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.

One of my favorite episodes from Seinfeld was one where George’s girlfriend sits him down at Monk’s and tries to give him the old, “It’s not you, it’s me,” routine.  You know what that is, right?  When someone tries to break up with their significant other by saying that it has nothing to do with the S.O., but rather about the person doing the breaking up.  People say that because confrontation is never desirable; they never want to tell the other that it really IS them, or something that they’ve done or neglected to do, that is causing the break up.  George counters the move by saying, “I invented the, ‘it’s not you, it’s me’…nobody tells me it’s them and not me.  If it’s anybody – it’s me!”  How about in a failing teleprospecting campaign?  How do you know it’s really your fault and not your vendors?  There is someone to blame, no doubt, but how can you tell who’s owns the blame?

You know, I’d like to think that there is always a chance to succeed at a teleprospecting campaign, but sometimes there are just no leads to be found.  I know, however, from experience that it isn’t always the case.  I’ve done work with folks who thought that their target market desperately needed the software that they offered and had to tell them that it was perceived more as a “nice to have.”  There have been times, too, that I thought, “I’m NEVER going to find leads for these folks,” and low and behold, they become long time clients.  If you’ve partnered with an organization to find you sales qualified opportunities, or if you have an in-house team doing the same, there comes a time when you need to take a good long look in the mirror if the project is not successful.  The way I see it, there are three ways to tell it’s you and not your BDR’s to blame for a failing project: 

1. Your sales team is getting plenty of qualified opportunities, but none hit pipeline.
2. You keep tweaking and re-tweaking teleprospecting scripts.
3. You’re focusing on the wrong metrics.

One of the first ways to tell that it’s the client and not the teleprospecting team to blame is if your sales team is getting plenty of qualified opportunities, but none hit pipeline.  More than likely, before you’ve signed a contract to have someone generate sales leads for you, you’ve outlined with detail, what your definition of a “qualified lead” looks like.  You’ve given that definition to your vendor, and I’m betting that if a lead crossed your desk that didn’t fit that bill, that you’ve sent it back.  Your teleprospecting team takes that definition and finds you sales qualified leads, maybe even to the number per month that you were hoping for (hopefully more), yet none of them are hitting your sales team’s pipeline.  You see, with that, I would say that the problem starts with the way the qualified leads are being followed up upon.  If you’re receiving leads that fit the definition that has been predetermined (by you) from the beginning of the project and none (or only a few) are moving along in your sales process, then something is amiss, and more likely than not, it rests on your side.  If this is happening to you, do some investigation as to what your sales process is like and who is following up on the leads that your teleprospecting team is generating.

Another way to tell that it’s a client issue and not a teleprospecting issue is if the client keeps tweaking and re-tweaking teleprospecting scripts.  I’m not talking about the occasional edit here and there, especially if new software or service offerings are making their way into the market.  What I am talking about are those clients who, after a few days of a teleprospecting campaign, feel the need to change the script.  Not only do they do it a few days in, but they change it a few days after that.  After a couple of weeks, their target audience has heard several different messages from BDR’s and is not doubt thinking that they’re dealing with a bunch of hacks, because no one is saying anything with any level of consistency.  I’ve said it before, but you’ve got to give the message a chance, and one longer that three days.  Sometimes it takes a week before we generate a lead for a new project.  Sure, there are times when our BDR’s come across a low-hanging fruit and pass a lead on day one or day two, but that is not the norm.  If you find yourself constantly changing your teleprospectors script, it should be no wonder why you’re not seeing the level of leads you’re hoping for; they haven’t had the chance to bring any level of message-unification so that your market understands what you offer.

Lastly, if you’re focusing on the wrong metrics, it’s most definitely you, not your teleprospector.  For example, if you’re not getting the amount of leads you hoped for and none of the ones that have been passed to you have hit your pipeline, it is certainly a problem with your BDR’s.  However, if you have fewer opportunities, but those opportunities are hitting pipeline at a greater clip, what is the problem?  The focus should be, ultimately, on dollars closed, but depending on your sales cycle, you’ll have to wait six to twelve months before you utilize that statistic to gauge success.  Alternatively, though, you should be focusing on the amounts of money hitting your pipeline due to the leads that have been passed over.  Make sure you’re focusing on the right metrics.  Focus on conversations, not activity.  Focus on lead conversion from the conversations being had.  Focus on the percentage of positive results from leads passed, but most importantly, focus on what is being added to your pipeline on a monthly basis.

