Ah yes – you know where that line comes from, don’t you?  While country music is not necessarily my go-to choice of music genres, I really love the song The Gambler by Kenny Rogers.  I love it for a couple of reasons, really.  Growing up, I can remember listening to it in my parents’ living room, on their 8-track player no less!  There’s a nostalgic factor to that song that can take me right back to that living room some 30 years ago.  I also like that song because I enjoy playing poker; Texas Hold ‘Em for me, thanks.  It doesn’t get any more cliché than listening to that song while playing, but it means more to me because I do play (not well at all, in fact).  How does this relate to teleprospecting, though?  Well, I’ve got to tell that when you’re dealing with business development reps, sometimes you really do need to know when to fold ‘em.

We’ve all had them, right?  Employees that we LOVE and could never imagine working without.  Then, something happens, and all of sudden you’re like, “why have I been holding on to this person for so long?”  If you’re partnering with an organization to provide you with sales qualified opportunities or maybe you’re managing a team of teleprospectors yourself, but regardless of which, there’s going to come a time when you need to let go of one of your BDR’s.  The way I see it, there are three instances (barring an HR issue) that should cue you as to when it’s time to fold ‘em, and let them go: 

1. Productions been gone – for a while.
2. They’ve become a negative influence on your culture.
3. They’re change averse.

The first one is easily the most obvious – productions been gone, for a while.  Look, if you’ve got a BDR and they’re not producing for you, you can do one of two things – you can figure out why or you can just let them go.  I think most of us would always opt for the former, but in the cases where you can’t, for the life of you, figure out why they’re not producing anymore, then it’s time to help them transition on to something else.  Let’s say, too, that you’ve got a BDR who you really enjoy working with; they’re always positive and always contributing to your corporate culture.  The problem is that they’re just not cutting it like they used to.  Maybe in the past you could get 10 to 15 fully qualified sales opportunities out of them, and now you’re lucky to get five or six.  Regardless of how you feel about them, it’s time to move them off of your team (or your vendor’s team).  Be friends with them outside of the office, sure, but don’t let that connection drag you down because of their lack of performance.  Again, I know this one’s obvious but it’s no less important to stress.

Second, when you have a BDR who’s become a negative influence on your culture, it’s time to let them go.  You know who this rep is, they’re the one that’s always got something to say and doesn’t care who’s around to hear it.  It’s always uncomfortable and always negative and always demeaning to someone.  They’re not happy with the account they’re on, they’re not happy with the team they’re working with, and their numbers are never where they’re at because it’s someone else’s fault.  Goodness gracious, get rid of them!  Now sometimes, that negative person is really good at the job.  In that case, I still advocate letting that individual go.  It’s not worth it to the rest of the good people that you have working with and for you.  Negativity in a teleprospecting bullpen is like a cancer – I’ve watched it first hand, and you’ve got to deal with it quickly before it spreads.

Lastly, when you’ve got a BDR who’s change averse, it may be a sign that it’s time to fold ‘em.  These folks can have you or your trainers sit with them, listen in on calls, and give them tons of feedback on areas of improvement, and when you sit with them days later, they’ve neglected all of your suggestions.  These BDR’s just can’t get it together in terms of implementing new ways of doing things.  They’re stuck in a rut, stuck in old ways of thinking, and they don’t want to do anything about it.  Get rid of them.  You don’t need that, nor do your clients.

What do you think?  There are other reasons for “folding” a BDR – what did I miss?

Photo Credit:  Alex Stoen on Flickr

Did you ever have a Magic 8-Ball?  You remember that, right?  You ask it questions, shake it up, and then look at the bottom of the ball to see which side of the twenty-sided die inside floated to the top.  There were answers like, “It is certain,” “Ask again later,” and “Very doubtful.”  I had one as a kid and always thought they were pretty cool.  If the Magic 8Ball said that I was going to win a basketball game, then of course it was going to happen, right?  If only predicting the future was as easy as shaking one of those things.  Of course, with some of the answers you’d receive, I’m not so sure I want to leave the future up to fate.  So what does this all have to do with teleprospecting?  Well, it got me thinking about self-fulfilling prophecies and a conversation I had today. 

I had lunch with a friend of mine who’s a sales rep, and we were talking on the way back about the teleprospectors that provide him with sales qualified leads.  He said that his territory had recently changed, and that he was really excited to be working one-on-one with his BDR.  I asked him what was one of the more challenging aspects of working with BDR’s in general, and for him, he said that it’s helping BDR’s out of a rut.  He said that when they have a string of dry days (no leads), it’s really tough to help them stay positive.  That got me thinking about the whole self-fulfilling prophecy thing I mentioned above.  I remember being on the phones and trying to find sales ready opportunities, and if I had a run of a few bad days, it was hard to not think that I couldn’t get over it.  I kept expecting prospects to say, “not interested,” to me, and I was expecting them to hang up on me or never get back to me.  And what do you think happened?  They said “no” and hung up on me more often.  But was it because I was expecting them to?  I think so.  

