Archive for the ‘owner managers directors’ Category
Friday, January 22nd, 2010
Unsolicited telephone sales calls can be illegal. So this means you can’t simply start calling names and companies at random from a list. And you certainly can’t do what some companies used to do in the 80’s which was to call numbers out of the Yellow Pages to make sales calls.
Make sure your telesales activity stays the right side of the law
As long ago as December 2003, the government introduced legislation which made it unlawful to make unsolicited calls to individuals who have indicated that they do not want to receive such calls. Both consumers and businesses can register their unwillingness to receive telephone (TPS) and fax (FPS) communications on a central register.
Over 15 million consumers and businesses have already registered their numbers which means these businesses and consumers must not be contacted unless permission has been explicitly granted to the calling company. There is a potential fine of up to £5,000 for each breach of the legislation. So this means you must ensure your in-house list must be checked periodically, and any lists you buy in should already be TPS checked. Any reputable list supplier will do this as a matter of course.
Incidentally there is a shelf life of 3 months on these checks meaning that any list that has not been checked for 3 months should be checked again. There are many companies that will provide a service to check your numbers for you, such as www.numbercheck.co.uk.
We find that this is a much more serious issue if you operate and sell in consumer markets and phone people at home. Most companies don’t register their office numbers thank goodness as the whole economy would grind to a halt, but many householders do.
This is brought to you as part of To Market’s public service! If you want further information or advice on this subject, we suggest you have a look at the telephone preference service’s website http://www.tpsonline.org.uk/ctps/what/ for all the official information.
Tags: CTPS, marketing legal practices, telemarketing law, Telephone preference service, telesales and the law
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Telemarketing management, Telephone preference service, owner managers directors, small business marketing, telemarketing, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, January 4th, 2010
Hire an interim to support your new telesales manager. You may have a new team leader, or a supervisor who you’ve just promoted to run the team for you. This is something they deserve and have worked for, and you want to acknowledge their contribution. However you may also acknowledge (perhaps privately) that they don’t have all the rounded commercial and business skills that will help them become an immediate success. This is a situation we are coming across increasingly at the moment as clients seek to motivate and reward the staff they already have without wishing to commit to management wages and extra salaries.
Help support your telesales or telemarketing team leader
You want them to lead the team on a daily basis, but you recognise that they may need some help and assistance setting up good management reporting systems and training. Perhaps they’ve never had to look at key performance indicators before, perhaps they don’t know where to start. Have they ever trained a team ? And what are they like at working with you to set up a good motivational commission scheme ?
Other areas we typically look at include the quality of the database. What’s the quality like ? Have they had to evaluate it before ? In order to help your team supervisor or team leader make a quick success of their role and in order to help shorten the learning curve, we can work alongside them on an interim basis to help get the systems set up. Once that’s done, we step away and you then manage your team in-house.
Hiring an interim on a fixed number of days per month can give them the support they may need to get things set up without you commiting to the ongoing cost. If this is an idea you’d like to explore further, just drop us an e-mail to info@tomarket.co.uk and we can have a chat.
We can help you with interim telesales or telemarketing management across the West and East Midlands including Leicester, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Coventry, Derby, Nottingham, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Milton Keynes, Melton Mowbray, Daventry, Northampton, Newmarket and Cambridge
Tags: fixed term telemarketing management, interim telemarketing manager, interim telesales manager, Telemarketing management, telephone team management, telesales team management
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, benchmarking telesales teams, interim telesales manager, owner managers directors, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, December 21st, 2009
It’s really important you create a dynamic atmosphere within your telesales team. Winning teams look, sound and behave different to other teams. You may believe that the feeling of success and the buzz comes from the success itself. But there’s no reason why you shouldn’t encourage the team to produce this energy themselves. This is one common theme with team audits we carry out on teams – where we go and listen in to them for 2 hours while they talk to real customers and prospects on the telephone. http://www.tomarket.co.uk/teamaudits.php for more details of our team audits.
Motivate your telesales / telemarketing team - success brings success
In one report for a Birmingham client in metal manufacturing we wrote “Consider working on some more ‘jazzy’ ideas for making it feel more like a sales office. We could work on this with the team collectively.”