I know what you’re thinking – I’m just throwing blame off of the teleprospector.  Stay tuned, though, as I will be doing another post like this, only talking about ways to tell that it’s your BDR’s and not you who’s to blame for a failing project.

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…

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.

Growing up as a boy in the 1980’s with a love for all things action-related, it should come as no surprise to you that I’m a fan of The A-Team.  You remember those guys right?  The ex-military, mercenaries-for-hire team on the run for a crime they didn’t commit?  God I loved that show.  While I never understood why a team of highly trained Army Special Forces members couldn’t hit the broadside of a barn with their AK-47’s, the show’s ultra-action premise wasn’t lost on me at 11 years old:  The A-Team was trying to clear their name from something that they were accused of doing and didn’t, and helped a lot of people along the way.  Each member of the A-Team brought something special to the table and I think they’re a perfect analogy for the types of characteristics you need in someone to manage your B2B teleprospecting efforts.

The first character I want to take a look at is The A-Team’s pilot, H.M. “Howling Mad” Murdock, played by Dwight Schultz.  Murdock was known for, among other things, getting out of his military trial because he was found to be “insane.”  Of course, the viewers of the show were lead to believe this as well, although he had brief times of being fully sane.  Come to find out, years into the show, Murdock was pretending to be mentally unstable, and that become part of his cover from being prosecuted as a war criminal.  I think if you’ve partnered with someone to manage your lead generation efforts, or your building your own team in-house, you need someone with a little bit of Murdock to them.  I see three things that Murdock was that you should look for in a BDR Manager: 

1. A pilot.
2. Over the top.
3. Quick thinking.

As I stated above, Murdock was The A-Team’s pilot.  Anytime they needed to fly somewhere that required them to take a helicopter, Murdock was the man for the job.  In the same way, your BDR Manager needs to pilot your teleprospecting team.  They need to be able to manage the launch of a project, bring it to a cruising altitude, know what the destination of the project is, and bring the project to a successful landing.  A great manager of sales prospectors knows how to get a teleprospecting project off the ground.  They understand the amount of time and effort it takes to bring a lead generation effort to a point where BDR’s are passing qualified sales opportunities at a good clip and they have a great handle on their objectives from a production standpoint.  They also know how to successfully bring a project to an end (when it’s required) without it crashing and burning.

Second, Murdock was over the top.  He had to be, though, right?  That was his cover; he needed to be that way to keep himself from being declared fit to be tried by the court.  In the same way, though, your BDR Manager needs to be a little over the top.  Hey, speaking from experience, when you’re dealing with people whose job is to be on the phones all day long and who typically get hung up on and yelled at for interrupting someone, they need a manager who can make their jobs a little fun.  I’m not saying that you need to coddle them and give them Romper Room, not by any stretch, but I am saying that by being a little over the top will help you lighten the mood of an otherwise very stressful, typically quota-driven job.  If you have a manager who can be a little over the top for teleprospecting team, and foster a culture that has an element of “fun” to it, your production values are going to soar.

Lastly, Murdock was quick thinking, and your BDR Managers need to be, too.  They’re going to be faced with a multitude of different problems every day, from employees to bosses to clients, and they need to be nimble in thought.  Murdock always had an answer for everything (albeit sometimes they didn’t make sense, as per his character), and he was creative in his thinking.  A great BDR Manager will be the same, at least in terms of being creative.  Salesforce.com isn’t working and your reps can’t make their calls?  Got a list of tradeshow attendees from THREE years ago as a starting point?  Haven’t seen a lead in a week and a half and the client is on the phone wondering why?  These are just a few of the challenges that I’ve had to deal with in the past, amongst hundreds other, each one requiring creativity and quick thinking.

Well there you have – my take on why the person managing your teleprospecting efforts needs to be a little bit like “Howling Mad” Murdock.  Tomorrow, I’m going to talk about why your BDR Manager also needs to be a little bit like Templeton “Faceman” Peck.  Stay tuned!

I hate being sick.  I know I’m not the only one out there who does, but I just want to get that out of the way.  Regardless, back to blogging!

So, last week I shared some thoughts with you on whether or not your sales prospecting vendor was listening to you and whether or not your business development reps were listening to your prospects.  Today, however, I want to ask you if you’re listening to your teleprospecting vendor?  If you don’t have someone providing your sales organization with qualified opportunities, maybe you’ve got a team doing that in-house for you, in which case, I would pose the same question.  They need you, you know, if your project with them is going to be successful or not.  No B2B lead generation provider is an island!  So what about you then?  Are you listening to your teleprospecting team?