You can’t think like that in sales, let alone teleprospecting.  The job requires momentum and you’ve got to keep it as positive as possible.  Here’s three ways I see that we can help teleprospectors to stay positive: 

1.  Remind them of the number of prospects they have to call:  If your teleprospectors have a large number of contacts that they can try to qualify, remind them that a “no” is just like dirt on their shoulder.  They need to dust it off like Jay-Z and move on to the next name.  There is no time to waste on people who aren’t interested. 

2.  Remind them to focus on their successes:  Here’s an easy way to keep things positive for your BDR’s.  You wouldn’t have kept them around if they weren’t successful in the past (gosh, I HOPE you wouldn’t), so go back to those past wins with them.  By helping your teleprospectors to revisit leads that they’ve passed before, you’re going to remind them that they can do the job, and have done it well in the past. 

3.  Remind them that every day brings a clean slate:  There is nothing as refreshing as that thought.  No matter how bad yesterday was, tomorrow is brand new.  Tomorrow we can make more calls, talk with more prospects, qualify more of them in OR out of our sales process, and close more business.  Focusing on what has already happened does no good. 

What about you?  What do you do to help your team out of a rut, or to keep them from falling into negativity?

*Photo Credit: misplaced in the city on Flickr

Where do you get inspiration from?  Better yet, how do you inspire your teams to bigger and better things?  To pass more leads of higher quality?  To make more calls today than they did yesterday?  To make more calls tomorrow than they’re going to make today?  To talk with more people who will probably hang up on them?  To initiate interest in a product that the prospect knows nothing about but after a ten to fifteen minute phone call now has to have?  How do you get them to do that if you’re feeling burned out yourself?  If you’re a manager of BDR’s, you can’t afford to burn out.  You can’t afford to do anything BUT burn bright.  You’ve got to keep yourself ablaze if you expect your reps to even glow, so how do you do that? 

For me, I listen to music.  Music like Jay –Z and Alicia Key’s Empire State of Mind.  Check it out: 

This song has vision and hope!  Can a song have those?  I’m not sure, but if it can, this one has them.  If you have a team of teleprospectors or you’re partnering with someone to provide you with sales qualified leads, you need to make sure they’re being managed by someone who has vision and knows HOW to manage.  How to motivate.  How to inspire.  The job of making phone calls and qualifying sales ready leads is not glamorous, but it is no less important.  It is no less necessary and it is no less needed whether you’ve hopped on the inbound marketing bus or not.

So today, I’m asking for feedback.  What do you do?

Now, I’m not really much of a racing fan, car, horse or otherwise.  What I do know about the sport of racing, however, is that whatever method you choose to use to race, you’d better make sure that it’s in top shape.  It always amazes me, whenever I do catch an auto racing event on TV, is how fast the pit crews are when a car comes in.  Even for a flat tire, they’re so fast at changing them!  They have to be though, right?  I mean, there’s a ton of money riding on those races.  You can see where this analogy is going, right?  Your sales machine is typically the money maker of your organization, and the “pit-crew” of your sales machine are the folks who are fully qualifying leads for them.  If you want to keep that crew at a level of high performance, how do you go about doing that?

If you’ve got your own in-house teleprospecting team, or maybe you’re partnering with a vendor to supply you with sales qualified leads, this question has to be answered.  Typically, in the teleprospecting/appointment setting/telemarketing industry, the turnaround for the ground-level, in-the-trenches, phone-jockey job is pretty high.  It is the rare organization that is able to keep their top producing folks around for a while.  The way I see it, there are a few ways to help ensure that the folks who are great at qualifying sales opportunities for you to stick around longer: 

1. Inspire them consistently.
2. Keep them challenged.
3. Have them mentor new BDR’s.

The first way you maintain a high performing BDR is to inspire them consistently.  Let’s call a spade a spade here, okay?  Teleprospecting is not rocket science.  That being said, it is by no means any less important to the organization utilizing teleprospecting services, be they in-house or outsourced.  The job that teleprospectors do is so important!  Every dial they make should have a purpose behind it, so that they don’t feel like all they’re doing is smiling and dialing until the 5:30pm whistle blows.  If you’ve got a high performing BDR, you want to make sure that they feel like what they do is important; not because you want to manipulate them, but because it’s true.  If you really don’t see the value in teleprospecting, then that is a completely different story that I would be happy to talk about.  Thomas Edison said that, “genius is 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration.”  If that is true (and if you’ll allow me the stretch of “genius” being analogous to “high performing”), and you’re not inspiring your BDR’s to be better today than they were yesterday, than you really can’t expect them to be at their best.

