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

Okay, before you read ANY further, I’m going to spoil this season of LOST for you if you read the following paragraph.  I just want to make sure you understand that.  Skip the next paragraph and move on to the next one if you don’t want this season to be spoiled.

Great, now that that is out of the way, let’s say that you’re stuck on an island, and there is only one other person on that island with you.  And let’s say that the only way you can get off of that island and go home is that you have to kill the other person on the island, only, YOU can’t actually kill them.  You’d have to get pretty creative, right?  Such is the ageless Man in Black from LOST.  He’s been stuck on that island for God knows how long, but the only way off of the island is if he kills Jacob, the other ageless man and seemingly more authoritative man on the island, only, he can’t kill Jacob.  So what does the Man in Black do?  He takes the form of John Locke and convinces Ben Linus that he needs to kill Jacob.  THAT’S creative thinking.  You know what?  You need your teleprospecting reps to be creative, too.

You may not think that creativity is really needed to be a teleprospector, in fact, I think most folks think that the job is pretty mindless.  Don’t believe me?  Try telling someone that’s what you do when they ask, “so, what do you do for work?”  The look on their face when you say you’re in lead generation or teleprospecting is all you need to see to know that they think all you do is smile and dial.  I’m here to tell you differently, though.  If you’ve partnered with an organization to provide you with qualified B2B sales opportunities, or maybe you run one inside of your company, you want your BDR’s to be creative.  I see three reasons why they need to be: 

1. Your BDR’s need to be creative because they ARE making, for the majority of their day, phone calls.
2. Your BDR’s need to be creative because they are going to need to know how to handle problems that come up spontaneously, and
3. Your BDR’s need to be creative because sometimes the gatekeeper just won’t let you through.

Your BDR’s need to be creative because they ARE making, for the majority of their day, phone calls.  Let’s be honest with each other here, although their jobs are very important, qualifying sales opportunities for your sales team, their job is not glamorous.  Your teleprospectors need to be creative because they need to be able what can be non-flashy job and make it interesting.  If they don’t, or if they can’t, they’re going to burn out quickly.  They do need some help from their managers on this one, because it should be up to them to make their reps feel important and/or understand the significance of what they do, but for the most part, if you’re going to be a great BDR, you should be a creative thinker.  It doesn’t have to be anything monumental, but a BDR should be imaginative to keep themselves from burning out. When I was making calls, another BDR and I had a bet, every day, as to who would end up with more dials by 5:30pm.  The winner got to tack the prize (just a dollar bill) to their cube.  Yeah, it was only a buck, but to me, it was what that dollar represented – that I had won for that day.  It was just something extra to keep me involved.

Your BDR’s need to be creative because they are going to need to know how to handle problems that come up spontaneously.  Inevitably, no matter how much I studied my client’s product or service offering, some prospect wound up asking me a question that I didn’t know how to answer.  That question often rolled into several, and after a while, saying, “I’ll get back to you on that,” got really old.  The thing about teleprospecting calls is that when anyone picks up the other end of that phone, ANYTHING can happen.  Questions will be asked and situations will arise that you can never train for because of the human element.  Talk to ten prospects and chances are you’ll have ten different sets of questions from them, because everyone is different.  What matters to one may not matter to the other nine, and what matters to the nine may not to the one.  The point here is that your BDR’s need to think creatively when a problem arises during their calls.

Lastly, your BDR’s need to be creative because sometimes the gatekeeper just won’t let them through.  They need to be creative not only in terms of working their verbal mojo, but for using their Sales 2.0 tools, too.  If an administrative assistant won’t let them talk with a decision maker, your teleprospectors need to be able to find a way in past that admin.  Now, if they can talk their way through, great.  If they can use the tools around them like Jigsaw, LinkedIn, or whatever, that’s great, too.  They need to be creative here because there will come that time when none of these tools works for them, and the account their calling on is a must have for you or for your client’s organization.  Again, this is another reason why your teleprospecting manager should be creative, too.  Creative thinking BDR’s find a way into an organization when no one else can.

Well, there you go – do you agree or disagree?  What do you think?

I read a blog today from the inside sales consulting firm The Bridge Group’s Patrice Murray.  Patrice highlighted a post from Dave Kurlan’s blog, where basically Dave shared a story of a time where he was giving a presentation on a Sales Hiring Webinar.  Dave was asked why, if his process worked so well, were more people not using it.  Dave’s answer was broken down into three points – ego, money, and fear.  Patrice did a great job breaking down the post, and you should read it here.

