Adventures in Telesales - Part 1

Once upon a time in a business pretty similar to yours, there was a cold calling professional named Tammy. She was so good at lead generation that people called her "Telesales Tammy". People used to joke that her dialling finger was so strong, she could do push-ups with it.

Calling telemarketing sales leads was Tammy's strength. Every day she'd dial out 50 calls. While others around her barely managed to do 20 or even 35, Tammy's 50 calls a day were record-breaking. She started dialling right at 9a.m., while her co-workers were just turning on their computers and figuring out where they had left their pencils and pens from the day before. By noon she had completed 30 calls. By 3p.m. she had finished nearly all of them and spent the rest of the day finishing her administrative work and trying some numbers that had rung busy earlier.

But the person who worked across from her was a little worried about Tammy. Even though Tammy's call out numbers were high, her effort seemed unstable. On some days she was positive and happy. On other days she was grumpy with her co-workers and even short with her customers. Sometimes, people asked each other in ...

... whispers whether it was "happy Tammy" or "angry Tammy" working today.

Why was Tammy coming across as unstable? She was one of the most diligent workers around and her closing record was just as high as everyone else's. Her manager became concerned, called his lead generation mentor and asked what the problem was. After some probing questions, the mentor who we'll call "Claudine W." knew what was wrong right away.

Her closing ratio was the same as everyone else. The problem was not in Tammy's efforts but in everyone else's efforts! You see, Tammy was achieving and exceeding the benchmarks each day and she had a closing ratio of 1% to 2%, which meant that of her 50 calls, she could turn 2 to 4 people into leads.

However, Tammy has gone crazy. She is snappy, angry and unapproachable. Why?

All the other employees did just 30 calls a day, closed the same percentage of people, and essentially had a break because they did not call as much as Tammy. Tammy was experiencing more "no's" than everyone else and that's what was frustrating to her. As the day progressed and she tried to get through her calls, battling "no" upon "no" upon "no", she became increasingly stressed. It came through in her voice to her co-workers and to her customers. And when customers perceived that she was stressed, they would back down from moving the business relationship forward because it seemed like Tammy was trying to "cram something down their throat".

The lead generation mentor had a few suggestions that the manager should do for Tammy to help her.

Within just a few days of Claudine W.'s suggestions, the manager and other members of the department were happy to see that happy Tammy was a permanent employee and angry Tammy was nowhere to be seen.

What were Claudine W.'s successful lead generation suggestions? You'll have to check back to find out! Visit www.claudinewask.com