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

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?

Last week I blogged about things that you need to think about before you decide to build your own in-house teleprospecting team,  where I tried to get folks thinking about some of the questions that they may not have considered, and hopefully offer some insight into the difficulty of creating their own teleprospecting team.  Today I was thinking – what if someone had all of those things covered?  What if someone decided to build their own team and had been an experienced, successful teleprospector?  What if they knew exactly what their ideal BDR looked like and what if they really knew how to measure their team’s success?  It certainly isn’t beyond the scope of possibilities that if you’ve decided to build your own team that you already know how to answer these questions.  As a follow up, then, I’d like to offer some additional questions that you should think about.

So, let’s say that you’ve got yourself your own teleprospecting team – now what?  The way I see it, there are a few questions that you need to ask yourself once you get to this point: 

1. You’ve done teleprospecting before and you were successful at it.  Do you know the people you should surround yourself with so that you can focus on managing your team?
2. You’ve hired the right BDR’s, but do you know how to train them?
3. You know what metrics to measure to determine your team’s success, but do you know how to improve them when they’re not successful?

Congrats!  You’ve done teleprospecting before and you were successful at it.  You’re already way ahead of the game, but, do you know the people you should surround yourself with so that you can focus on managing your team?  There’s a lot going on from an operations perspective regarding the management of a successful teleprospecting team.  Who’s going to build out your team’s CRM so that it’s optimal for the BDR’s?  Who’s going to do your list scrubbing for you (and by God, get someone to do that!)?  Who’s going to manage all of the call metrics for you?  Who’s going to write and rewrite messaging and email templates?  Those are just a few questions that need answering.  Can you do all of this yourself?  Absolutely.  I’m not so sure you should be, though.  By determining who you should have working with you besides your BDR’s, you’ll be able to spend more time focused on managing your BDR’s rather than having to be sidetracked by all of those other issues that come up.

You’ve hired the right BDR’s, but do you know how to train them?  Just because you were a successful teleprospector doesn’t mean that you know how to train someone else to be just as successful.  They say those who can’t, teach.  I think that’s bunk.  Teaching isn’t easy.  Make sure that if you’ve got your own team of teleprospectors that you know how to train them.  And I’m not just talking about getting them up and running so that they know how to make a cold/warm call.  That’s all well and good for a little while.  I’m talking about keeping them sharp.  I’m talking about knowing how to keep them maintained as a well oiled sales opportunity qualifying machine.  I’m talking about having a team of folks who are constantly improving their skills, and better yet, are being taught to do so by you.  It’s fantastic if you were a really great BDR, but if you’re not a teacher or a trainer, take some time to plan out your team’s improvement process from an expertise perspective.

Lastly, you may know what metrics to measure to determine your team’s success, but do you know how to improve them when they’re not successful?  You’ve got a great connect rate but your lead rate is low, why is that?  Is that because you’re solution or a service is a “nice to have” or is because your BDR is afraid to pull the trigger on asking for a meeting?  Your lead rate is off the charts, but your connect rate is miserable – how come?  Does that even matter?  What about your leads that are hitting pipeline versus the ones that aren’t; do you know why?  Why is it that your BDR’s get off a call and feel like they’ve got a great opportunity but your sales rep says the lead sucked?  Who’s wrong in this case?  These are just a few questions you need to ask yourself regardless of whether or not your team is successful.  If they’re not though, and your boss has the metrics that you’ve determined for him/her that are what you should be measured by, you need to know how to improve.  You need to be able to determine when you need to add a little manpower to this campaign, or throttle down the activity to that campaign.  You need to be able to receive feedback on all of your team’s opportunities from each person that is a recipient of a lead, and you need to know how to get that feedback from the toughest reps who are not fans of your team.  It’s one thing to know how to measure your success, it’s a whole different animal knowing how to improve upon them.

Hopefully I’ve given you some things to think about.  If you have any questions about building your team, or improving them, feel free to give me a shout.  I know a lot of folks that would be happy to talk with you, and it would be my pleasure to help you get in touch with them.