I can tell you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the most successful teleprospecting campaigns that I’ve managed had at least one thing in common – a client who listened.  It is the rare project that succeeds where a client is not really “all in” with us.  I could never understand why someone would want to acquire someone to generate sales qualified leads for them, yet never really participate in the process.  Look, I’m not saying that I want a client to do our job for us, certainly not.  I do need them to listen, though.  There are, however, three questions you should be paying high levels of attention to from your teleprospecting team: 

1. Can you help us with your list?
2. Can you listen in on calls with us?
3. Can you help in closing the loop with sales?

First off, you’ve got to answer the question of “can you help us with your list?”  Your vendor shouldn’t be looking for you to give you the Glengarry leads, but at the same time, you should be able to provide a framework around the contents of your list.  I’ve worked with several clients who were quite good at segmenting out which lists our teleprospectors should be calling into and what product they should be qualifying for.  Conversely, I’ve worked with several clients who just threw lists at me and said, “here, you sort it out.”  Help your vendor or inside team when they ask for your help in managing their list.  The biggest, and I mean BIGGEST, help you can give here is to make sure that if you’ve given lists to them, that you’ve scrubbed the list of your current customers and companies that are not a good fit for you.

Second, answer the question, “can you listen in on calls with us?” with a resounding, “YES!”  I’m in awe every time I ask a client to do that and they tell me that they don’t have the time.  Really?  You’ve got the money to invest in teleprospecting, yet you can’t find a couple of hours to listen to how your message is being delivered to the masses?  This one is huge, folks.  If your vendor or inside folks ask you to shadow on calls with their BDR’s, do it.  You need to do it because you can course correct any messaging that is a little awry, and you need to do it because if lead production is not where you want it to be, you can listen in on live prospecting conversations to find out why.  You need to do it because your spending money on it, and every hour spent by a BDR hunting for your perfect prospect is a direct factor in seeing your Marketing Return on Investment (mROI).  Whether you’ve got a vendor acquired or an inside team, listening in on teleprospecting calls is a must.

Lastly, when your vendor or in-house team asks, “can you help in closing the loop with sales?” you need to.  In cases where you’ve got a vendor making your teleprospecting calls, you really need to lend a hand when asked.  Your vendor should be able to handle closing the loop themselves, but we know how sales reps can be when we’re looking for their feedback.  Typically, they’re too busy giving demos, meeting prospects, or putting proposals together to do so; however, to truly see your mROI, you need their feedback.  Your sales folks are only going to respond to vendors so much as they’ve been bugged and bugged to do so by someone on the inside, and for better or for worse, that inside person is you.

Regardless of whether or not you’ve hired someone else to find sales qualified leads for you or you have your own team doing so in-house, make sure you’re listening to them when they’re asking for your help.  The more you’re involved, the better the results; and that’s what we want after all, right?

So, if you’ve been reading The CRAP Report now, you know that I’m typically writing for folks that may either be looking to outsource their teleprospecting efforts or that may have their own internal sales prospecting team.  I’m also writing for folks that are looking to improve their Business Development Rep’s, be they a vendor or an in-house team.  Oh yeah, and my Mom.  Today, though, I really want to speak to those folks who’ve outsourced their sales opportunity generation efforts.  There may be some take-aways for others, but if you’re working with a vendor who is finding sales qualified leads for you and your sales team, this one’s for you.

Like the title says, I’m asking if your teleprospecting vendor listens to you.  I guess I need to be a little more detailed here, right?  You’ve spent A LOT of money outsourcing lead development and because of that, I’m hoping that you’re getting what you’ve asked for.  There are three key areas that you should be focusing on getting what you’ve paid for: 

1. Does your vendor share YOUR definition of a qualified lead?
2. Do they target your key prospects?
3. Are you getting access to the BDR’s calling on your behalf?

First off, does your vendor share YOUR definition of what a qualified lead looks like?  There have been many blog articles lately about making sure that Marketing and Sales share the same definition (see here and here for examples), but in this instance, you and your vendor had better share that same one, too.  This one is obviously the most critical.  During the initial implementation phase, my suggestion to you is to spend as much time hashing out with your outsourcer just what you feel a qualified lead looks like.  If all you care about is understanding a prospect’s business pains but your vendor’s BDR’s are qualifying for budget, something’s amiss.  I can’t stress this point enough, in fact, for those of you reading that are going to outsource and have not done so yet, get your “qualified lead” definition straightened out first.  Ensuring that you and your outsourced sales prospecting vendor share the exact same definition of what a qualified lead looks like is going to save you headaches in the long run.