Additionally, my colleague, Craig Ferrara, hosted a webcast about best practices for hiring teleprospectors.  In it, Craig shares his thoughts on setting up a teleprospecting profile, implementing an interview process that focuses on the phone role play, and his evaluation process.  Check out the Perspectives on Teleprospecting – Best Practices for Hiring Teleprospectors webcast here.

*Photo courtesy of LisaDeeRN via Flickr

Okay, if you’ve got a stick of gum, a paper clip, three pennies, a ball made of rubber bands, and an acorn who are you?  A lot of folks may say that you’re the contents of the front pocket of a seven year old boy, but they would be wrong.  Actually, the real answer is a flame thrower if you’re in the hands of one Angus MacGyver – yes, THE MacGyver.  You remember him, right?  They guy with a penchant for getting out of inescapable situations by creating some contraption out of things he’d find on the ground or in his or a partner’s pockets.  MacGyver was awesome (besides the mullet) and one of the cooler aspects of that show was actually trying to figure out how he was going to do what he needed to do, and with what.  Like I said, the guy could make a tank out of a broken baby-stroller and a coat rack.  More than anything, MacGyver was inventive, and without a doubt, one of the top 100 qualities of a great teleprospecting rep is being inventive.

MacGyver, played by Richard Dean Anderson, had a great number of skills that really do not pertain to sales prospecting and B2B lead generation; most notably, the guy was a physicist and chemist.  Not necessarily skill sets that make one a fantastic qualifier of potential sales opportunities.  Now, the fact that the guy was inventive?  That is a skill that BDR’s need.  I can see three ways that being inventive is a great quality for your teleprospecting reps to have: 

1. They invent new ways to shape messages.
2. They invent new ways to get in front of prospects.
3. They invent new ways of streamlining their job.

First of all, being inventive comes in handy for your BDR’s because they are always going to need new ways to shape their teleprospecting messages.  If you’ve got an in-house teleprospecting team or maybe you’ve partnered with a vendor to supply you with sales qualified leads, you’ve got to remember that at some point, “new messaging” becomes “old messaging.”  Who better to help you tweak and reshape their call scripts than a great BDR.  The really good ones are already doing this, anyways!  They’re taking what works and what doesn’t and amalgamating them into one really successful teleprospecting script.

Second, being inventive is necessary because getting in front of prospects gets harder everyday.  Administrative Assistants get colder to the cold call, and decision makers are picking up their phones less and less.  Great teleprospectors invent new ways to get time with their (or their client’s) targeted prospects.  Take for example, one of my colleague’s BDR’s.  Now, although someone else may have come up with this idea, this particular BDR was the first to do it in his group.  He had gotten tired of never hearing back from prospects that he was emailing, so he decided to take a bold step and send out an Outlook invitation for five minutes to talk about his product.  It worked.  He got more prospects to respond than he ever had.  Now granted, more of them were declinations, but he got a lot of prospects to give him five minutes, which is all he needed to get his foot in the door.  Again, maybe someone else did this before, but never in my buddy’s organization.  They standardized sending Outlook invites, and while some prospects get offended, more often than not their praised for their inventiveness.

Lastly, being inventive is important because you want a BDR who is looking for ways to streamline their job.  A teleprospector spends their day making phone calls, and the good ones always make more.  The great ones invent new ways to get more done with the hours they have.  Now, I’m not talking about inventing new software or telephony products (though that would be awesome), I’m really talking more about processes.  Whether it’s inventing a new system to get more calls made in an hour or a new way to write up the sales qualified leads that they’ve found, they’re doing something.  It may be as simple as the way they set up their CRM and their web browsers, but to them, they’ve invented a new way of doing things that makes them more effective.

There you have it, my reasons why a great teleprospector is an inventive one.  What did I miss, or what can you add to this topic on inventiveness?

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?

Here’s the story – a Vietnam Vet comes to a small town to visit one of his former unit members only to find out that he’s passed away.  The Vet makes his way through the next town where he meets that town’s Sherriff, who does not like the look of the Vet and drives him to the town’s border and tells him not to come back.  The Vet comes back, gets arrested by said Sherriff and mayhem ensues with a manhunt in the mountains.  You’ve got to know that the Vet I’m talking about is the one and only John J. Rambo, played by Sylvester Stallone, from First Blood (and its sequels).  How the hell does this relate to teleprospecting!?  Rambo was as inventive a movie character as ever, and believe me when I tell you, you want BDR’s who are as resourceful as Rambo.