So you’re thinking about building an in-house teleprospecting team, huh? I mean, someone has to follow up on all of those inbound leads you’re getting, right? Maybe you’re hosting webinars and need those attendees followed up on, right? The most logical thing to do would be to build some sort of qualification machine to follow up on all the contacts you’ve got from all of the marketing programs/events/campaigns you’ve run (and more than likely never got around to getting in touch with). You could give them to your sales guys, no doubt. Trish Bertuzzi, President and Chief Strategist over at the inside sales consulting firm, The Bridge Group, blogged about this with some help from Kirko Papjanis over at her blog, Inside Sales Experts Blog, where Kirko urges folks to put their sales reps in front of prospects sooner. While I agree with him, it’s been my experience that not all sales reps are willing to be put in front of prospects without having them fully qualified, nor are they as effective. So, if you’re thinking about building an in-house teleprospecting team to generate sales qualified leads, there are some things you need to think of.

Running a B2B lead generation team may or may not be as easy/difficult as you may think it to be. It all depends on what your background is. Sales prospecting may be a passion of yours, it may not. Regardless, if you’re in the position where you’re determining whether or not you should build one, I think that there are three things you need to seriously consider before taking the leap to have your own inside teleprospecting team:

1. Do you know how to qualify a lead over the phone? Have you done it before?
2. Do you know the type of candidate who makes the best teleprospecting rep?
3. Do you know how to measure a teleprospecting team’s success?

Do you know how to qualify a lead over the phone? Have you done it before? These are important questions that you need to ask yourself, and I believe that if the answer is no, you need to rethink this idea altogether. If you’ve never spent time qualifying a prospect and expect to lead people who are going to do that for you, you really have your work cut out for you. I’m not saying that you need to be some sort of a cold calling guru, but you need to have actually done the job you’re putting a team together to do. You can’t lead people to places you’ve never been, and on top of that, if your own qualification skills are at a 3 (on a scale of 1 – 10, with 10 being tops), you’re never going to be able to train your team to be better than a 3.  John Maxwell calls it the Law of the Lid in his book The 21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership – “…your organization or business will not rise beyond the level your leadership allows.” I’m not saying you can’t do it, I’m saying that if you’re going to, you’ve got a lot to learn.

Do you know the type of candidate who makes the best teleprospecting rep? You need to think about this question, too. You can’t hire just anybody to qualify sales opportunities for you. Like Charlie Bowdre said in Young Guns, “..you can’t be any geek off the street. Gotta be handy with the steel, if you know what I mean? Earn your keep.” Sure, in this case I’m substituting qualification skills for a gun, but the sentence is no less true. Hire someone who’s done it before and they may bring in poor habits from someone else who trained them. Hire someone who’s too green, and they’re going to get eaten alive by rude or obnoxious prospects (not that they exist, right?). If you’re going to build a team in-house, you’ve got to know who the best candidate is before you can start.

Do you know how to measure a teleprospecting team’s success?  Teleprospecting is more than just making phone calls and qualifying leads. Those are the two most important aspects of it, yes, but a team’s success is more than just the number of dials made and the number of leads passed. You’ve got to think of other things like connect rates, lead rates, feedback percentages, leads to forecast percentage, etc. If you’ve never worked IN business development from a teleprospecting perspective, then how do you know what metrics are the most important? You’ve got a lot of research to do there. Again, I’m not saying that you can’t do it, you just need to prepare. A lot. You also don’t want someone else in your organization telling you what they’re going to be measuring your team’s success on – you need to set the tone for that. If sales prospecting falls under marketing’s direction, you don’t want poor sales follow up to be a detriment to your success, and if you fall under sales’ direction, you don’t want poor marketing efforts to do the same.

Have I missed anything? What do you think? Also, please feel free to contact me directly if you have questions about building a team yourself.

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?

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?

One of my all time favorite cartoons from childhood was the Laff-A-Lympics.  Do you remember this one?  There were three teams of Hanna-Barbera characters who participated in various sporting competitions.  You had The Scooby Doobies, The Yogi Yahooeys, and The Really Rottens.  One of the reasons that I liked this show so much was because it was chock-full of characters from all different cartoons.  You like Scooby Doo?  He’s there.  You like The Blue Falcon and Dynomutt?  They’re in there.  You like Grape Ape?  He’s there, too.  How about The Creeply’s from The Flintstones?  Yup, they’re in it, too.  You get my point.  The other cool thing about the cartoon was not only getting to see all of those characters interact together, but they were all competing against each other, which of course, always leads to hilarity.  I think competition is one of the things I like best about being in a sales environment, too.

