Telesales Tips

Then you will know who your top agents are, and you can reward them accordingly. Giving your sales team appropriate, motivational targets is an obvious way to boost productivity, but what are the right things? Remember, the correct metric-based targets are not always the easiest to measure and you should only measure thing that will be reviewed, analysed and acted on.

Also, it is important to measure what is relevant to the need, which will change over time. Finally, it can be valuable to look for and then act on trends rather than one-offs. Instead, look for trends, particularly those which can be fixed. If you just set a target for your telemarketing team, without thinking through the real reasons for why you have implemented it, advisors will see it as important and they will find ways to get around proper procedures, particularly if targets are linked to pay.

And whilst this may be beneficial in lowering talk time, it is certainly not in maximising performance and will likely lead to a lower sales per contact ratio. It is important to sound authoritative and energised about the product or service you are selling. Wireless headsets provide users with the ability to stand up and move around the office, which in turn helps the telesales or telemarketing agents open up their lungs and project their voices more effectively, as well as getting the blood pumping to keep them feeling more awake when on the call.

We have improved the productivity of our workforce by implementing a positive strategy of staff engagement. This was developed to optimise the amount of time we invest in our employees and, through the use of leading-edge workforce management technology, we have been able to increase significantly the amount of and team contact that we have with our staff. This has created a very positive environment in which our people understand their vital role in the success of our business. As a result, we have benefited from enhanced productivity in terms of schedule adherence, conformance and other productivity metrics, as well as improvements in employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

Allowing, and in fact encouraging, advisors to establish their preferred work schedule has been shown to improve employee morale, increase employee and customer satisfaction, and improve key operational metrics in the call centre. Therefore, telesales people should have a way to communicate their preferred work times without prior consent, available times with prior consent, and unavailable times.

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One way to easily take these preferences into account when creating agent schedules is to implement a feature-rich but not necessarily costly workforce management system. For more on this topic, read our article: Playing to the strengths of each team leader and positioning people according to their skills is a tried and tested way to boost performance. We used to follow the practice of putting the best team leaders with the worst performers in the hope they would improve.

We changed that approach after realising that when we paired the best with the best, productivity was boosted. When people are good at what they do, they have added enjoyment and tend to be more productive. To maintain momentum, a call centre manager needs to offer long-term prizes of large value such as a holiday or experience. These can be tailored around a theme or season to add extra interest and keep the incentive or reward programme timely. This ongoing approach needs to be interspersed with surprise short-term incentives and rewards taking place daily or weekly.

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These make an immediate positive impact on morale, as experiences help to create positive memories that are associated with the workplace, and they make a big difference to the level of motivation and energy within a room. AO use this premise in their contact centre, and you can learn more about how they do so by reading: Automating sales and telemarketing management and bringing CRM into the contact-handling system as a single agent desktop allows the agent to focus on talking to the customer. Data from front- and back-office systems can be aggregated in real time and presented to the agent with relevant cross-sell and up-sell data.

By integrating CRM and contact handling, the system can become self-learning and discover which agents are best at closing certain types of lead, and can route future leads, calls or emails accordingly. Thanks to Susannah Richardson at mplsystems.

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Work out what will provide value and offer them something useful with, if possible, a free sample, a no-strings-attached trial, etc. Put yourself in their shoes: Rapid peaks can also be responsible for low employee morale and, in the case of customer complaints, increase the time to complaint resolution, further damaging brand and reputation. Most customers forced to complain feel vulnerable and agents feel the brunt of this.

By having the means to be proactive, the agent can quickly calm the customer and start the resolution process. By identifying complaint trends by using root-cause analysis, the management team has the knowledge needed to prepare agents and to put resolution strategies in place. Staffing in line with predicted call peaks reduces call answer time and the ferocity of the caller. It will also help to drive sales! Contact centres are all about hitting targets and rankings, and many are now realising the importance of making their advisors feel good. Competencies and company values should also be measured among staff to help them develop competencies.

Competencies and values in a call centre would be good to focus on, as they are great for staff development and for incentivising the staff and company. With competencies, the telemarketing manager can assess and give an expectation rating as well as a final rating, which will show how the person has developed. The manager can also use the option of staff self-assessment. Develop multi-skilling and link it to a competencies and development plan. Our banked-hours scheme enables staff to enjoy sunny summer afternoons by banking hours.

We can utilise these owed hours during our peak winter period. This has led to a saving on recruitment and training and enabled us to retain our experienced workforce. We understand that call centre work can be challenging. Down time is encouraged following a difficult call, allowing the operator to feel positive and refreshed ahead of their next call, which also reduces days lost to sickness. Internal communication is key in a productive telesales or telemarketing environment. So, make sure teams and individuals have the latest updates on targets and deadlines, and information about deals, so everyone is focused on the same results.

Also, it could help to run regular debriefs and share information, so employees continue to learn and improve. First impressions count and presenting the caller ID as soon as a call comes through can help prepare staff to handle any incoming call effectively. Simple procedures, including automatic routing of calls to the correct department, can ensure that enquiries are resolved quickly, providing improved service and saving time for both the customer and the salesperson.

By going further and integrating a telephony system with other applications, such as Salesforce CRM, staff can use a single screen to manage all incoming and outgoing calls. This saves time as the sales team can access all customer information from one central source rather than logging onto different systems. But what about you? Do you have any tips to boost the productivity of a telesales team?

Some great ideas here and will be reviewing most with my team to see which ones we feel we want to implement. Atmosphere is so important in a sales room. All very interesting but the bottom line, missed by almost all call centres, is to pay people properly and have fair incentives.

Hand in hand with this goes hiring eager beavers in the first place. Lack of personal experience in selling over the phone for managers is the main drawback in call centres. A very insightful blog. All of them excellent solutions to the problem everyone in inside sales might have faced at one point or the other. Please click here if you are not redirected within a few seconds.

Confidence is an absolutely essential part of creating a relaxed tone for cold calls. So that means you need to work on improving but also think about some of the things you do really well. And simply practicing and making a lot of calls can make you feel more confident over time. Small talk at the beginning of each call might seem friendly and natural. But too much of it can be distracting and time wasting. So say a quick hello and then try to get to the point of your call quickly.

Not every cold call is going to go smoothly. In fact, there are some obstacles that might come up fairly regularly. If you notice some of those common issues, you should be able to anticipate them and come up with good responses to use on your cold calls going forward. If you keep a few talking points nearby, it can help you stay on track in case you get distracted or thrown off. Instead, respond to each customer inquiry or response in a natural way that allows you to then lead back to your talking points. If possible, it can be beneficial to find some kind of connection with your prospect early on in the call.

So that means you need to set up your workspace in a way that will support you. Get a comfortable chair, put up some family photos and otherwise personalize your space. If you want to get a lot done, you might think that you should make cold calls while also completing other tasks. But your prospects deserve your full attention.

So build up your energy with some healthy snacks or light exercise beforehand. So think about what types of problems or needs they might have in order to better sell to them. So instead of just talking about the features you offer, focus on what your product or service can actually accomplish for your customers.

You can also talk a bit about what your company has accomplished in order to offer some proof that it would be beneficial for customers to buy from you. You also need to fully understand your customers in order to effectively sell to them. That means that it can be a good idea to ask a fair amount of questions to gain a better understanding and keep the conversation going. Doing so can turn customers off and ruin any future chance you might have of doing business with them.

If you go on and on forever, your prospects might get bored or disinterested. Or they might just not have the time to sit on the phone with you for that long, even if they are interested in purchasing.

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Along those same lines, you also need to keep calls quick so that you can make as many of them as possible. And you might even get more comfortable making those calls as you go.