Okay, so I’m obviously not stating that your BDR’s need to be ex-Special Forces members who have been awarded Medal’s of Honor (though that would be awesome), or am I saying that they have to be ruthless killers (okay, that would be bad).  What I am saying is that they need to be as imaginative as Rambo was when he was being hunted down by the Hope Town police department in the mountains.  Rambo used what he had with him after escaping the police department, his hunting knife, and created a series of traps to incapacitate his pursuers.  Whether you’ve got a team of BDR’s qualifying sales opportunities for you in-house, or you’ve partnered with a vendor to provide you with sales qualified leads, you want those BDR’s to be as capable as they can be.  I can think of a few ways that they need to be as resourceful as Rambo, and they are: 

1. They need to know how to get around “gate-keepers.”
2. They need to know how to find contact information.
3. They need to recognize and know where to go to get help when they need it.

First, your BDR’s need to know how to get around “gate-keepers.”  The gate-keeper is that special type of administrative assistant that does not believe in helping anybody.  The majority of admins that I’ve spoken with over the course of my career have typically been a helpful bunch.  Would they let me speak to their boss?  Most of the time, no, but they would help me determine that I could probably get better information from someone else who worked for their boss.  They understood that part of their job was to assist; granted, they were assisting me, but still, they were helping!  Seriously, though, the gate-keeper is that administrative assistant who is not willing to offer any help at all.  Resourceful BDR’s know how to get around that.  They know that there are other ways to that executive aside from speaking that the gate-keeper and they stop at nothing to get there.  They know that old tricks like calling early in the morning or calling after hours…actually works sometimes, so they do it.

Second, your BDR’s need to know how to find contact information.  It’s a little easier to do this one today, than say, even two years ago.  With organizations like Jigsaw and ZoomInfo, finding someone’s direct line or their email address is much simpler.  There are times, however, when contact databases (God forbid!) have the wrong contact information.  A resourceful BDR needs to know where to go to find that information.  They know how to use search engines to find email matrices and how to find direct dials.  When I was making teleprospecting calls, that was a fun part of my job – trying to find someone’s email address or direct dial after I was told by a gate-keeper or an operator that I wasn’t allowed to have that information.  I used to love calling the operator and saying something like, “I just spoke with so-and-so’s admin, and he/she was very helpful.  I’d like to let so-and-so know that their admin is doing a great job without the admin knowing.  Can I have so-and-so’s email address to let them know?”  It wouldn’t work all the time, but I loved it when I did.  It was like the heavens opened up for a brief moment and said, “Well played my son – well played.”  Really, though, the point here is that BDR’s need to get that type of basic contact information when no one else will give it to them.  They have to be resourceful!

Finally, a resourceful BDR needs to recognize and know where to go to get help when they need it.  If you’re BDR is not generating leads for you at the amount that you’re expecting them to, a resourceful BDR recognizes this and comes to you for help.  If they’re stymied by a gate-keeper and none of their teleprospecting tricks are getting them any closer to passing a lead with Company X, they’re smart enough to know that they need help, and they also know who to talk to.  Maybe its your training department, maybe its you, I don’t know – but your BDR should.  The last thing you want is a BDR who has fallen into the grind of “smilin’ and dialin’.”  You know folks like that; you’ve either worked with them or have had them work with you.  They’re burned out and know that they’re just running their teleprospecting career into the ground because they just don’t have it in them to get help.  Resourceful BDR’s make sure that they don’t get to that point by getting all of the help (and training, I should add) that they can get.

There are plenty of other ways that BDR’s can be resourceful, the above are just but a few.  The deal is, though, they need to be like John J. Rambo and make the most with what they’ve got.  Train them right, and you can echo Col. Trautman’s (Rambo’s Commanding Officer) sentiment in this exchange with the town Sherriff: 

Sherriff: Whatever possessed God in heaven to make a man like Rambo?
Trautman: God didn’t make Rambo. I made him!

 I love that!  When prospects think, “God, who made a teleprospector like that,” you can sit back and think, “God didn’t make that BDR.  I made them!”

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?