As someone who’s been on sales prospecting teams and managed them as well, competing against someone else’s output is one of the best parts about the job.  We already know that lead generation is a numbers game, whether its number of calls or number of conversations or number of sales qualified leads passed.  If you have a team of BDR’s or if you’ve outsourced your teleprospecting efforts, one of the ways to get BDR’s more engaged in their jobs (because we know they can burn out!) is fostering a healthy environment for competition.  Competition, done right, can raise morale and improve the overall culture of your organization.  My colleague, Craig Ferrara, blogged about the importance of your company culture yesterday, and you can read more about that here. 

I think there are three important aspects to creating a healthy environment for competition for your BDR’s: 

1. Understand your BDR’s and what motivates them.
2. Set appropriate goals.
3. Keep BDR’s updated on their progress.

A while ago I talked about one of the top 100 qualities of a great teleprospecting rep being “a rep who understands what motivates them.”  As someone managing a team of BDR’s, you should know what motivates your reps, too.  This is huge!  You’ve got to know what matters most to your BDR’s, because more often than not, money ain’t it.  If you’re going to have them compete for something, having a better understanding of what is important to your reps makes all the difference in the world.  If you have a team of BDR’s who are not necessarily motivated by cash incentives beyond their salary, and you put money in front of them as a prize, you may not be able to extract as much out of them as you could.  Now, if public praise at a monthly company meeting means something to them, and they know that the winner of this month’s lead passing competition is going to be spoken about at the holiday party (with upper management there), setting that as a prize will more than likely drive production through the roof. If you’re going to foster a healthy atmosphere of competition for your BDR’s, you’ve got to understand what motivates them first.

Additionally, nobody wants to participate in a competition if they feel like the goals are too hard to achieve.  It is important, then, that you set appropriate goals.  For example, if your BDR’s average 50 activities per day, and you run a competition to see who can average 100 activities per day over the course of a month, your BDR’s are probably going to give up pretty quickly.  Though the math is simple, it’s still asking for twice the output that they’re used to over the course of an entire month.  They could probably do it for a week, but if you’ve ever made teleprospecting calls, you know its not as easy as flicking a switch to crank up your activity to double what you’re used to.  Make sure you’re asking your BDR’s to do something that is actually considered “do-able.”  Do they pass 12 – 13 qualified sales opportunities per month?  See who can average 16 – 17 for the month.  Are they able to average 12 – 15 quality conversations per day over the course of a month?  See who can average 15 – 20.  Regardless of the goal that you set before them, make sure its something that is not going to totally make them feel hopeless out of the gates.

Lastly, you’ve got to keep your BDR’s updated on their progress.  Sure, this one may seem obvious, but it is important to state nonetheless.  However you do it, whether you let them do it through reply all emails or you send out daily stats, make sure that they’re kept abreast of who’s winning and who’s not.  This makes for some great trash talking if you’ve got a great group of BDR’s.  Here, though, is where you need to exercise some care.  Some folks take that a little too far, and the last thing you want is a crying BDR or an angry BDR (or worse!) in your office because someone took the fun a little too far.  We’re not looking for HR to get involved here, just some good, healthy fun.  Not that I’m speaking from experience or have ever made Lindsay cry during The Infamous Call Blitz of 2003 because I made more calls than she did, but you’ve got to be careful.  To be fair, I didn’t say anything to her; I let my activity speak for me.  Keep your BDR’s updated on their progress, but also be watchful of when someone takes things a little too far.

Competition is great in a sales environment and it’s probably one of the main things I love about my job.  Again, if you do it right and you set the tone, a competitive environment can yield you greater productivity and boost morale at the same time.