Second, to maintain your high performing teleprospector, you need to keep them challenged.  This can look like different things to different folks.  If you manage a team of teleprospectors who work on various campaigns for different solutions, you may want to put the high performing BDR on the struggling project.  Maybe you’ve got a project that’s only yielding five or six sales qualified opportunities per month.  Give that project a shot in the arm by putting in place one of your better performing reps.  The really great ones will rise to the challenge.  A couple of things will happen here – one, if that BDR is really good at what they do and the lead flow doesn’t change, you’ll know it may be an issue with the project, and two, if the BDR blows it out, then you know the rep that was first on the project may need more help than you thought.  If you don’t have the luxury of switching BDR’s and placing them on different projects and have an in-house team, you still need to challenge them.  This may come in forms of their metrics or the quality of their opportunities.  Challenge them to set personal records and then break them.  This is simple stuff, folks, but it bears mentioning.  Kudos to the manager who can challenge a BDR to break his or her older records because they actually did the job, too!

Lastly, another great way to maintain your high performing teleprospector is to have them mentor new BDR’s.  Let your BDR know that the reason why you’re using them to help train new reps is because of their high level of performance, and that you expect them to keep up that same level as the new employees sit with them.  Better yet, find a way to incent them on the effectiveness of the rep that they’re mentoring.  When I was a rep, I made sure I did everything I could to hit my bonus numbers, and would have jumped at the chance to earn more because I was able to train someone to do the job better than myself.  Training people should, theoretically, keep your skills sharp, too.  The sharper the skills, the more effective you can be.  The same should hold true for your BDR, too. 

What do you think?  What are some other ways to maintain your high performing teleprospectors?

As 2009 comes to a close, I’m thinking about the fact that I love lists – you know, countdown lists.  The “top ten” this or the “top five” that.  Whether I really agree with the person making the list or not, I still like reading someone else’s opinion.  Over the course of the next week, I want to share with you a few thoughts on what I want for your teleprospectors in 2010.  You can call it my top five “wants” for your teleprospectors in 2010.

If your BDR’s are like mine, chances are they spend most of their day trying to get in touch with people who don’t want to be spoken to.  If and when they get those folks on the phone, they are, at times, subjected to some of the most “not so nice” attitudes that prospects can conjure up.  I don’t care how tough you are, teleprospecting can take a lot out of you; and it can drain your confidence if you’re left hearing a lot of “no’s” all day.

That being said, what I want for your teleprospector in 2010 is more confidence.  I want your telepropsectors to feel like no matter what they come across on the phones, they’re ready for it.  Help your BDR’s to prospect better by building their confidence on the phones in 2010.  I see three ways that we can do that:

1.  Knowledge is power – help your BDR’s to be as confident as they can be by making sure that they’re as knowledgeable as they can be about the solutions or services that they’re calling on.  Having a solid understanding about how things work brings confidence with it.

2.  If you build it, they will (be)come – help your BDR’s to be as confident as they can be by involving them in the process of developing the messaging that they’ll be delivering to your prospects.  If your BDR’s feel like they’ve been part of the creation process, they’re going to feel a greater sense of ownership to their teleprospecting script.  A greater sense of ownership means they’ll feel a sense of pride while using “their” script, thus becoming more confident in their work.

3.  Practice makes perfect - help your BDR’s to be more confident in 2010 by spending time role playing with them.  Put some thought into it, too.  Don’t just role play for the sake of saying that you’ve done it.  Put together a plan to take your BDR’s through the toughest role plays you can think of, and then take them through them again.  Will all of their prospecting calls go the same way?  No, not at all, but if they’ve got practice dealing with tough calls (even fake ones), chances are they’re going to feel more confident when the really difficult ones come their way.

That does it for today – stay tuned, though!  Tomorrow brings with it Part 2 of What I Want for Your Telepropsectors in 2010.  See you then!

I’m sure around the holidays that you, like me, will have a good number of parties to attend.  Now, some may be family affairs while others may be for work, but for the most part those holiday parties typically have the same thing in common – food.  Wherever you go, I’m sure that there’ll be plenty of food to eat.  Folks will have spent time preparing and cooking great appetizers and main dishes, and desserts, too.  One of the things that may run through your mind while you’re at an event, and probably while you’re eating, is “how can I make this at home?” For a lot of you, though, the better question will be, “how can I make this better at home?”  That’s what cooks, do, right?  They find something they like and then they make it better.  The same thing can be said for your teleprospecting efforts, you know?  You’re sales prospecting machine may be great, but there’s always a way to make it better right?  Of course there is!