Well here we are – the last of a four part segment on why your BDR Manager needs to be a little bit like each member of The A-Team.  Last Thursday I shared why your teleprospecting manager needs to be the pilot of his/her team, a little over the top, and quick on their feet like “Howling Mad” Murdock.  Last Friday I explained that your BDR Manager needed to be like Templeton “Faceman” Peck in that they should be a “master of disguise,” resourceful, and focused on your customer.  Yesterday it was all about being like B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus.  Your teleprospecting manager needs to be like a mechanic, a disciplinarian, and needs to know when to say no.  Today, I want to let you know why your BDR Manager needs to have the leadership qualities of John “Hannibal” Smith.

John “Hannibal” Smith, played by the late great George Peppard, was the leader of this crack commando unit on the run for a crime they didn’t commit.  Along with being the leader of The A-Team, Hannibal was the master tactician of the group.  When a plan needed to be devised, Hannibal had one at the ready.  When the plan needed follow through, it was Hannibal making sure that everyone played their part in seeing it to fruition.  The consummate leader, Hannibal was that member of The A-Team that the other members looked to for direction.  Its no coincidence then that the person who is either running your inside B2B lead generation efforts or your vendor’s teleprospecting manager needs to share some of Hannibal’s qualities.  The three that I think are most valuable from a sales prospecting perspective are: 

1. They need to be a natural leader.
2. They need to see the big picture.
3. They need to implement a plan.

The first one is obvious as Hannibal was a natural leader, but your teleprospecting manager needs to be a natural leader, too.  Hannibal just exuded leadership, and you knew that the rest of The A-Team would follow him anywhere, and when they were down and the odds seemed against them (hello, like the U.S. Army chasing you), he always found a way to rally his troops.  Making cold calls (or sometimes warm ones) is not the most glamorous job in the world – I’ll concede that.  A great BDR Manager knows how to inspire his or her reps to greatness.  To me, passing sales qualified opportunities is so important because it’s important to our clients.  Their organizations, their jobs, their futures and their family’s futures depend on how well their sales teams run.  I know that if someone contracts to partner with me that my team and I play a critical role in the success of not just the contact at my client’s organization, but the success for all the folks that work there.  That’s a huge responsibility, and when viewed in that light, teleprospecting seems pretty damn important.  There’s a purpose behind every dial my BDR’s make, and when they understand that, they see their job as more than just “smiling and dialing.”  Your BDR Manager needs to do the same thing; they need to be able to inspire your BDR’s, as a natural leader, to be better and achieve more than the day before.

Hannibal, as the team’s strategy guy, always knew the outcome he wanted for each mission the team took on.  In the same light, your BDR Manager needs to be able to see the big picture.  It’s one thing to work on a sales prospecting project and know that you need to get leads.  It’s another to understand where teleprospecting fits in the greater picture of sales and marketing.  A great BDR Manager works to align themselves and their team with sales and marketing, bridging the gap that sometimes exists between the two.  Before a B2B lead gen campaign gets underway, your teleprospecting manager should also be able to work with you to map out production expectations.  Seeing the big picture from a sales prospecting perspective is huge because of its importance.  Putting qualified leads in front of sales for sales to close faster means more revenue, and more revenue means (hopefully) more money for everyone involved.

Lastly, if you EVER watched the show, you know that Hannibal always said, “I love it when a plan comes together.”  Your BDR Manager needs to share this same sentiment – they need to be able to implement a teleprospecting plan.  Your BDR Manager should be able to take the information that they’ve gleaned from bridging that gap between sales and marketing and not only create a plan, but implement it as well.  Looking to find fully qualified leads in the security space?  Your teleprospecting manager should be able to look out at their business development rep landscape and know which BDR’s will work best on the project.  Don’t have a good marketing list in place?  Your BDR Manager should already have a marketing research specialist on the job building your list.  Messaging not resonating prospects?  Your BDR Manager should already have a contingency plan in case of such an event.  The person who is managing your teleprospecting efforts should be able to implement your B2B lead generation plan and be prepared for anything.  Like Hannibal, they should “be on the jazz” for your campaign from jump street.

As you can tell, I loved The A-Team (and still do!).  Thanks for joining me for the last four days as I revisited some great TV characters and tried to apply them teleprospecting.  Cue the theme song!

