Telesales

How To Build Your Telesales Staff

Hiring good reps isn’t easy. Most folks have a fear of phones and rejection. Rejection is a large part of the everyday life of a telesales phone rep. What you need to do is interview to find the superstars who are very experienced or greenhorns who demonstrate the highest potential. Making a judgment based on interviews will be risky. Hiring telesales reps “at will” makes the most sense. A 90-day probationary period should be more than enough for you to judge whether to hire them permanently or not.

The same should apply to your “superstars” that you hire either by referrals from other reps or other sources. Nowadays you can gather a boatload of resumes just by cruising the online job boards and posting an ad which costs less than your local newspaper classifieds and attracts talent from a larger area. Assign a staffer to screen the resumes and set up the interviews. Keep in mind that it may take 3-4 interviews to make your final choices. Make two lists. On your “A” list, have your first choices. On the “B” list, those who seemed good, but didn’t make the first cut. These individuals can come in handy as replacements should some of your “A” listers not pan out.

Telesales Staff Compensation

Pay every rep on commission. Salary against commission may work well. A draw won‘t, especially for the inexperienced, because they take time to nurture. Superstars may elect to take 100% commission in lieu of any salary offers.

Get A Good Phone System

Even if you have a small staff of 5-10 reps working in-house, you’ll still need a phone system and long-distance carrier plan, voice mail boxes for each of your telesales reps, customer service reps, administrative assistants and you. Check out VOIP, Voice Over Internet Protocol systems to see if they are available in your area. Shop vendors. And don’t forge that whatever system you invest in may still have to be tied into your local phone carrier.

Invest In Contact Management Software

If you don’t have the time or skills necessary, hire consultants to set up your computer network and install your contact management software and database program. A good contact management software program will provide tools for reps to efficiently use their time and a database program that you can administer.

Contact management software should be an area your consultant already knows. For any program he recommends, make sure you get recommendations from other businesses using the program as some software developers seems to think that beta versions are OK to market while they work to clean out bugs. If ever. Unless you want the additional headache of being a best tester for nothing, consider established programs. Act is one.

Install A Network

Have a consultant install your LAN or local area network tied into a server in a centralized location that you have access to. This is not the time to hire kids from high school or the tech guy from around the corner. Your consultants will earn their money and you’ll benefit if you elect to install reliable (not always costly) equipment professionally done. Make sure you get a installation warranty covering disasters that may occur.

Take Advantage Of Offered Training

Your consultants should be willing to provide free training for you and your telesales staff as part of their service package. Make sure you also train your administrative assistants on the use of your database software, how to make forecasts, backups and sorting of sales details necessary for your business plan and compensation of sales staff.

Hours Of Operation

If you’re on the east coast, plan to begin operations at 7a.m. to reach other business across the rest of the country. Start phone operations at 4a.m. if you’re on the west coast to reach east cost contacts.