Often times business development gets caught somewhere between Sales and Marketing, and though I do believe that teleprospecting bridges the gap between the two.  That being said, and speaking from experience, it typically is a Marketing responsibility.  For the majority of projects that I’ve worked on, both as a BDR and as a Director, my main point of contact has been someone from my client’s Marketing department.  Surprisingly enough, right, that there was little involvement from the Sales side?  I’m here to say, though, that if you want to make your BDR’s better, regardless of whose responsibility B2B lead generation is in your organization, get your sales reps involved.  I see three ways that your sales team can make your BDR’s (or your vendor’s on your behalf) better: 

1. Give them “dream” accounts to call into.
2. Let them listen in on sales calls.
3. Give them feedback on all leads.

You give your teleprospectors marketing lists to call on, sure.  Those names are from tradeshows and webinars, white paper and eBook downloads, and even purchased lists.  That data is great, no doubt, but if you want your sales reps help in making your teleprospectors better, have them give your BDR’s “dream” accounts to call into.  Sales guys all have this list – the name of marquee companies that they want to close, and especially the ones they haven’t even broken into yet.  Giving this list to your BDR’s helps them to be better because it gives them incentive to impress.  If there is one thing that I’ve learned most about the BDR’s that I work with, it’s that money is not always the number one motivator for them.  Maybe it’s their generation, or maybe they’re just better with their money than I am, but for the most part, they would MUCH rather receive recognition for a job well done than extra money (crazy, I know!).  I know that when I was a BDR, if a sales rep told me that he or she “couldn’t” get into Company A, that I busted my ass to make sure that I did.  Getting a list of “dream” accounts to call into made teleprospecting fun for me, and it helped me to raise my game because I understood the importance of getting my sales rep in front of that important account.

Next, your sales team can make your BDR’s better by letting them listen in on sales calls.  I’ve talked a lot about shadowing in on calls with your BDR’s, but they need to shadow your sales reps.  Giving them that opportunity lets your BDR’s hear how objections are handled by the folks in your organization who are the best equipped to handle them.  Listening on sales calls also allows your BDR’s to focus on an important skill without any pressure – listening.  There is a lot of pressure to listen while on a prospecting call.  At the same time you’re supposed to focusing in on listening to a potential sales opportunity, you’re also trying to process what questions they’re posing and what objection they’re throwing at you, and how you’re going to answer them both.  Shadowing in on calls with your sales team affords your BDR’s the chance to just listen.  That’s all they’ve got to do.  It can be a nice break for your teleprospectors while at the same time gives them the chance to learn a lot about the sales process.

Lastly, the very BEST way to get your sales team to make your BDR’s better is to have sales give them feedback on all leads.  This is the closed loop strategy; you’re closing the loop on the opportunities that sales receives.  There is no single better way to shape your BDR’s qualification skills then by having your sales team go over each lead that gets passed to them and detail what the end result was for each.  Was the information that they received initially validated?  What worked well?  What information wasn’t accurate and what information wasn’t provided that really should?  What is the next step in the life cycle of this lead?  All of this feedback only stands to make your BDR’s better.  I know that my BDR’s look forward to each interaction they have with the sales reps that they’re passing leads to because they want to know if what they’re doing is effective.  They want to be better at qualifying leads and when they hear the feedback from the folks who actually follow up on their leads, it spurs them on to achieve success.  My colleague, Lindsay Roberts, talked about having a closed loop strategy earlier this week in a webcast entitled Perspectives in Teleprospecting – A Closed Loop Strategy, and you should check that out here.

There are other ways, I’m sure, that your sales team can make your teleprospecting team better, so tell me what you think we should add to this list?

We’ve all got friends in our lives that say that they’re going to do something and then they don’t do it, right?  It’s not just me, is it?  Hell, I know I’ve BEEN that person before.  I’m not proud of that, but it’s the truth.  For the most part though, hopefully we can forgive our friends if the gaffe wasn’t too great, and hopefully they’re able to do the same thing for us.  But when it comes to work, it’s a little different, isn’t it?  If you’re counting on someone to do something for you and they just never get it done, that isn’t as easily forgivable, especially if you’ve got deadlines to keep.  How do you keep people accountable to doing what they’re supposed to be doing?  And speaking about teleprospecting in particular, how do you keep BDR’s accountable?

