In this
day and age of social media and internet sales, telesales continue to be one of
the most dynamic and essential channels of sales for organizations across
diverse industries.
Telesales
offers the organization the ability to target diverse target markets and employ
diverse pool of talent. It controls costs, and improves quality and efficiency of
the sales staff. The real time call
analysis gives a streamlined focus on quality.
Most of
us have already implemented or thought about the quantifiable methods of
increasing telesales business, I have implemented the below quantifiable
methods to my programs over the years.
1. Training
and Development: It all starts with effective training on product and the
selling skills. The importance of effective training can be summed up from the military
saying that the more that you sweat in training the less you bleed in the
battlefield.
Whether experienced
or a fresher, everyone in your organization needs continuous training and skill
development to be a successful sales consultant. Sales training is all about
focus, interest, desire and action. This however needs to be sharpened with
exhaustive product knowledge to cut through the sale resistance. During new
staff sales training the focus should be on overall knowledge development on
the product and the target market. The AIDA methodology and data mining of the
sales leads is equally important. When imbued with all that is mentioned above,
training then becomes a quantifiable tool to measure the sales efficiency of
the new consultants as well of the veteran sales staff.
2. Incentives:
Salary aside, it is the incentive which every thoroughbred sales person strives
for. Here is when it becomes tricky, what may work for one team may not work
for the other, what inspires a star performer may not workout for the
stabilizers. Incentives should look to improve performance of KPIs and not just
sales. Incentives should look to increase team efficiency; these should cater
to the vision of the business. Incentives which focus on improving referral
business and conversions generally work very well. In order to be really
effective, incentives must strive to improve and positively impact both the
share holder and the customers. Incentives should be agile, inspiring and immediate.
They must excite the imagination of a large team and inspire them to exert
their best effort.
3. Data
Analysis: One of the most important and measurable aspect of team
management in not just tele sales or call centre environment but true for any business
is detailed analysis of all data available.
Whether
it is customer engagement data, the call quality data, or leads conversion data
it is essential for a manager to see which way is the wind blowing and to do a
course correction as and when it is required. The importance of a manager is to
do data analysis periodically can not be over stressed. It separates the wheat
from the chaff and the men from the boys.
4.Source
of Sales: The raw
material for your sales are the leads, and it goes without saying that it
becomes necessary to analyse what’s contributing to the business. The focus
should be on the conversion percentage of the leads which are distributed to
the team. A good manager will distribute leads based on the strength of his
team members. If a sale consultant is unable to deliver the results on
enterprise database, but is great with nomination conversion and small business
database he should be used as such. Ability to choose horses for courses is the
defining test of a good manager.
5.AHT
“It Talks”:
Average handling time, reveals a lot of facts if analyzed carefully. Whether outbound
calls or inbound, the higher the AHT the more work needs to be done on the
skills of the sales staff. A successful call should provide extra ordinary call
experience at the right margins. It should be an engagement rather than a mere
transaction.
6.Customer
Engagement: What
happens when customer engagement is lacking?
One satisfied member will refer at least five friends to you. An unsatisfied
customer has the ability to take ten potential customers away from you. Post
sales customer engagement becomes a very potent tool for a telesales agent. It
keeps the client happy, aids in getting references, and reduces the possibilities
of cancellations. It keeps the relationship with the member alive and increases
the chances of renewals.
7.Innovation
and Change: In
our fascination for number crunching we usually forget to innovate and change
and this can be detrimental. One must innovate and change one’s script for varied
selling and cross selling opportunities. For example over the years DNC has
become the biggest obstacle in reaching out to the right party, think of cloud
telephony for a solution it provides inbuilt CRMs ;it helps saves money on hardware
and physical servers, PRI lines and GSM gateways, records the calls, gives output
reports, at the end of the day cost is as important as revenue in any business.
8.Coaching and Feedback: Last but not the least and a powerful tool is coaching and feedback, precise, structured and documented feedback, keeps the team members aware of their strengths and opportunity areas. It becomes easy to monitor regular progress and also helps to maneuver the progress in the desired area. Coaching and feedback on its own is another big area to talk about on a different time.
Thanks for taking out time to read my blog, I would greatly appreciate your comments and reviews.
Thanks
thenofusssalesman
