Posts Tagged ‘telephone team management’

Your key responsibilities as a telesales or customer service team manager

Friday, April 1st, 2011

Key responsibilities as a telesales or customer service team manager are many. We’re not saying for one minute that if you apply these key however many principles your life will be wonderful…… HOWEVER

Telemarketing telesales customer service management

Telemarketing and customer service management tips

There are some key bits of advice and tips that come up time and time again.

  1. Be prepared to lead from the front (set a good example with behaviour and attitude) Be someone they can look up to.
  2. Set targets with your team. Admittedly easier with a telesales or telemarketing team than customer service but important nonetheless. Everyone needs to know what they’re supposed to be doing and how much of it they’re supposed to be doing.
  3. Give each of the members of your time (specific one to one time) and learn about them as individuals. By understanding them, and their goals and personality, you’ll find it so much easier to manage and motivate them. And they’ll respect you more for the time and attention you give them. It’s exactly the same with children for that matter!
  4. Adopt a calm attitude. Don’t allow little things to make you anxious (regardless of how you feel inside!) A calm leader will find their team respond better and learn to be calm themselves.
  5. Be positive. It is always easier to be negative and point out all that’s wrong with everyone else and with the company. Once you’re perfect – then you’ve got the right, but not until …..
  6. Learn. Always be looking for opportunities to learn. Watch what other people do : other managers, other human beings in certain situations, from books, from television, from Mary Portas, from Sir Alan Sugar. Opportunities for personal growth are all around – all the time.

We’ll put together some more ideas on this in the not too distant, but for the time being use some of these 6 principles. And if you have any ideas of your own : about the key responsibilities of a telesales or telemarketing or customer service manager, let us know at info@tomarket.co.uk/ We may include your ideas and if we do, we’ll credit you as the source.

To Market runs training courses for supervisors, team leaders and managers in telephone sales, telemarketing and customer service across the East Midlands, Peterborough, Cambridge, Leicester, Northampton, Derby, Nottingham, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Coventry, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Peterborough, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, Milton Keynes, Lincoln, East Midlands as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire

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Posted in benchmarking customer service teams, benchmarking telesales teams, Customer service management, Customer Service tips, Personal development, Telemarketing management, telesales team management | No Comments »

How to be an effective phone team manager – some free tips

Monday, November 1st, 2010

How to be an effective phone team manager – some free tips. Some great ideas came out of a recent course we ran for a team of telephone team managers in Birmingham.  We run courses for telesales, telemarketing, customer service and internal sales team managers, supervisors and team leaders and we enjoy seeing buckletloads of good ideas coming out.

Customer Service and Telesales Managers training

Customer Service and Telesales Managers training

On this course we ran a session on what makes an effective team manager. The question we ask the group is ; What personal characteristics do YOU think you need to be an effective phone team manager. We will write about some of the other ideas that came out of this course in future articles, but for the time being we thought you might be interested in the following top 10 tips ;

  1. Be proactive
  2. Be approachable (friendly & open)
  3. A good listener
  4. Decisive
  5. Positive
  6. Respect (need to earn it and show it)
  7. Courtesy
  8. Able to give constructive feedback
  9. Flexible
  10. Dynamic

If you are a telephone team manager, supervisor or team leader in charge of a telesales, customer service, telemarketing or internal sales team, we’d be interested to hear about 3 characteristics you think you need. We’re interested in building a list that anyone can read and benefit from. Send your ideas to info@tomarket.co.uk

And remember our customer service management, telesales team leader and telemarketing supervisor courses run in Birmingham, Coventry, Leicester, Northampton, Nottingham, Derby, Melton Mowbray, Daventry, Wellingborough, Ketttering, Corby, Loughborough, Milton Keynes, Cambridge, Peterborough, Newmarket, Rugby, Solihull and Lichfield. You can either join other phone team managers, or alternatively we can provide telephone team manager training on site at your offices.

Our next public course – the art of running a successful telephone team is running in the East Midlands on  Wednesday 24th & Thursday 25th November 2010 which isn’t far off now. Follow this link for more details http://www.tomarket.co.uk/courses.php We are taking bookings now!!

To Market runs training courses for telephone sales, telemarketing and customer service managers, supervisors and team leaders across the East Midlands, Peterborough, Cambridge, Leicester, Northampton, Derby, Nottingham, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Coventry, Birmingham, Lichfield, Solihull, Peterborough, Wolverhampton, West Midlands, Milton Keynes, Lincoln, East Midlands as well as wider parts of Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk, Buckinghamshire, Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire.