Typically everyone has someone to keep them accountable to doing what they’re supposed to be doing at work – that person is called your boss.  If you’ve outsourced your teleprospecting efforts, or even if you have your own team generating sales qualified leads for you in-house, keeping those folks accountable to your marketing and sales teams is of the utmost important.  Its more than just being accountable to a boss, they also have a customer that they have to answer to, be it external or internal.  I’ve blogged before about key performance indicators such as conversation numbers, lead rates, and closed loop percentages, and those are great ways to keep your teleprospecting teams responsible for producing the number of sales qualified leads that you need them to generate.  Additionally, though, I think there are three other ways we can keep BDR’s accountable: 

1. Make them give presentations before a project kicks off.
2. Have them participate in weekly client meetings.
3. Make sure your clients listen in on their calls.

One way that we can make sure that teleprospectors are really doing what they’re supposed to be doing in terms of learning about the solution or services that they’re calling on is to make them give presentations before a project kicks off.  Its really important that our BDR’s know what they’re talking about to our prospects, so make them present it back to you.  If you can, make it a full blown presentation with PowerPoint slides and invite others to sit in on it with you.  If you’re a vendor, make the BDR do it for your client.  If you’ve got an in-house team of lead generators, make them do it for your sales and/or marketing team.  Jerry Seinfeld does a bit about people being more afraid of public speaking than of death, and I know I’ve read that elsewhere, but here’s an opportunity to light a fire under someone’s ass to make sure they’re as prepared as they can be.  If the majority of folks are afraid of public speaking, they’re more than likely going to over-prepare (I know, I’m hopeful) for a presentation in front of their boss and clients.  As a side note, this is also a great way to weed out really bad hires, too.  I’ve had BDR’s come to my team without me having interviewed them, and I can tell as soon as they do their presentation whether or not I’m going to keep them or help them find a job that they’re going to succeed at.

Another way to keep BDR’s accountable for their productivity is to have them participate on weekly client meetings.  Regardless of who your client is, be they another company you’re generating leads for or your own sales team, you’re probably meeting with these folks pretty regularly.  I’m advocating that the folks making calls on their behalf be involved in those meetings, as well.  Give your client the opportunity to ask them questions about conversations that they’re having, or check to see if they’ve brushed up on the latest release of whatever.  I’m not saying that you should throw a BDR under the bus – not by any stretch.  What I am saying, though, is to let them be held responsible for what they’re supposed to be doing in front of their client.  One of the newer guys on  a project got grilled one day by the CEO of my client, and my rep could hear the frustration in the CEO’s voice when he didn’t have an answer to his question (about a detail from a conversation a week prior).  You’d better believe that during our next weekly call with that client my BDR was well prepared for any question that could have come up.  He was held accountable for his responsibilities, and it made him an all around better BDR because he knew I wasn’t the only one checking up on him.

Lastly, and I know I beat this drum all the time, but it is no less important, but make sure your clients are listening in on calls with your BDR’s.  Beg them if you have to.  I’m even advocating groveling here because of how important this one is.  There was never a time where I wasn’t as prepared as I could be than when my client was listening in on calls with me.  I even had a client shadow calls while sitting in my cube with me!  You know what, though?  It made me a better rep.  If you ever want to find out whether or not your BDR “gets” what they’re calling on, there is no better way than to listen to them try to qualify a cold call prospect.  If you’ve spent money to outsource lead generation and you haven’t listened in on calls with your vendor’s teleprospectors, shame-shame know your name!  If you can’t do it, get someone in your organization that can.  Make sure that the message that is being delivered is the one you want delivered, especially if you’re not seeing the production that you think you should be.  If you have an in-house team, make sure someone from the sales side (or marketing if lead gen is a sales function in your office) is listening in.  A warning, though – some BDR’s are fantastic but can’t handle the pressure of having someone listen in on calls with them.  If you know they’re good, encourage them that call shadowing is only going to make them better.  If they’re not good, well, use it as a way to weed them out.

There are other ways to keep BDR’s accountable for their output, but beyond the typical metrics, I think these will help you help your client.  What about you?  What are other methods you use to keep a teleprospector accountable?

Oh man – we’ve all made them right?  Mistakes?  I can think of some mistakes I’ve made in my life and am glad I’ve learned from them.  No mistake, though, will be greater than what I call 2002’s Worst Job Move Ever.  I needed a job and took the first one that was offered to me from the- medical-technology-company-that-shall-remain-nameless.  This was a bad move all around for me.  For starters, it was business casual all the time.  Oh, except for Fridays when I could wear black jeans.  Yes, you read that right, black jeans.  Who wore black jeans in 2002?  My ex-boss, that’s who.  He made the determination as to what “casual Fridays” would be like, and black jeans were the only option.  Next, there was the travel.  I’m not a fan of flying – I’m not all John Madden about it, but I don’t like it.  I was told, at most, I’d travel 4 times a year.  Well, after 3 trips in 2 months, I realized I’d been duped.  We all make mistakes, but not all of us learn from them.  I’d like to talk with you about some teleprospecting mistakes and how your BDR’s can learn from them.

