The CRAP Report

Last week I started a four part series on why the people managing your teleprospecting team need to be a little bit like each of the four members of The A-Team.  On Thursday, I shared with you how your BDR Manager needs to be a pilot for their team, a little over the top, and quick thinking like “Howling Mad” Murdock.  On Friday, I explained why your telesales manager needs to be a “master of disguise,” resourceful, and focused on your customers like Face was.  In addition to all of those qualities, your BDR Manager also needs to know when enough is enough, how to keep your troops in line, and how to be a fix-it man.  Today, it’s all about the meanest, toughest, Mohawk-headed badass of The A-Team, B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus.

B.A. Baracus, played by Mr. T, was many things to The A-Team.  He was certainly the toughest of the bunch, as well as the meanest (hence the nickname “Bad Attitude”).  B.A. was also The A-Team’s go-to mechanic.  B.A. was MacGyver with muscles.  Whenever the team needed a tank built out of a ’57 Chevy, some sheet metal, and a box of bananas, somehow B.A. was able to make due.  And in a fight!?  Forget about it.  B.A. took on all the bad guys he could, barely leaving any for the rest of the team to tackle.  You may have yourself an in-house team developing sales qualified leads for you, or maybe you’ve secured a partner to do your B2B lead generation.  What you need, though, is to make sure the person managing that team is a little bit like B.A. Baracus.  Not so much with the Mohawk hair cut and gold chains (though that would be fun!), but more so like B.A. in the following three areas: 

1. They need to be like a mechanic.
2. They need to be a disciplinarian.
3. They need to know when to say “no.”

B.A. was The A-Team’s mechanic, and as I stated before, could make you anything you needed vehicle-wise, as well as drive it.  The comparison here is that your BDR Manager needs to be like a mechanic – they need to be able to diagnose a problem, as mechanics do, and fix them.  Your teleprospecting manager needs to be able to tell when a campaign is not running like it should be.  They need to be able to analyze all the parts of the teleprospecting effort and not only pinpoint where the problems are, but then also have the know how to actually fix the problem.  Does the problem stem from something simple like not making enough dials to generate enough interested companies into a pipeline, or is it something complicated, like trying to figure out buzz words that resonate with a really niche prospect base?  Maybe the problem comes from sending out a bunch of mailers that never reached their intended audience, and so you need to make smarter dials to actually find that audience, or maybe the problem comes from, as I talked about in my first blog entry, a product that nobody really wants.  Regardless of the problem, your teleprospecting manager needs to be able to evaluate the situation and fix the problem at hand, much like B.A. would do with any mechanical issue The A-Team had.

It was no secret that probably one of the greatest strengths that B.A. brought to The A-Team was his fighting prowess.  The bad guys never wanted to mess with B.A. (would you!?).  In a similar fashion, your BDR Manager needs to be a disciplinarian when a disciplinarian is called for.  I’ve spent the last nine years working in a telesales environment, and while there are certainly times for fun, there are times when things need to be serious, too.  There have been times when I’ve had to give people verbal warnings, written warnings, and even terminate employment because of performance levels.  It’s not a fun part of the job, but if you’re going to have a great BDR Manager, they need to know how to run a tight ship and be a disciplinarian when needed.  As much as I would like everybody to be buddy-buddy in the office, a manager can’t afford to be that way.  B.A. was able to lay the smack down when The A-Team needed it, and so should your teleprospecting manager.  Figuratively speaking of course.

Lastly, if you recall from the old TV show, B.A. was afraid of flying.  He never wanted to go anywhere by plane and he wasn’t afraid to tell the rest of the group.  That never stopped them from drugging his milk so that he would sleep through the plane rides, though.  In the same manner, your BDR Manager needs to know when to say “no.”  Let me flesh that out a little bit more for you:  I once had a client who wanted my team to drive attendance to a seminar that they were having, along with finding them sales qualified opportunities.  I had no problem with this as it was going to generate additional revenue to add the additional headcount for the event optimization.  My client, on the other hand, didn’t understand why their teleprospector couldn’t do that at the same time they were qualifying leads.  They wanted my BDR to find seminar attendees and qualified leads at the same time.  That’s a no-no in my book.  If you shift the focus of a BDR from lead generation to adding on the responsibility of event optimization at the same time, your lead production plummets.  I know this because I’ve learned from my mistakes.  In that instance, I had to know when to say “no.”  I was not going to have the BDR do both, because I knew it would come at a cost, and that cost was too great in my book, as I was going to be evaluated by that same client for lead output.  Your BDR Manager needs to know when to say “no” for productivity’s sake.

Well, that’s three A-Team members down, with one more to go.  Stay tuned for tomorrow’s entry, where I’ll share with you why your BDR Manager needs to be a little more John “Hannibal” Smith.