Teams often have whiteboards in the office to record something, but it’s frequently not in real time. One car company we visited in September (2009) had a whiteboard divided up into sections with each persons name down the left. It was titled Targets 2008 ! and there were no numbers anywhere on the board ! Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear ! Instead use your whiteboard to monitor activity and give feedback to your team.
Having a series of KPIs (key performance indicators) is another important part of this. Every member of the team needs to know how they’re doing against what the company requires. Again in realtime, not just at the end of the month. How can a person be motivated if they don’t know how they’re doing ?
There are many more ideas about motivating your team through creating the right atmosphere, and if you think your team would benefit from some more structured working and an injection of energy, give us a call today on 01858 461148. We can kick some ideas around.
To Market runs team audits with companies across the company and we can agree the fee with you in advance. We work across the East and West Midlands including Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Leicester, Northampton, Derby, Nottingham, Cambridge, Newmarket,Wellingborough, Kettering, Corby, Warwick, Leamington Spa, Huntingdon, St Ives as well as wide parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, and Suffolk.
Tags: telemarketing KPIs, telesales KPIs, telesales motivation, telesales team management, telesales team motivation, tips on telesales management
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, benchmarking telesales teams, owner managers directors, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, December 14th, 2009
Get advice on why not to hire a new telesales manager. If you are currently looking to build up the telesales or telemarketing function in your company, you may be looking at recruiting a new telesales manager. Alternatively you may be looking to recruit one who has left. However there is a flexible alternative.
Hiring a short term telesales manager gives your business flexibility
You can hire in a manager for a limited period of time. You can agree some objectives for them, and you can ‘hire’ them for a fixed number of days per month. A package might be between a half a day per month and say 6 days per month. In this time a quality telesales or telemarketing manager will be able to help you set up good managment systems and KPIs (key performance indicators) for your team. They should also be responsible for training and agreeing with you some targets and benchmarks for activity and results.
We can come and have a chat over a coffee about how this may work for you. We can give advice on what to look for, and what an interim or short term contract telesales manager may be able to offer you. So if you’re in Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Newmarket, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, Oakham give us a call on 01858 461148 and we’ll have a chat.
Tags: fixed term telemarketing management, interim phone team management, part time telesales management, Telemarketing management, telemarketing team management, telephone team management, telesales team management
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Marketing, Telemarketing management, benchmarking telesales teams, interim telesales manager, owner managers directors, small business marketing, telemarketing, telesales team management | No Comments »
Tuesday, December 8th, 2009
What is the difference between commission and bonus ? This is a question we’re asked frequently by clients. Not only what is the difference, but equally importantly, “do we need both of them ?” and “how can we use them both to motivate our team in different ways ?”
Get your commission and bonus schemes right and this is what should happen to sales
Indeed we think commission, bonus and campaign incentives all have a place in how you reward your telesales or telemarketing team. It is worth spending some time thinking these elements through too, because if you get it right you can motivate your telephone team to produce better results, increased sales, more appointments, higher numbers of quotations etc. You don’t mind paying more if you get more do you ? However you don’t want to pay more for the same or less !
Commission should be a regular payment for doing the telesales or telemarketing job well. It should be a constant, and the best performers in your team should earn the most. In addition it must be easy (for them) to work out at the point of getting the order. After all if it isn’t, it can’t motivate them can it ?! So a percentage of order value is a common version of this.
“My commission rate rewards me at 2% of order value.” “Great so if I can get this deal for £500 this morning, that means that will be £10 in my sky rocket (or pocket – for those of you not familiar with cockney ryhming slang !)
Bonus however is for what you reward individual members of your team with on top of their core job. So if you sell any of the platinum service plan we give you £50. You can tailor this then to sales of your more profitable products or services, or end of line stock that you want to clear etc. Alternatively it could be for achievement of quarterly target. Bonuses then should be for specific (relatively) short run campaigns or business objectives. This allows you to direct the guns in a particular direction until the objective has been achieved, or time has passed.
