A Great Idea to ‘Suit’ Telesales Training!

Telesales ‘live’ coaching sessions in call centres can, let’s face it, get a bit tedious. I once spent an hour with someone who didn’t reach a single decision maker despite making 40 calls.

I have however devised a method of livening up telesales coaching sessions that has gone down a storm with all the salespeople involved. The only props needed are a few packs of standard playing cards. My local toy shop sells 2 decks for just £1.

If you like this idea and start to use it a lot then you could copy the ‘key cards’ multiple times and laminate them. If you do this then you can also add key learning messages either below the card or on the reverse.

Whilst all the cards could technically be used (as it is the ‘suit’ that is the differentiator), I extract only the ACEs and the Kings and Queens of each suit for use in each session. Depending on the client and the group I may also take along a Joker!

The idea is very simple and can be used by a trainer/trainers who are simply floor walking and listening to small snippets of calls (audio from the agent only), or longer and more structured live call coaching via a headset (audio from agent and prospect).

The playing cards are used to symbolise good and not so great behaviours, the black cards (Clubs and Spades) represent undesirable behaviours and the red cards (Hearts and Diamonds) represent the positive and desirable behaviours. For example:

A King or Queen of Clubs is given when an agent is heard to be bombarding the client with questions or feature bashing, or generally being too pushy (I give a King to a male agent and Queen to a female).

The Spades are used when the agent is ‘digging a hole’ for themselves and this is often as a result of a poor opening statement. Filling silence by constantly talking and not giving the prospect time to think, let alone respond also gets a Spade.

On a more positive note the two red suits are used as follows:

The King or Queen of Hearts is used as a sign that the agent is giving out lots of warmth and energy and is great at rapport building.

The King or Queen of Diamonds is a sign of an all-round great performance (The Diamond Standard) and this is the card they all aspire to be left with at the end of the session.

So to explain further, in an individual feedback (post call debrief) session I may use multiple cards and combinations to represent how that particular call went. It may have started well and I will reinforce my feedback by putting down the Heart card as a symbol of a great opening statement and rapport building. I may then explain that rather than ask one great open question, they asked multiple questions and the call became a bit interrogative and as a result I replace the Heart card with a Club card.

Obviously the idea is that at the start of the session there are lots of Clubs and Spades flying around BUT by the end of the coaching session everyone should be left with a red card.

So what about the ACEs?

I have for a long time advocated the use of the ACE (Acknowledge/Agree Clarify/Confirm Explain/Elaborate) acronym tool for objection handling. I was working with IBM recently and they use LACE, adding ‘Listen’ at the start.

When in live coaching sessions I have award an ACE to those people that have used the technique effectively on a call. These get stuck to the edge of their monitors with blue tack and act as both ‘badge of honour’ and an aide memoir.

As for the Joker, well in my experience every telesales team has at least one of them!

Let me know how you get on.

Should ‘Selling Skills’ be Taught in School?

A few months ago I spent an hour in the company of Toby Perkins MP at his offices in Westminster. Toby is Labour MP for Chesterfield and Shadow Minister for Small Business.  I contacted him having read an interview he gave to the Financial Times, in which he stated his belief that “selling is a fundamental skill and should be taught in schools”. The article resonated with me so much I just had to send an email of support for his brilliant thinking and just a week later I was delighted to combine a meeting with Toby and a visit to the Learning & Skills Expo.

In the current issue of Professional Manager (CMI Magazine) I notice that Tessa Munt MP (Lib Dem – Wells) is reminding the Department for Education that its job is to prepare youngsters with social skills and not just academic skills. She states “We don’t rely on parents to teach their offspring academic knowledge; we shouldn’t rely on parents to guide their offspring in social skills”.

This makes me realise just how great my own upbringing was.

Any of you that have read my ‘About’ page will know that my father was an antique dealer and a career salesman. As a result my upbringing consisted of regular visits to auction houses and antique fairs. I was about six years of age when I made my first profitable deal. I had bought a Corgi toy fire engine from one vendor for 50 pence (a significant purchase for me at the time) but like all children I soon got bored after just a few hours and dad suggested I put it for sale on his stall for £1. Within minutes it was sold and I played an ‘active’ part in selling it (“It all works” I said and added “It has lovely red paint”) and my education in business had begun!

The second great influence in my early life was the Scout Movement and I cannot stress how valuable that education was. It taught me discipline, organisation, problem solving skills and the importance of working as a team as well as leadership skills. I progressed right through Cubs, Scouts and Venture Scouts and only left when my sales career started at 17.

Whilst it is great to see the resurgence of apprenticeships as a link between school and work (and I was delighted to contribute by recently developing an Advanced Apprenticeship in Professional Selling Skills), they must be relevant and valuable. In any event as I have clearly shown in my own story above, it is never too early to start to learn key life skills and I fully support any move to add selling skills to the school curriculum.

Sadly my father died when I was in my early 30s but I will never forget the ‘survival skills’ he taught me.  They were not the outdoor type (I got that from the Scouts), they were the “real life” survival skills like how to influence people, sell myself and above all make money!

Thank you Dad. R.I.P.

How do you train your new sales people?

Those of you that follow my blogs will know that one of my key beliefs is that ‘adaptability’ is more important in selling than ‘ability’. By this I mean the action of flexing our own style based on the circumstances and the individual you are selling to.  However, having worked with a lot of inexperienced sales people in the past few years I have learned that before they can learn to be ‘adaptable’ they must first learn to be ‘consistent’. This completely changed my view on how new sales people should be taught as they enter the profession.

In very basic terms it is the old “You cannot run before you can walk” story but I prefer a cricket analogy. When teaching a new fast bowler months and months are spent on getting the individual to develop their ‘stock ball’, this is called a “repeatable action” (it is the same idea with a golf swing). Until the new bowler can hit exactly the same mark on the pitch habitually, ball in ball out, they are not ready to try anything else. Once competent at their standard length ‘stock ball’ they can then learn adaptations such as a slower ball, a short ball and a full length ball known as a “Yorker”.

Bringing this back to sales I have seen the following scenario happen many times, both with and without management coaching. A new salesperson makes a call and does everything they have been taught to do, as best they can, they do a great job but they do not make a sale. They assume it was ‘their fault’ and decide to change approach for the next call. They try the new approach and that does not work either, so they decide to change approach again for the next call. I hope you are seeing the picture developing here. By constantly changing their approach they are not developing a “repeatable action”, they get frustrated, tense and sound increasingly desperate, which is never a good sign. If they do happen to make a sale, they will assume that the same approach will work on the next call and it may not, and so the cycle goes on.

My solution then is quite a simple one. The new salesperson should be encouraged and coached to be consistent above all else, regardless of whether their initial calls win business or not. In the early days do not set revenue targets or ‘over celebrate’ the wins. Instead you should set targets based on call volumes and how well they follow the structure you have given them. You may think that this approach will delay the time it takes to get a salesperson to be fully ‘productive’ but I totally disagree. Using my altered approach I have witnessed that they maintain morale longer and this results in them making more calls. As a result of making more calls they learn to become consistent quicker and this in turn increases their confidence. It is a cycle of experiential learning that really works exceptionally well and before you know it they will naturally start to learn adaptability, even quicker if you help them.

On a final note the great Zig Zigglar once said “for every sale you lose by being too enthusiastic you’ll win a hundred more you wouldn’t have got”. Young sales people are naturally enthusiastic and don’t coach this out of them.

If you would like me to train your new sales teams give me a call to discuss, I guarantee a rapid and exceptional ROI.