Second, do they target your key prospects?  Did your vendor listen to you when THEY qualified you?  Do they know your target audience?  They’re making dials every day on your behalf, so make sure that you know that they’re calling the prospects you want them to.  A good portion of this problem can be alleviated if you come to the table with a list that you want them to call into (my colleague, Craig Ferrara, talks about putting lists together, and you can read his thoughts on that here).  If you already have a focused list, then there really may not be much to worry about, however, I have worked with clients in the past who want us to put lists together for them.  That’s okay, but make sure you review the list before giving the green light to make calls.  Nothing is more embarrassing for a BDR than calling a client’s customer because the client didn’t review the prospecting list and remove their name from it.

Lastly, are you getting access to the BDR’s calling on your behalf?  People who are making calls under your company’s banner should be made available to you, and pretty much whenever you want to talk to them, within reason.  I use the caveat of “within reason” because if you’ve outsourced to an expert, you shouldn’t impede their time on the phones too often.  Getting the opportunity to sit in on calls with the rep working for/with you will tell you all you need to know about whether or not your vendor has listened to you.  You’ll be able to pick up on all of the tweaks you’ve made to your messaging and make sure that what you want to be said to prospects is being said.

While I imagine that most outsourcers do a good job at these, you should keep the above three questions in mind regarding your relationship with your lead gen vendor and whether or not they really listen to you.

So I’ve been thinking lately about something that those of you looking to outsource your B2B lead generation efforts should look for in a vendor:  transparency.  You’re going to be paying good money to someone else to find qualified sales opportunities, so make sure that you get access to all of the information that’s important to you.  You’ve contracted with someone to maybe take your tradeshow attendance list, your webinar attendance list, or maybe even a cold call list (because cold calling isn’t dead!), and create sales qualified leads (SQL’s) for you.  Obviously it’s great to get the SQL’s, because that is what you ultimately want, but there are some other things that you should be getting out of the engagement, and the overarching theme you should keep in mind is transparency.

When I think of transparency, words like “see-through,” “clarity,” and “clear” come to mind.  That is just what you want in a sales prospecting organization.  There shouldn’t be anything that happens that you’re not able to have access to from a lead gen stance.  Specifically speaking, I see three areas of a partnership that you’ll want access to:  the Business Development Rep making calls on your behalf, quality conversations, and the list accumulated during the project of companies not interested in your product/service/solution.

You need to have access to the BDR making calls on your behalf because they’re the ones that are actually speaking to your target audience.  Hopefully you’ve done your due diligence by getting the best list possible (my colleague Craig Ferrara talks about his thoughts on lists here, and you can see mine here), and now you’re going to put that list into the hands of someone outside of your organization.  Sometimes that can be a scary thing, but not if you’re working with a lead gen company that is transparent.  A sales prospecting organization that provides you access to the person making dials for you knows this, and by allowing that level of contact, you’ll have the ability to make sure your message gets to your market the way you want it to.  A lack of transparency here should raise red flags for you.  You WANT to talk to the BDR calling for you.  You WANT to make sure they convey your message to your satisfaction.  For goodness sakes, you WANT to sit in and listen to the calls they’re making FOR you!

You need vision into all of the conversations (real conversations folks, not ones that end with “yeah, call me back later) that your BDR is having because you want to make sure nothing is missed.  At the very least, on a weekly basis, you should be getting reports sent to you detailing all of the conversations that your BDR has.  This level of clarity ensures that an opportunity that, on one hand may not be completely qualified but on the other may be with one of your dream accounts, doesn’t get lost because again, it isn’t totally qualified.  You’d be surprised at the number of leads I’ve sent over to clients that weren’t as qualified as a typical SQL just because the organization in question is one that they desperately want to sell to.

Lastly, you want some clarity into the companies that have told your outsourced BDR that they’re not interested in your product/service/solution, and more importantly, why.  This information, surely, is often seen as just as valuable as the SQL itself.  This type of information allows your marketing team to build new campaigns around the objections that have been collected.  This type of information is critical to amass if for nothing but sheer market intelligence value.  Wouldn’t you like to know what your audience’s reasoning is for NOT doing business with you?

Transparency is important folks.  You want to know your BDR, you want to know what their conversations are like, and you want to know why your prospects aren’t interested in you.  Make sure you’re getting what you pay for, especially if you’re outsourcing your sales prospecting.