When creating incentive plans, ask your sales people to identify what really motivates them

As a Sales Manager, are you spending a lot of cycles trying to identify the best compensation plan, the right incentives, the most motivating sales contests?  In his article, ‘Stimulate Your Staff With Questions’, Keith Rosen, The Executive Sales Coach TM, recommends that sales managers ask their sales reps to identify what motivates them.

Here are his suggested questions:

• What do you want in your career that you don’t currently have?
• What do you want to be doing that you aren’t currently doing?
• What are you doing now that you don’t want to be doing?
• What areas do you want to strengthen, improve, or develop?
• What is most important to you in your life/career? What does a successful career/life look like?
• What is the legacy you want to leave behind when you are gone?
• What are the three most important things you would like to accomplish right now?
• What is your plan of action to achieve those goals?
• What do you need that is missing and which prevents you from reaching these goals?
• How can I best support you to achieve these goals? (Uncover how each employee wants to be managed and supported.)

Outside motivators are good, internal motivation is better.

Are your Telesales Representatives using out-of-date questions?

An updated approach to sales questions provides updated sales results

Check in with your Telesales team, make sure they have eliminated ‘old style’ sales questions from their sales conversations with prospects as well as customers.

In his article Sales Training: The Power of Questions, Kelley Robertson points out that the old style line of questioning many sales representatives are trained to use do not advance the sales conversation and often work against the sales representative.  Can’t you see the prospect rolling his/her eyes when asked the question ‘If I could save you money, would you be interested...?’

His advice?

1. Determine your key objective.
2. Consider the person you will be speaking with.
3. Use “what” questions.

Managing the sales calls with well tuned questioning techniques and open ended questions, will result in a deeper knowledge of your company’s customers and prospects.  And a deeper knowledge will enable your Telesales people to present solutions that appeal to the customer’s needs.

Who are your Telesales and Customer Care All Stars?

Last night’s All Star game was an exciting game, right up to the last inning.  For baseball fans and non baseball fans alike, it provides an excellent backdrop for recognizing the performance of your top telephone representatives.  Be sure to take advantage of the All Star break to shout out the contributions of your All Stars, whether top individual performers, top team contributors, subject matter experts…....the list is endless.  Seasonal, themed recognition is easy to create and the media coverage provides a supporting backdrop.

Put a Little Fun in the Game of Teleselling

In his book “Management by Baseball”, Jeff Angus highlights FUN as the key ingredient for Rule 14.99 (page 231).  ‘Fun drives effective change.  An organization that wants to drive change has a better chance if it promotes playful attitudes and ideas....’ ( Jeff Angus’ blog). 

A teleselling environment is an ideal environment for introducing stress-reducing fun into the game of selling. 

If you are looking for suggestions on how to add FUN to your telesales meetings and training offerings, grab a copy of The Big Book of Sales Games by Peggy Carlaw and Vasudha K. Deming. 

Telesales Training:  Questions to ask when selecting a training company

There are many excellent Sales Training options available, however not all have the talent or expertise to train Telesales Representatives.  When selecting a training company for your Telesales team, look for a Telesales track record.

Be sure to ask the following:
1.  What percentage of your training engagements involve training Telesales representatives?
2.  How many of those engagements are exclusively Telesales Training (as opposed to training in combination with Field Sales training)?
3.  How is your Teleselling training different than your other Sales training offerings?
4.  What specific Telesales techniques do you include in your training?

Asking a few Telesales-specific questions at the beginning of the search will result in a shorter list of applicable Telesales Training resources.