Here’s me and my A-Team:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yesterday I shared with you the first of a four part series on how your BDR Manager should have characteristics from each of the four members of the hit ’80s TV show The A-Team.  I talked about how the manager of your teleprospecting team should be like “Howling Mad” Murdock, the A-Team’s pilot; they should be able to pilot your team, be a little over the top, and quick thinking.  In addition to those qualities, your BDR Manager needs to also be someone who can (obviously) wear many hats, has their focus on their client, and can be clever when the job calls for it.  Today, I want to talk with you about how the person who runs your teleprospecting team needs to be like the A-Team’s resident smooth talker, Templeton “Faceman” Peck.

Though dubbed so because of his way with women, Face, played by Dirk Bennedict, was the man to go to when The A-Team needed some undercover work done.  They needed to get a vehicle to go here? Face was sent in to get it.  They needed equipment for a particular job?  Face was the one to acquire it for them.  Whatever The A-Team would seem to need from episode to episode, Face was the one who would come through and deliver.  I believe if you’ve got an in-house team of sales prospectors or maybe you’ve partnered with someone to find you sales qualified leads, that you need to have someone a little bit like Face leading them.  I can see three specific areas in which your BDR Manager needs to be like Face, and they are: 

1. They need to be a “master of disguise.”
2. They need to be resourceful.
3. They need to focus on the customer.

The first way that your BDR Manager needs to be like Face is that they need to be, to some extent, a “master of disguise.”  Now, I’m not speaking from a deceptive stand point here, but rather, look at what “masters of disguise” tend to do.  They tend to resemble their surroundings and try to be all things to all people.  In a similar fashion, your BDR Manager needs to be able to wear many hats.  On some days, they’re going to need to be a motivator, on some they’re going to need to be an application specialist, and yet still on other days, they’re going to need to be a disciplinarian (I’ll talk more about that next time).  The bottom line here is that the person who manages a group of teleprospectors is going to have to multi-task, and they’re going to need to do it well.  Take it from me as someone who’s spent many years managing teleprospectors – no two days are ever the same.  There have been days when I’ve been able to focus on other “management level” priorities, and then there are days when I need to be able to inspire people to pick up the phone and make five extra calls, because those five calls, when added up over the course of a week, then a month, then a year, may mean the difference of just hitting your lead goals or crushing them.  The person who is running your teleprospecting team definitely needs to be able to wear many hats.

Additionally, and kind of riding on the coat tails of being a “master of disguise,” your BDR Manager also needs to be resourceful.  Face always knew how to get what he wanted, whether it was information or equipment.  In a similar light, your manager should be just as resourceful.  Whether its extracting extra effort from a team of BDR’s who’ve had a grueling week, or whether its quickly fixing the problem to a less than successful lead generation project, the manager of your BDR’s should be able to find a way to get it done.  Being resourceful also comes into play in terms of training your BDR’s.  There are a lot of folks out there who think that making teleprospecting calls is as simple as just “smiling and dialing.”  Then, when those same people start working, they realize it’s not as easy as it sounds.  Now, try managing those folks.  BDR Mangers need to be resourceful in finding ways to make teleprospecting easy for new hires to grasp.  There is a lot to teach, especially to those newbies, and you need your manager to be able to pull the “inner” teleprospector out of those rookies and get them producing at high levels as quickly as possible.  Without a doubt, your BDR Manager needs to be resourceful.

Lastly, your BDR Manager needs to be customer focused.  I’m speaking to both in-house folks and vendors here.  In-house BDR Managers, your customers are both your sales and marketing teams, and obviously for the vendors, your clients are your customers.  Regardless of who your customer is, though, your BDR Manager needs to be focused on them.  For Face, his customers were the rest of the members of The A-Team and whoever’s hired them.  He made sure that he came through for them when they needed him to, and in the same, your manager needs to think that way, too.  This quality is probably pretty obvious, but it goes without saying that if you’re going prove your worth, be it to your internal customer or your client, you’re going to need to provide them with excellent customer service.  Be there when you say will, provide what you say you’re going to provide, and deliver it all with a smile.  The best thing that could ever happen from excellent customer service, and I’ve seen it first hand from my colleagues, is that customers refer you to a friend, and thus you bring in more business.  More business means more money, and more money means everyone makes out in the end.

So there you go – if you’ve got yourself an inside teleprospecting team or maybe you’re thinking about building one, or maybe you’re partnering with a B2B lead generation firm, you need to make sure that the person managing those sales prospectors is a little bit like Face from The A-Team.  Stay tuned for Monday’s entry, when I share with you why your BDR Manager needs to be like B.A. “Bad Attitude” Baracus.