I’m not old enough to have had the chance to watch the original Mission: Impossible TV series from the late 1960’s – early 1970’s.  Although I had heard the theme song (which we all have – dun dun-dun-dun-dundun-dun-dun-dun), I never had the chance to watch the show.  I have, however, been a fan of the Mission: Impossible movies.  I love movies like that, you know, ones where different people with different specialties come together to accomplish a task?  Hell, I just wrote a four part series on The A-Team and how their specialties relate to the management of teleprospecting teams.  What I loved about Mission: Impossible the movie was how, after Ethan Hunt (Tom Cruise) was framed for being a mole, Hunt assembles his OWN Impossible Mission Force (IMF) to clear his name.  One of the characters that he recruits is a computer expert named Luther Stickell.  If Luther was good enough for top agent Ethan Hunt, let me tell you why you need a “Luther Stickell” on your lead generation team.

Luther Stickell, played in all three Mission: Impossible movies by Ving Rhames, was Ethan Hunt’s computer go-to guy.  In the story, Luther was a disavowed IMF agent who was enlisted by Hunt to help him clear his name as a suspected traitor.  Luther was responsible for everything computer related on all three missions.  I think that every good business development team needs a “Luther” on their team.  I’m not talking a government level computer hacking spy, but more along the lines of someone who is responsible for the data portion of your teleprospecting efforts.  There are three ways I think your sales prospecting team needs a “Luther”: 

1. For list management purposes.
2. For key performance reporting.
3. For call plan quality assurance.

First, I think all teleprospecting teams need a “Luther” for list management purposes.  I know just from making sales prospecting calls myself that there were times when managing my lists were easy, and there were times when it could be difficult.  A data person solves this issue.  It’s their responsibility to ensure that the lists used for teleprospecting purposes are continually being updated with fresh names to call.  If you’ve ever made prospecting calls (which I know you have) you know that lists can get stale quickly.  Stale names do nothing but delay the lead generation process.  A data person can be responsible for accumulating the data from current lists, and using all of the parameters (company size, revenue number, industry, etc.) to go out and build one from various list sources on the web, or, like one of the data folks I used to work with, just build it from scratch.  The thing here is that it really is a dirty job, but someone needs to do it.    Your “Luther” should be responsible for helping you and your BDR’s to manage your teleprospecting lists.

Second, all teleprospecting teams need a “Luther” for key performance reporting.  Quick – if I ask you what your team’s connect rate versus their lead rate is, who do you go to for that information?  Truth be told, you probably look in the mirror.  I think its really important that you have a data person responsible for accumulating that information for you when you need it.  This becomes more important for those of us in the sales prospecting and marketing services industry.  If you’ve got someone finding qualified sales opportunities for you, I know understanding key performance metrics on a weekly basis is of the utmost importance to you.  You’re spending your budget on someone else, outside of your organization, to find your sales team leads.  You want to know what their performance is.  You NEED to know what their performance is.  If you’ve got your own in-house team, really the need is the same.  You’re paying people to find sales qualified leads, and if they’re not, you need to know why.  Having someone who’s responsible for aggregating all of your key performance indicators becomes very important here.

Lastly, all teleprospecting teams need a “Luther” to ensure that your teleprospecting call plan is being followed.  We use Salesforce.com here, and I can go in at any given time and pull up a record for any of the projects that my team has worked on and I can tell you if the BDR on that project was following our strategic call plan or not.  Having a call plan is a must, but having someone who can check on ALL of your BDR’s to ensure they’re adhering to that call plan is – well, its an even bigger “must.”  If you’ve got a BDR or a team of BDR’s who may not be producing qualified sales opportunities at the rate that you want them to, one of the things you should investigate is whether or not they’re following your call plan.  If you’ve got a “Luther” on your team, you shouldn’t have to worry about that because part of their responsibility is doing random spot checks, quality assurance checks if you will, to make sure that those teleprospectors are following your call plan.  Now look, if the idea of a “call plan” is throwing you off and you don’t know what I’m talking about, we’ve got another issue entirely.  I can’t stress enough the importance of having a strategic call plan in place for your BDR’s to follow.  For additional information on call plans, see my colleague’s, Craig Ferrara’s, blog entry on the topic here.

