Posts Tagged ‘telesales team management’
Friday, June 25th, 2010
The magic ingredient that will help you get on in life is ENTHUSIASM and it’s close associate ENERGY.
I often sit there watching TV at night wondering what makes those who offer us advice on all manner of aspects of our life, celebrities. Is it that they’re the most highly qualified in their field? Not usually. Are they the brightest or most experienced? Again not necessarily. But what they all possess in common is enthusiasm for what they do and energy around doing it. This is especially true of the TV chefs. I always think people like Jamie Oliver and Rick Stein really love what they do. The cynic may say, well yes “if I was earning what they were earning, I could be enthusiastic too.” But of course it doesn’t happen that way round does it? You have to put the effort in first and loads of energy, then the rewards will come. Ok, that’s the moralising over!
Enthusiasm and energy are what will get you what you want from life
If you’re selling your business to others as a business owner or director or you’re employed in a sales position, it is really important – vital in fact that you’re communication reflects this positive attitude and strong belief.
Those of you who have already been on one of courses and done the work on ‘Expression, Energy and Emphasis’ will know that you can tell 40+ things about a total stranger from the opening 6 words of a telephone conversation! Remember grey, red, pink & fluffy and the brown man ?!
The energy in your voice will say more about you than you will ever realise. Make it part of your power of attraction. Jamie does.
Tags: motivating a telesales team, telephone techniques training, telesales motivation, telesales team management, telesales team motivation, telesales training, training for telemarketing
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Selling advice, Telemarketing management, Telesales tips, communication skills, sales development training, telemarketing, telephone techniques, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Friday, May 7th, 2010
Make sure your telesales team is targeted on what you are targeted on. Obvious advice in theory, but not every organisation with a telesales or telemarketing team follows this. It can be easy to dismiss the need to do this on the basis that the management looks after the commercial elements for instance. We have worked with companies in the past who only target their team on sales and then have to manage a large volume of unprofitable orders.
Make sure your telesales targets reflect corporate goals
We’re just starting a programme with a client just outside Birmingham who has a large team selling items business to business over the phone. We carried out a team audit with them recently (more details of team audits at www.tomarket.co.uk/teamaudits.php.)
The team actively promotes the fact that the goods are free on approval and “if you don’t want them, we’ll simply pick them up from you free of charge.” Also phrases such as “no obligation” appear frequently. Clearly this strategy is intended to get as many products out as possible which is great – but there is no sense of them being selective at all with who they mail out to. The result is that the company feels that too much of it’s sales activity is unprofitable.
The team is targeted on products sent out. It doesn’t take into account how many products come back.
It is really important that you understand what your business needs and ensure at least some of this is fed through to the telesales or telemarketing team on the front line. It pays to make sure everyone shoulders the responsibility for the overall success of the company. And the danger of keeping any part of your team in the dark is that first they don’t understand what is important to the organisation they are working for, and worst they may not realise that what they are doing is counterproductive. Furthermore, how can you ever discipline someone for poor performance if they have every reason to believe they’re doing a good job?
Tags: assessing telesales teams, incentivising telesales, sales targeting, targeting telesales, telemarketing target setting, telesales team management, telesales top tips for free
Posted in Commission schemes, Independent audit of telemarketing team, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, Telesales tips, benchmarking telesales teams, sales development training, telemarketing, 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 »
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 »
Thursday, November 26th, 2009
Commission or bonus and incentives for my telesales team ? What schemes should I motivate them with ? How much ? Should it be regular commission or one off bonuses ? What works best ? How much is all this going to cost me ? And what if I end up paying more for the same ?! How do I avoid this ?
Telesales commission and bonus schemes
These are some of the questions we get asked by clients frequently.
Should I pay commission, bonus or run campaigns for my telesales or telemarketing team ?
Well why not do all 3? They all have their place and they can do different things for you.
“It’ll cost me too much” I hear you cry! Well that depends on how much you award in each category doesn’t it? After all if someone is successful, then you’re happy to pay them an amount up to the margin or profit they are making for you – right?
You want to encourage the top performers don’t you? And you don’t want them wandering off to another job – or worse still your opposition.
I believe elements of commission, bonus and campaigns all have their place in your remuneration system. They each do different things. Click here to find the full article http://ezinearticles.com/?Should-I-Pay-Commission,-Bonus-Or-Run-Campaigns-For-My-Telesales-Or-Telemarketing-Team?&id=2088836 we’ve had published at ezine articles.
And if you want to discuss a tailored system that would be right for your team, give us a call on 01858 461148 or simply e-mail us your question to info@tomarket.co.uk
Tags: bonus schemes for telesales, incentivising telesales, motivating a telesales team, running telesales campaigns, telemarketing team management, telesales commission scheme, telesales team management, telesales team motivation
Posted in Commission schemes, Telemarketing management, telesales | No Comments »
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
It can be difficult distilling them down to just 5, but we know how much you like lists – so we’ve picked these 5 ;
- Have some form of targets. Otherwise how can you (and equally importantly them) measure success ?
- Get their results up on a wall board. This has many benefits for them and you.
- 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.
- Set aside some time to talk to members of your team regularly. It will yield enormous benefits.
- 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
Tags: managing a telephone team, motivating a telesales team, telephone team management, telesales motivation, telesales team management
Posted in Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, telemarketing, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »
Monday, September 14th, 2009
There is a way to get an experienced telesales or telemarketing manager in your company for a fraction of the usual cost.
Many companies are facing a current situation where they want to provide strong leadership and telesales or telemarketing management for their team, but without wanting to commit to spending the £50,000 to £60,000 that it would normally cost.
Get your team to the next level with some interim management
An alternative is to hire somebody on a freelance basis to do an agreed number of days per month for you. Say you set up an agreement with someone to do 5 days per month. The required investment will be less than half what it would cost to employ someone.
You may additionally get around the need for a lengthy contract and so if your business changes shape or your needs change, you can wind up the agreement. Alternatively you can also use the exercise as a great test bed for trying out a potential telesales or telemarketing manager. Also your freelance manager should be able to help you spec up what you need. No company car, or pension or healthcare either so you have access to quality management and leadership at a fraction of the normal fee.
Many organisations are talking to us at the moment about such an arrangement as it gives much more flexibility and a lack of heavy investment and cost at a time when business conditions are volatile.
Consider the idea of an interim manager for your team. They can help set up or develop KPIs for your team, can help with benefits selling, objection handling and even sales call structure. It could be the best thing to help train, develop and build a telesales or telemarketing team whether you are in Leicester, Northampton, Kettering, Corby, Wellingborough, Cambridge, Peterborough, Birmingham, Coventry, Derby or Nottingham or anywhere across Leicestershire, Northamptonshire, or the East or West Midlands.
Tags: birmingham, cambridge, corby, coventry, developing telesales, how to improve telesales team, kettering, leicester, Leicestershire, northampton, Northamptonshire, Telemarketing management, telemarketing teams, telesales process training, telesales team management
Posted in Independent audit of telemarketing team, Telemarketing management, Telesales team assessment, benchmarking telesales teams, sales development training, telemarketing, telesales, telesales team management | No Comments »