If you’re managing a team of in-house BDR’s, or maybe you’ve contracted with an organization to manage your teleprospecting efforts, then you know that, like most of life, lead generation has its ups and downs.  There are moments when you sit in and listen to calls with a green rep and you’re cheering for them because they’re qualifying a prospect with the dexterity of a seasoned vet.  On the other hand though, there are those moments when you sit in and listen to calls with a seasoned vet, and for some reason they’re not “feeling it” and they sound like they’ve never picked up a phone before.  In shadowing in on calls with BDR’s, I often see three common mistakes that they typically make: 

1. Expecting no one to pick up the phone.
2. Not being prepared.
3. Letting an opportunity to talk go.

Don’t kid yourself about this first one – we’ve ALL been there.  If you’ve ever made a teleprospecting call, you know that hardly anyone ever picks up the phone.  The mistake, though, is expecting no one to pick up the phone.  What happens when you fall into that rut is that you start to work on auto-pilot.  Last time I checked, but humans aren’t 747’s; we’re not meant to run on auto-pilot.  We get dazed and we become almost zombified (without the horrible disease) and start to just “smile and dial.”  You forget to hit “0-#” when you get the voicemail.  You miss an opportunity to find a new decision maker and instead just focus on hitting an activity goal.  We don’t pay attention to what we’re doing because hey, no one is going to pick up anyways.  It’s almost like a self-fulfilling prophecy, almost like willing the person we’re calling to ignore us.  BDR’s need to shake themselves out of that rut.  They need to get up, stretch, or take a break.  If you work with me, you’re probably talking about movies or something like that.  Regardless, you’ve got to help your reps to not fall into this rut.  This mistake can be costly because there is no time to be mindless while mining for qualified sales opportunities.

Not being prepared is another big mistake BDR’s make.  I’ve blogged at great lengths (here and here) about pre-call planning, and if its done, it will help your BDR’s (and mine) from falling in this trap.  It is not fun to be on the shadowing end of a BDR who is not prepared to speak with a prospect when that prospect has picked up the phone.  The “ums” and “uhs” alone are enough to make you cringe, but how many times can you say to a prospect, “that’s a great question.  I’ll get back to you on that,” before the prospect just disregards you altogether?  Not being prepared has cost you that one potential opportunity.  Help your BDR’s by holding quick project meetings with them, just to make sure they’re up on the product or service that they’re calling on.  Obviously you meet with your employees on a regular basis, but make this meeting more about preparedness.  Task your BDR to create their own “sales card” that has everything they need to know about what they’re calling on and then make one yourself; see who’s is better and make a competition out of it.  The thing here is that our BDR’s can never be too prepared.  Since they’ve never spoken with EVERY one of their prospects, someone always has the potential to bring up a question that they’ve never come across.  Help your BDR’s to be like the Boy Scouts – to be prepared.

Lastly, I’d have to say the MOST cringe-worthy mistake a BDR can make is letting an opportunity to talk go.  Sometimes with more rookie-level BDR’s, they’re too self conscious about what they perceive to be “bothering” someone.  If a prospect picks up the phone and the tone in their voice is one of quickness or they’re short, I’ve been with reps who just ask for a better time to talk.  I want to say, “Yeah, you just HAD it, and you’re not going to get it again!”  Help your BDR’s by role playing difficult situations with them.  Get them used to hearing someone be quick with them on the phone.  Sometimes a prospect is quick because they have to be, because they’re busy.  Sure, there are times when a brisk prospect just doesn’t want to talk, and they never would have been an opportunity there, but work with your BDR’s (or your vendors) to help them understand the difference between the two.  Make reps call those prospects back, too.  If a prospect has blown your rep off the line with something they didn’t know how to respond back with, make them call the prospect back immediately with you there feeding them the answer.  Regardless of what you do, help your BDR’s to make every moment that they have with a prospect on the phone count.

How about you?  What mistakes have you made in your teleprospecting career or have your reps made and how have you corrected them?