Then on top of commission and bonus there are incentives and for a phone team these are the fun bit. Very short term and with a high profile to add some energy and dynamism to a team’s activity and performance in the short term. But this is perhaps a subject for another day. In the meantime, there is a slightly more indepth article at ezine articles. Follow the link here http://ezinearticles.com/?Should-I-Pay-Commission,-Bonus-Or-Run-Campaigns-For-My-Telesales-Or-Telemarketing-Team?&id=2088836
Tags: management, Telemarketing management, telephone team management, telesales team management
Posted in Commission schemes, Marketing, Telemarketing management, Telesales tips, owner managers directors, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, December 7th, 2009
You run a small to medium sized business and you feel telesales has a place in your business. It is after all a proven and highly measurable way of developing new sales opportunities. You’d either like to develop the team you already have, or alternatively you might be keen to set up a team.
Get personalised one to one mentoring help for your business
The thing is you’re an expert in something else – not in setting up and running a telesales or telemarketing team. Furthermore you probably don’t want to be !
We may be able to help. We can offer bespoke tailored mentoring work with you personally, to help you develop your telesales or telemarketing team. And if we are working with you personally, there is also the possibility that some or all of it could be funded through Train to Gain.
If this is something of interest to you, and you’re based in Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, Oakham we can help. First we’d like to have a chat over a coffee at your place – and we can take it from there. Give us a call on 01858 461148. We’d be keen to offer you any help, advice or tips we can.
You get some specific tailored help directly applicable to the needs of your business. We can provide you with anything from half a day per month to 5 days per month.
Tags: marketing for small business, marketing tips, owner manager development, small business growth, small business marketing, SME marketing ideas, Train to Gain funded mentoring, Train to Gain funded training
Posted in Free training, Funded training, Marketing, Personal development, Train to Gain funding, business development, business growth, owner managers directors, partially funded training, sales development training, small business marketing, telesales team management | No Comments »
Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009
Many companies are in the situation where they want to develop a more effective telesales or telemarketing team, but don’t necessarily want to commit to spending £40,000 a year that it would cost to secure a quality manager.
How to find a quality telesales manager for your team
Furthermore the economy is fragile and so you want to maintain flexibility. A great and increasingly popular solution is to hire a quality telesales manager on a short term contract. And if you can negotiate a flexible and open agreement where you’re not even committed to them for as long as a year then so much the better !
By agreeing to take on someone with a track record in successful telephone team management you can improve your own systems and processes so that after they’re gone, you can run the systems yourselves. Often a team leader or supervisor can look after the team on a day to day basis and they might only be costing you £20,000 a year.
Our advice on beefing up the telesales management in your company is that you should expect a good telesales manager to help you with such varied issues as ;
- Advice on your team’s callpots. Do you have enough names, too many, about right ?
- A check on your database quality. The best sales team will struggle and get demotivated if they’re working poor quality leads.
- Input into setting up some effective KPIs and management reporting systems. This gives you complete control then. Disciplinary procedures rely on evidence. Underperformers must know they’re underperforming.
- Advice on how to set up and run easy incentives schemes
- Help integrating incentives into company campaigns
- Added value in terms of general marketing advice on things such as your website. Optimising it so that it brings in more visitors is straightforward, it just takes some time and dedication.
If the idea of hiring in an interim telesales or telemarketing manager is something that appeals to you, feel free to contact us on 01858 461148 for some tips and advice. Alternatively go to Associated Learning Systems site where you will find an audio CD on the topic of how to set up and manage an effective telephone team. Click through here http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=2
We have worked with companies in many areas including ; Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, and Oakham
Tags: fixed term telemarketing management, short term telesales manager, telemarketing interim manager, Telemarketing management, telephone team management, telesales team management, temporary telesales manager
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Marketing, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, benchmarking telesales teams, interim telesales manager, owner managers directors, telemarketing, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, November 16th, 2009
As we’re all aware at the moment, times are challenging. There are fewer customers about, and many of those that are have cut their spending. A number of people we’ve spoken to are keen to find ways to sharpen their selling, and improve their sales effectiveness on the phone, but have limited budgets to invest in full scale training.
So we’re planning on running a free seminar in late January 2010 for directors, senior managers and small company owners where we will offer some key tips and suggestions for making more effective use of the phone in developing sales relationships with customers. The initial seminar or free telesales workshop will be held in the East Midlands – likely to be in Leicestershire or Northamptonshire (possibly Leicester, Kettering, Northampton, or Corby).
