How career development protects your greatest asset

What's the greatest asset in your call center? Before you start tallying the value of your phone equipment or sizing up the effectiveness of your database, stop and listen. If you can hear the sound of call center representatives making calls, your answer should be simple. It's your telesales/telemarketing team.

An Asset Worth Protecting

Think about it. Nothing happens at your company until somebody picks up the phone and calls a customer or prospect. The efforts of your call center employees increase your customer base, and that's what generates revenue. Without revenue, nothing else can happen. Materials cannot be bought, employees cannot get paid and operating expenses cannot be met until customers are found and sales are made.

Other positions within your company exist because of the customer base your call center generates. The accounting staff bills customers. Customer service and support staff solve customer problems. Development staff design products and services for customers and so on. In essence, your call center staff makes things happen.

With all this in mind, doesn't it make sense to do everything possible to insure you attract, hire and retain quality call center representatives? Unfortunately, there are still many telesales and telemarketing operations that subscribe to the "churn-and-burn" theory of call center management. These companies view their call center staff as dispensable and seek to keep turnover high to keep pay scales low. However, this management style loses more money than it saves because it creates a highstress and low-morale environment. Call center staff who don't feel appreciated are hardly motivated to perform well. The result is ineffective telesales and telemarketing. An ineffective call center equates to low sales revenue and low profit margins; both have clear and negative implications for every other department in your company.

We've observed and surveyed telesales and telemarketing teams at a wide range of companies. Each experience gives us the opportunity to shine flashlights into the corners of each call center to identify issues that enable top performance and those that have a negative impact on performance. A common element we've found in top-performing call centers is the great value placed on their call center staff. These companies treated their telesales and telemarketing teams as an asset by providing accessible career paths, ongoing skill development and employee recognition programs.

Accessible Career Paths

Call centers that offer career paths increase their chances of attracting and retaining top performers. Job definitions should be designed to allow representatives to grow with the company. For example, one call center manager divides his customer service representative (CSR) positions into three levels: associate CSR, CSR and senior CSR. Each position level provides more responsibility and earning potential.

When drafting job definitions, management should articulate the responsibilities each job entails, the result anticipated from each responsibility and the time frame for completion of each responsibility.

The following example is for an entry-level position at a call center.

Position: Telesales Assistant, Part-Time

Main Responsibility: Telephone prospecting using an internal database to qualify sales leads and update the database for five account executives.

Results Anticipated: Connecting with a minimum of 40 prospects per day and pass over 10 "qualified" leads per month. "Qualified" means you have had at least one conversation with an influencer or primary decision maker, they have agreed they have a need for our product and would like to be contacted by a salesperson.

Time Frame For Completion: Three to four hours uninterrupted phone time should be scheduled every day to perform prospecting tasks.

It's important to clearly define expectations by giving representatives a clear target. A carefully detailed job definition lets call center representatives know what tasks they must master to succeed in their position and what they must accomplish to be eligible to advance in their career.

Job definitions also assist call center management in the task of evaluating performance. The definitions of each responsibility, result and time frame provide a pre-agreedupon standard of performance.

Skill Development

I remember the introductory training session given to me at my first telesales job. In fact, I can repeat it to you verbatim. It went like this, "Here is your desk. The phone is there, and your call list is there. If you need anything, I'll be in my office. Good luck."

Needless to say, that company experienced extremely high turnover. The management at that company assumed that all you needed to succeed at telesales was a warm body with a good voice. Professionals in our business know that assumption is a mistake. Telesales and telemarketing require a lot of skill. In fact, there are more than 40 skills necessary to perform the act of selling. Fortunately, many top-performing call centers recognize this by providing ongoing skill development for their staff. The key word here is ongoing. To enable top performance, skills need to be worked on regularly. It's important that skill development is viewed as a process, not as an event. Training is not an end to itself. The best telesales and telemarketing representatives know their skills need to be continually refined.

The benefits of ongoing skill development sessions are twofold; not only will they enable representatives to perform their jobs better, they also send the message that the company wants the call center staff to excel. This message generates loyalty to the company.

Essentially, skill development is asking your team to change or modify their current behavior, so it's important for new skills to be reinforced. The best way to ensure the change in behavior is to assign specific activities to your call center staff after training. Three to four weeks later, hold an open session to discuss what worked and what didn't. This gives the entire staff a chance to learn from the experiences of others in the group and a chance to brainstorm for solutions.

Sales contests are also an effective way to reinforce new skills within your call center. A spirit of friendly competition makes learning new skills more enjoyable and work more fun.

It's important for contests to be structured so everyone has a chance to win. For example, any team member who achieves a specific benchmark should be rewarded. The team member who achieves the most gets the largest reward.

Employee Recognition Programs

A sales manager at a high-growth software company in Framingham, Massachusetts keeps her call center turnover levels very low. She achieves this by recognizing and rewarding the success of her team members regularly.

Call center members need to be caught doing things right. Being recognized and rewarded for a task well done perpetuates top performance. Recognition programs do not necessarily require monetary rewards. Plaques, trophies, prime parking spots or memos that outline how a representative closed a sale all work very well as recognition programs. Whatever you choose, a non-monetary reward should have an acknowledged value to the call center staff.

Non-monetary rewards are usually very effective. The prizes last longer than money and serve as a continual reminder of the staff member's accomplishment. Also, displaying a non-monetary reward (such as bookends, a travel bag or a television) in the call center provides a visual reminder to call center staff.

Monetary rewards are just that; money as a reward for performance. This is money given to team members above and beyond their salary and commission.

Both monetary and non-monetary rewards should be used for employee recognition. This recognition should be for sales results as well as achievement of benchmarks in both skill improvement or activity levels.

If you are running a contest, use a scoreboard to provide employee recognition. Prominently displaying the results of each staff member allows the call center, as well as the entire company, to recognize and support the achievements of each team member. It also provides an incentive for call center staff to perform well because no one wants to see his or her name at the bottom of the list! Most important, scoreboards work well because they don't limit performance. Each sale made "raises the bar" for the next level of excellence.

Make The Commitment

Instituting career development in your call center is a commitment. It takes time, resources and money. Career paths need to be continually refined. Skill development and employee recognition programs require ongoing revision to be effective. If the thought of spending the time and money on a career development center seems unnecessary, think of the ways your company protects its other assets. Who would think twice about purchasing a maintenance agreement for a copier, upgrading outdated computer equipment or insuring a building against fire? Then, why not protect the asset in your company that generates revenue? Investing in career development at your call center protects your company against high turnover and low productivity and ensures long-term growth. It's a worthwhile investment!

Brian J. Geery is president of RESULTS Consulting Group, a Wellesley Hills, Massachusetts-based sales, telesales and telemarketing consulting and training firm that helps companies increase their sales effectiveness and achieve measurable, lasting revenue growth by identifying and reinforcing sales strengths while removing success barriers.

Copyright Technology Marketing Corporation Aug 1996
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