One of the games I liked playing as a kid was Connect Four.  You remember that game, right?  It was like tic-tac-toe and checkers had a crazy love child.  You have to strategically connect four of the same checkers before your opponent does.  Playing the game with someone who’s never played before was fun, because it was easy to win.  More fun than that, though, was playing someone who had played before.  As a kid you could play for hours going back and forth with, “okay, how about best 9 out of 17?” or something like that.  The strategy of that simple game, much like that with tic-tac-toe, obviously determines the winner.  The same thing goes with teleprospecting and connecting with your intended contact.  How, then, do you as a manager (or maybe as the client of a B2B lead generation company) help your BDR’s connect “more”?

Your teleprospectors are on the phones all day, right, so naturally they’re having boat-loads of quality conversations?  Um, maybe.  I mean, that depends.  Do you count when a prospect says to your rep, “I haven’t had time to look at your information.  Call me next week,” as a quality conversation?  If yes, then I bet they have had a lot.  I don’t know about you, but MY clients certainly don’t count that type of a conversation as “quality.”  So I’ll pose my question again – how do you help your BDR’s connect with their prospects more often?  How do you help them make the most out of every phone call they have.  I think there are three things that, if implemented now, will have an immediate impact on your reps’ connect rates: 

1. Use “0-#” ALL the time.
2. Use, “Before I let you go, let me ask you this…”
3. Broaden your initial reach.

If you want your BDR’s to have greater connects with their prospects, then you have to teach them to use “0-#” all the time.  If you’ve ever made teleprospecting calls, then you know that the majority of the phone calls that you make end up going to voicemail.  That is the perfect opportunity for your reps to hit the “0-#” buttons on their phones and get connected to someone else.  More often than not, you get routed to an operator or an administrative assistant.  Sometimes, though, you get someone who may be covering for your prospect if they’re out of town.  Either way, you’ve got an opportunity to ask someone else for some qualification information.  If you get the operator or the admin on the phone, find out if you’re even talking to the right person.  I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty sure we can both agree that often times the lists that our reps are calling from are not always full of the most accurate data.  Use the admins and the operators to help get you pointed in the right direction, and then get transferred to that person.  If that person isn’t in, “0-#” again and find someone else who may have knowledge about the information that you are looking for.  Better, though, is getting transferred to someone else in that department who may be taking over for a vacationing prospect.  Get them on the phone and get as much of the base level qualification information as you can – what is the current scene like, what are you using now, who else is in your group, etc.

Now, this next one I’ve heard from several people before – saying, “before I let you go, let me ask you this…”  I was trained by Geoff Alexander some years ago to act like Columbo with prospects who are trying to get off the phone with me.  You remember Columbo, right?  Peter Falk’s detective character?  He used to ask suspects this as he was questioning them about some crime, and always got more information out of them than they were probably expecting to give.  Mike Damphousse, CEO of the appointment setting firm Green Leads, blogged about this technique a few weeks ago, and you can check out what he has to say about using this question here.  It is really a great way to get more information out of a prospect.  It actually sets a prospect at ease because you’re implying that you’re going to let them off the phone soon, and what do the majority of prospects want?  They want to get off of the phone with your BDR.  Teach your BDR’s to use this trick and they’re going to have more meaningful conversations with prospects because a prospect that is put to ease is more likely to answer qualification questions than those who are not.   Use those precious few minutes to extract as much pains and needs-type questions from your prospects, and you may find that they’re going on longer than your BDR’s were expecting, because maybe their questioning has struck a itch that they just have to scratch.

Lastly, to help your BDR’s increase the amount of connects they’re having with prospects, teach them to broaden their initial reach.  Let’s say you’ve given your BDR’s a teleprospecting list of 100 companies to call, with 100 contacts at each.  That is a great start, but how many of those 100 contacts are actually going to answer their phone the first time through?  And how certain are you that the contacts on that list are the exact person you want your sales team to be in front of?  What I would do is encourage your BDR to add two or three more people to each one of those organizations.  Let’s say you offer an email encryption solution and you’ve got a list of 100 CIO’s.  Sure, you want your sales rep in front of those CIO’s, but do you really think the CIO is the one who manages email encryption issues?  I doubt it.  Teach your BDR’s (or better yet your marketing list researchers) to add two or three more IT contacts into your list.  Do that, and now your list of 100 contacts jumps to a list of 300.  If your BDR’s are calling 300 versus 100, I guarantee that they’re going to have more conversations, and pass more sales qualified leads, because of that boost in potential contacts – and that, friends, is the ultimate goal:  more sales qualified leads.

I know that some of those tips may seem elementary, but they are no less important.  I’m often surprised at how many BDR’s let hitting “0-#” go by the wayside.  How about you, though?  How do you help reps increase their connect rates?