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Posted in Customer service management, Customer Service tips, Forthcoming courses, Telemarketing management, telesales team management | 1 Comment »

Hire an interim to support your new telesales manager

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

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

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, owner managers directors, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »

Get advice on why not to hire a new telesales manager

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

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.

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, Marketing, owner managers directors, small business marketing, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telesales team management | No Comments »

What is the difference between commission and bonus ?

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

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

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Posted in Commission schemes, Marketing, owner managers directors, Telemarketing management, telesales team management, Telesales tips | No Comments »

Don’t hire a new telesales manager yet !

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

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

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Posted in benchmarking telesales teams, Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, Marketing, owner managers directors, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telesales, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »

5 top tips for setting up your own in-house telesales team

Monday, November 23rd, 2009

5 top tips for setting up your own in-house telesales team. We have worked with many organisations over the years, and been asked our opinions on many aspects related to setting up and then running an effective in-house telemarketing or telesales team.

Setting up an effective telesales team can be easy using a template

Setting up an effective telesales team can be easy using a template

It can be difficult distilling them down to just 5, but we know how much you like lists – so we’ve picked these 5 ;

  1. Have some form of targets. Otherwise how can you (and equally importantly them) measure success ?
  2. Get their results up on a wall board. This has many benefits for them and you.
  3. Check the quality of the leads they are working. Quality in, definitely means quality out. For instance if you are a packaging industry company and you have a list of post offices, and bakers shops, the most successful sales person in the world will struggle.
  4. Set aside some time to talk to members of your team regularly. It will yield enormous benefits.
  5. Keep developing ideas to motivate your team. Telesales and telemarketing is a fast moving environment. Your ability to keep them motivated and enthusisatic will give better service levels to your customers and better results.

To read this article in full click here http://ezinearticles.com/?5-Top-Tips-For-Setting-Up-an-Effective-In-House-Telesales-Or-Telemarketing-Team&id=2114456

We have many ideas on team motivation, so if you want to get some external help and ideas contact us info@tomarket.co.uk. Finally we have a CD which explains how to make the setting up and running of your own in-house team as smooth as possible. Follow the link here to the audio CD which is just £34.99 + VAT. http://www.associatedlearningsystems.co.uk/product_detail.asp?ProdID=2

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Posted in telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telesales, Telesales team assessment, telesales team management | No Comments »

Do you really need a full time telesales manager ?

Sunday, May 3rd, 2009

A question for you. Do you really need a full time telesales manager ? 

As you know recruiting someone to run your team can be an expensive and time consuming business. You may not even get the right person !

Clearly you want the best quality telesales or telemarketing manager you can afford even if you’re a small company because you want to improve sales. Also we can take it as read that you want someone who will bring in more profit than it costs you to employ them.

Interim telesales manager - a more flexible approach

Interim telesales manager - a more flexible approach

The difficulty then is to recruit someone who you know will make these returns. And what do you do if they don’t ? Send them packing I guess. As soon as you agree a contract with them you’re committed to spending a defined sum of money. You’ve got ;

  • Salary (probably likely to cost £25,000 – £40,000 depending on what you want)
  • Pension
  • Social costs (N.I. contributions etc.)
  • Car (do you provide a car – or money in lieu of a car ?)
  • Other on-costs such as furniture, coffee ! heat, light, power etc.

As an alternative have you considered hiring an interim telesales manager on a short term contract ? This offers many advantages.

It will cost you less as they’ll be doing less days. Admittedly their day rate will be higher. Nevertheless if you get a top notch manager, you should get more quality and therefore at least equal results.  You are no longer paying turning up money, you only pay them for what you need. There may even be no fixed contract, so you can end it at any point.  This keeps them focused on achieving results for you.

If this is an idea which interests you, we can advise you on how to set it up, and the sorts of things a good manager should be able to help you with. Drop us an e-mail to info@tomarket.co.uk

This idea will help you whether you are a finance director, a business owner, an owner manager, or someone running a small business in Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, Leicester, Northampton, Market Harborough, Corby, Wellingborough, Kettering, Lutterworth, Cambridge, Daventry, Coventry, Rugby, Melton Mowbray, Uppingham, Oakham

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Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, interim telesales manager, telemarketing, Telemarketing management, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »