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?

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.