How to Engage Your Representatives
January 20, 2011
This is a part of a series that was created to help you get the practice of outbound prospecting built into your company. This series will walk through the process, necessary roles, in addition to guides for each role to help your company get started quickly. In the next few posts, I’ll be releasing the contents of a quick start guide for the outbound prospecting manager to use to attain success during this process.
If you did a good enough job screening candidates and selecting the most qualified people for the job, you should a have mature, smart, driven group of individuals. You should not have to be micromanaging people, but rather empowering them.
After your initial training, and supplying the group with valuable content, allow the team members to self manage 90% of the time. If you have trained your team properly on how to use the CRM system, everything you need to know about their performance should be available for you to access to make sure that everyone is staying on track. The metrics that the team is accountable for should be engrained in their minds. Don’t bug your team with pesky questions throughout the day about their productivity unless you see a real issue arising.
During your retrospective meetings, listen to the impediments –what issues have come up, what impediments are holding the team back from hitting certain goals? Take this feedback very seriously and make it a top priority to find a solution. Your team needs to know that you have their back, and that you will do whatever it takes to make them successful.
Another way to engage and motivate your employees beyond a quarterly bonus is to hold short-term weekly contests. Challenge team members, and offer a prize (e.g., gift certificate, leaving early on a Friday, lunch, etc.) to those who are the top performers. Salespeople by nature are competitive – harness that competitive energy to keep your team motivated and excited.
Cold calling is not a glamorous job. However, the more that you empower your reps, make them feel good about their hard work, and enable them to thrive and hit their goals, the more successful your program will be in the long run.
Additional resources:
Are your Sales People Engaged in their Work? Alice Heiman
Motivating your Sales Team to go for the Gold, Julien Dionne
Motivate Your Salesforce to Achieve Selling Success
Next week, I’ll provide some ways to create a model day for success.