1. Always Know What You Should Know
Although your team may have a goal number of calls made, quantity doesn’t always translate into quality. As such, you need the ability to access real-time analytics that can measure the actual performance of your team members. First, use a call management software that provides clear and easy to read dashboards of essential data and analytics can help you identify issues that indicate less-than-stellar productivity, production, and progress. Then, you can fix those identified issues! When your metrics reveal agents slipping below the curve and struggling in certain areas, it’s your responsibility to ensure they are given additional training. Watch for these specific key performance indicators (KPIs) that indicate success:
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Average handle time
This measurement is calculated by the length of calls divided by the total number of calls made. If an agent is spending long lengths of time on the phone (especially if a significant portion of that time is applied to hold or transfer time) it could indicate the need for tightening up closing skills or for increasing the agent’s product knowledge.
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Conversion rate
This measurement is calculated by dividing the number of sales by the total number of calls made. This number reflects the agent’s ability to consistently and efficiently close sales. You can also look at first call close rates to see the percentage of calls that are closed on the first call versus the total number of calls.
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Occupancy rate
This is a comparison between the time spent on calls and the time spent unavailable to make calls. This comparison can reveal if your agents are taking too much time after calls to fill in notes or complete follow-up work. A loss of productivity costs you money and should be addressed as promptly as possible.
2. No One Likes A Robo-Call
When connecting with buyers (the real, live, human men and women on the other end of the line) a pre-recorded message just doesn’t cut it anymore. Instead, you need to have flesh and blood callers who are well-trained and ready to have a real conversation at just the right time. These conversations may not all play out in the exact same way every time. Therefore, your agents need to know as much about who may be picking up the phone before the call connects. Using a fully compliant call management system that allows you to tie in your preferred CRM gives you the ability to organize your leads by their persona and where they currently fall in the sales funnel. With the right software’s preview dialing capabilities, your sales reps can prepare in advance which approach, such as value propositions, marketing insights, pain-points, and previous experiences/purchases, will resonate best with that individual. This prevents a one-size-fits-all approach… Because one size does not fit all!
3. Training Isn’t a One-and-Done Thing
Times change. Approaches change. Needs change. Be prepared to support your telesales team’s ability to change along with them! From role-playing to reviewing updated scripts and call recordings to whisper coaching, ensuring sufficient training to supercharge outbound telesales efforts is an absolute necessity. Give your agents the tools they need to pursue self-training opportunities and offer ongoing mentoring sessions with your most successful team leaders. Call quality monitoring as a method of training goes hand-in-hand with establishing reward systems. These systems should always be based on hard data and serve to be helpful rather than punitive. When you observe agents doing especially well, give them the appropriate kudos.
4. Say What?!
The way your agents utilize their call scripts directly impacts your prospects’ call experience. In a report published by Hello-Operator, prospects indicated how much their call experience improved when the agent didn’t sound like they were reading from a script:
- 16% said it improved slightly
- 33% said it improved somewhat
- 29% said it improved a lot
- 22% said it improved tremendously
This is important because, according to a 2015 study by Forrester, in instances where there was a customer experience failure or poor call center etiquette, 64 percent of customers said they would stop recommending the company. And once a customer’s business is lost after such an experience, that company has only a 20 percent chance of winning that customer back. Thus, it is imperative that your agents are provided with clever scripts that will give them something to lean on if they’re struggling but that won’t cause them to sound artificial or forced.
5. Supercharge Outbound Telesales with the Right Tech
Telesales isn’t a new effort. The technology to support its success has been steadily growing and evolving. Current cutting-edge technology options include cloud-based call center solutions. These solutions are accessible via any Wi-Fi equipped device and have almost completely replaced the prehistoric on-premise hardware used by inside sales teams in the olden days. While using a cloud-based autodialer allows you to give your agents the freedom to work from anywhere at any time, perhaps even more appealing is the ability to give yourself that same freedom. You can check in on essential analytics, monitor calls, review progress, and address any KPI issues needing your attention whether you’re in the office, at home, in the mountains, or overseas. Anywhere you have Wi-Fi, you can have access to the daily operations of your business… If that’s not supercharged, what is?!
Avoid the “Skinny Kids” Syndrome
Ensure your agents aren’t timid salesmen and equip them with the cutting-edge, cloud-based calling software that can supercharge outbound telesales. Schedule a FREE one-on-one live demonstration of Call Logic today!