I’ve blogged before about my love for the Cobra Kai from The Karate Kid, but today I want to share with you my admiration for Mr. Miyagi.  You remember him, right, Daniel LaRusso’s pseudo father/mentor/karate teacher?  What I love most about Mr. Miyagi was his dedication to not only teaching Daniel Okinawan style karate, but it was his dedication to Daniel as a person.  Yes, he was willing to teach him karate, but he was going to do so all while making Daniel a better person.  As the movie goes on, you can see Daniel’s transformation from a fearful victim of bullying to a very confident young man.  You know, when you think about teleprospecting and lead generation, it’s our jobs as people who manage BDR’s to make them better, too, and one of the key things we need to teach our BDR’s is confidence.

Mr. Miyagi, played by the late, great Pat Morita, was the handy man of Daniel’s apartment complex.  After getting beaten up at a beach party, Daniel asks Miyagi to teach him how to fight.  Miyagi agrees, but with one condition, that Daniel do as he is instructed and without question.  Through a series of chores, including waxing cars and painting fences, Miyagi teaches Daniel how to defend himself, all without Daniel’s knowing.  For me, one of the best parts of the movie is when Daniel is balancing himself on the bow of a rowboat and having an exchange with Miyagi on learning how to punch.  Daniel’s “a-ha” moment comes when Miyagi asks him if he thinks he is training to fight, to which Daniel says, “no.”  Miyagi asks him why he trains then, and I just love Daniel’s response, “So I don’t have to fight.”  He’s built confidence into a boy who got the crap kicked out of him in front of the girl that he likes.  We’ve got to do the same with our BDR’s, and there are three ways I think we can do that: 

1. Teach them everything you know about the technology/services they’re calling on.
2. Explain the differentiators between their technology/services and the competition’s.
3. Give them room to practice, practice, and practice.

First, if you’re going to make sure that your BDR’s are as confident at teleprospecting as they can be, you’ve got to teach them everything you know about the technology/services that they’re calling on.  Sure, they need to be held accountable to learn that information on their own, but there is nothing like having that one-on-one training.  Hear me now and believe me later on this one – if you’re a bad trainer, get someone else to do it, but do it nonetheless.  It’s okay if you don’t have the time to do it mano-y-mano, but the point I’m trying to make is that they need training.  Hell, do your BDR’s one better, and as soon as you’ve finished training them on everything you know, bring in someone who knows even more than you and have them train the BDR’s, too.  The deal here is that, if knowledge is power, power can bring confidence.  The more your BDR’s know about the technology/services that they’re calling on, even if they don’t have to use it on the phone (and they shouldn’t, that’s sales’ or sales engineering’s job), the fact that they know their product inside and out brings confidence.  I’ve seen this in myself when I made teleprospecting calls and I see in my BDR’s.

Second, in order to help your BDR’s become more confident on the phone, explain the differentiators between the technology/services they’re calling and the competition’s.  Let them take all of the information you’ve trained them on about what it is you (or your client’s for those outsourced teleprospecting firms) do, and now share with them how you differentiate yourselves from everyone else.  You want to know how to discourage your BDR’s?  Tell them that your technology/services really doesn’t have any competition.  Wait until they get on the phone with a prospect who says (and they do say), “How are you any different than what I’ve already got?”  Telling them to tell prospects that, “Well, we really don’t have any competition, so we’re totally unique altogether,” is going to frustrate a prospect.  Build confidence in your BDR’s by helping them understand every possible objection that could possibly come up during a teleprospecting call.

Lastly, and this one is huge in building confidence especially in a rookie BDR, but give them room to practice, practice, and practice.  I’m talking about role playing here.  I can’t say enough good things about giving your BDR’s the opportunities to fall on their faces in a safe environment.  Are they going to do it on the phone?  Of course they are, but the fall is less painful if they’ve had the chance to practice prior.  Make sure you throw everything at them during role playing sessions.  Change things up and pretend to pass them to several different people in one organization.  Bring in some of the more senior sales folks and have them help run the training session.  If the old adage is true, that practice makes perfect, make sure that your BDR’s have the chance to build to perfection.  Role playing gives a BDR the chance to showcase all they know in front of the ones that taught them, and then get feedback on where they went right and where they went wrong.  If you’ve outsourced your teleprospecting efforts, please make sure that you take time to role play with the folks making calls on your behalf.  Your sales qualified leads are depending on it.

If you’re going to have an effective B2B lead generation machine, make sure that it’s a confident one.  I’m sure there are other ways to help instill confidence in your BDR’s, but I feel like if you can get the three from above down, in the long run, you’ll actually be building better sales people.  Your benefit from that could be exponentially greater!

So, how do you build confidence in your teleprospectors?