At this stage we’re interested in knowing who would like to attend this event. Numbers are likely to be limited to 20 or so. So if you’d be interested in registering your interest for this event – just send us an e-mail to info@tomarket.co.uk and we’ll then send you the full details once we get nearer to the event.
Also, depending on how the initial event goes, we may look to run them at other venues in Birmingham, Cambridge, Milton Keynes, Warrington, Lincoln, Solihull, Lichfield and South Yorkshire. So if these venues would suit you better, please let us know via e-mail.
Tags: advice for free on telephone selling, corby, coventry, daventry, free, free advice on telephone selling, free telephone selling workshop, Free telesales seminar, kettering, leicester, northampton, telesales top tips for free, Wellingborough
Posted in Forthcoming courses, Free training, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, Telesales tips, benchmarking telesales teams, communication skills, owner managers directors, sales development training, seminar, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Saturday, August 1st, 2009
There will be a telephone skills seminar for business owners run in Grantham in September. We’re currently putting the plan for a 2 hour seminar for all of you who are interested in building a more effective lean sales lead business for the future. There will be 3 guest presenters all experts in their field. Will Hawkins from MMT Digital will tell you how to get the most out of your website to make sure that people find you and not your competitors. Follow the link to http://www.mmtdigital.co.uk/RVE6a6413e6e94644d9a2f44f4250586398,,.aspx to read more about Will’s specialist skills. We are also pleased that Lloyd Stubbs from Taxassist accountants http://www.taxassist.co.uk/lloydstubbs/ who will pass on his expertise on how to ensure you manage your cashflow which is of course critical to the long and indeed short term survival of your business.
Andrew Seaward will also be running a presentation on how to use the telephone to build more effective customer relationships over the phone. Getting more customers and keeping the ones you already have is even more important now than in the recent past perhaps.
For all business leaders in Grantham, Peterborough, Leicester, Oakham, Uppingham, Stamford, Market Deeping and wider parts of Lincolnshire, Leicestershire and Cambridgeshire who have an interest in this seminar, just post a reply here. Your attendance at the seminar will be free of charge, and just think one idea, JUST ONE IDEA will make you glad you came along !
Tags: business owners, business owners self-development, cambridge, free business advice, free marketing seminar, Grantham, Leicestershire, marketing seminar, Oakham, Peterborough, Stamford, training for business owners, Uppingham
Posted in Free training, Personal development, business development, business growth, owner managers directors, seminar | No Comments »
Tuesday, May 19th, 2009
A one day business development seminar is about to be run for business owners and is fully funded in the East of England, the Eastern Counties including Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Norfolk, Essex, Bedfordshire and Hertfordshire.
If you’re a director or business owner manager of a small to medium sized business in Leicestershire in the East of England your place at this £500 one day business development seminar may qualify for full funding. So to you – not a bean ! Not one shilling !
Funded is available through Train to Gain. The seminar is titled
How to win and keep more business
So it will cover elements of sales, customer service and how to motivate your team to build better customer relationships. And of course you will pick up ideas from other people like you (who run their own businesses) so good opportunities to network too with like-minded people.
If you think you may qualify, and you’d like more details on how to improve the sales and customer service functions within your company just let us know via e-mail. You can e-mail me directly and I’ll write to you personally with more details. If you have any questions in the meantime – pick up the phone and give us a call.
This seminar is ideal for business owners, and directors within companies in Cambridge, Bury St Edmunds, Newmarket, Norwich, Ipswich, St Ives, Haverhill, St Albans, Stevenage, Letchworth, Baldock, Hemel Hempstead, Luton, Leighton Buzzard, as well as the wider counties of Cambridgeshire, Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Hertfordshire and Bedfordshire
Tags: Bury St Edmunds, business development ideas, business growth seminar, cambridge, Ely, fully funded training, funded business growth seminar, Haverhill, Hemel, how to build business workshop, Ipswich, Luton, new business development, Newmarket, St Ives, Train to Gain funded training, training for business owners
Posted in Customer service management, Field sales training, Free training, Funded training, Personal development, Selling advice, Train to Gain funding, business development, business growth, customer handling, customer services, owner managers directors, sales development training, seminar | No Comments »