Does your Telesales Incentive Plan need an overhaul (or are you looking to implement your first?)?

Greg Brown offers some practical advice in his work.com ‘Guide to Sales Incentives’.  His best advice?

Make the program simple. Easy to understand, easy to measure, easy to track.  Provides the incentive to get the job done without having to get bogged down in the details.

Promote it, promote it, and then promote it some more. Leverage the program to the hilt by referring to it constantly.

Track progress publically. This ensures accuracy but, more importantly, it taps into the competitive juices of the Telesales people.

Be sure to have the rewards on hand. Make it real and make sure your reps trust the program by rewarding in a timely fashion.

3 Questions to ask before you select a Tele Training Partner

Effective training is a key component to successfully teleselling and teleservicing and there are many companies who offer sales and service training.

Here are 3 questions to ask before you select a Tele Training partner:

1) Is this training company the right match for my business?
Is this company expert in delivering Telephone skills training?
and
Does this company have customers that:
a) sell to the same sized companies
b) and target the same level of decision makers

2) Is this company’s training offering repeatable?
The best telephone skills training programs are those that deliver training in modules.  Once you complete the training, you can follow up with training in key focus areas. Be sure to select a program that is easy to deliver frequently, either by engaging an outside trainer or by purchasing access to modules that you can use as needed.

3) What do I need to do now to prepare for reinforcing the skills and techniques my team learns?
Plan ahead for what follows the training.  Commit to reinforcing the telesales skills and techniques. Review this requirement with the trainer you select and establish reinforcement and retraining plan before the training starts.  Build this into your plan and your training budget.

Using Management Checklists Points Out Important Focus Areas

There are so many moving parts to Customer Service and Telesales organizations that it is good to work with some standard checklists.  www.justsell.com has a number of good ones that can be used as is or customized to an organization.  Check out the Sales Evaluation.  It is designed as a self-evaluation tool for sales reps but could easily be used by managers.  The Customer Service Checklist is a good, basic start for a new Customer Care department. 

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.

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.