There are other reason why having a data person is important to your teleprospecting team, but I think these three top the list.  Now watch your eyes!  This message will self-destruct in five seconds…

If you’ve spent any time teleprospecting and making cold calls, or maybe if you’ve spent time managing a team of business development representatives, you know that typically the turn-over rate is pretty high.  I mean, let’s call a spade a spade here – teleprospecting is not a glamorous job; nobody is getting a Nobel peace prize or a Grammy for doing it.  However, that doesn’t mean that the job is not important.  I, for one, have always felt that what folks in our industry do is very important.  Our clients depend on receiving qualified sales opportunities that hit their forecast and close as quickly as they can.  Sales qualified leads are important to our clients, their families, my colleague’s families, my BDR’s families, and my family.  If you’ve got great BDR’s working for you, or maybe you’ve got a great vendor providing you sales opportunities, how do you keep a BDR from burning their proverbial candle at both ends?  How do you keep them invested in a job that, typically, isn’t glamorous?

I know in this economy that people are happy to even just HAVE a job; I get that.  What I’m talking about though is helping those folks, that may currently be producing quality sales leads for you, stay with you without burning out as quickly as they do.  They make hundreds (hopefully for you) of dials each week, leaving a shit ton of voicemails, and talking to people who, for the most part, curse the fact that they even picked up the phone.  I see three distinct ways that the folks who manage teleprospecting reps can help them from burning out and/or fading away: 

1. Offer them opportunities to switch up projects.
2. Offer them career development.
3. Help them with their career planning.

First, offer your BDR’s the opportunity to switch up projects.  Let’s say that you’ve got a great BDR who’s passing 10 – 12 leads per month, but maybe their leads are not as thorough as they used to be, or maybe they’re not passing as many as they used to.  That BDR may just need a new product to call on to invigorate them.  They may need the stimulation of learning a completely different piece of technology to generate leads for to give them the morale boost that gets them back on track.  I know for a lot of folks, when you do the same thing over and over again for a long time, boredom sets in.  By giving your BDR’s the chance to move around project-wise, you’re giving them the opportunity to learn new technologies and expand their mental horizons.  The benefit you get here is that you may be able to extend the “life span” of a great BDR who just needed a kick in the ass to get themselves back in gear.  Alternatively, you may learn that a particular BDR is beyond the point of no return, speaking from a “burn out” perspective, and maybe its time to help them move on.

Second, offer your BDR’s career development.  Sure they get training when they first start with you, but what happens after that?  Is career development up to the person or the organization?  I believe it’s the responsibility of the organization to offer career development.  By investing in your BDR’s professionally, you’re not only building good will, but you’re showing the BDR that you’re loyal to them, too.  You’re looking out for their career right along side of them.  If you’re managing a team of teleprospecting reps, or you’ve outsourced that function, make sure you’re giving them the chance to better their skills.  Have some in-house training sessions for them.  Sit at their desks and listen to them make phone calls.  Better yet, as my friend Trish Bertuzzi, President of The Bridge Group, says, pick up the phone and have them listen to you!  Whatever you do here, do SOMETHING.  Let’s recognize that, for the most part, good BDR’s don’t stick around forever.  The more you invest in their development, the greater likelihood you have of extending their time with you.  The longer you keep a good BDR around, the better it is for everyone – you, your managers, but most importantly, your clients.

Lastly, help your BDR’s with their career planning.  This is a little bit different than offering them career development.  Here, I’m talking about helping them plan out their career beyond teleprospecting.  Sounds crazy, right?  Well, if you’ve got good folks one of two things is eventually going to happen with them – they’re either going to eventually get bored or they’re going to eventually realize they’re good and find another opportunity elsewhere.  If they’re good, you want to keep them, so help them plan their career WITH you, not AWAY from you.  I’ve had the opportunity of helping some great BDR’s extend their stay with me by helping them figure out what they want to do after they’ve had their fill of teleprospecting.  Help your BDR’s with planning their career with your organization and you ensure that you keep your best folks close to you.

I always hate seeing good people leave my organization, and I’m sure you do, too.  If we can help our BDR’s by giving them other opportunities, by developing them professionally, and helping them plan their careers, I believe we’ll see fewer head for different pastures.  What do you think?