Is it Time to Invest in Your People?

I to agree in a friendly environment and the comment you have given so very true “perfect system but a colorless personality”

While providing simple advice this was a very good article. A lot of companies forget to invest in their people and of course have fun. We should all take something from this article.

The essence of call center telemarketing is training.

From day one, our new agents go through our specialized Early System Programming (ESP) where we train agents in increasing their level of intensity and persistence of behavior. Many courageous people initially display an interest in making cold calls, but not everyone has the ability to be a professional telemarketer. A person may be highly intelligent according to a
more conservative definition yet unmotivated to dedicate this intelligence to certain telemarketing campaigns.

The Psychology of selling over the phone is the initial topic covered. The trainee’s mind is focused on how to prevail over rejection and to uncover a physical stamina to handle a minimum of 8 hours of quality phone calls a day. Each trainee’s fear of telemarketing is addressed openly and resolved with compassion. Prevention for burn out is discussed and will be closely monitored daily for each trainee. This key observation will filter out potential quitters while promoting career team members for your company.

Phonetics is often discussed and is encouraged as an ongoing study for mastery. Tape recorded practice calls are made during every training session and will cover level one (easy close) to level five (non-stop rebuttal) types of calls. An analysis provided from a detailed checklist will judge the tone, rate, pitch, duration, pause, pregnant pause, delivery and timing of open and close-ended questions. Video taping a phone call in progress involves the same phonetics study along with non-verbal communication to understanding how body posture, facial expressions, hands as an illustrator and motion can dramatically improve a voice and projection Trainees must be a third party observer in order to make the necessary mental changes themselves. The only way anyone can make great strides in self-improvement is to be humbled by their own criticism. Self monitoring and reflection is what will make your telemarketing team rank among the most proficient sounding in the business.

The telemarketing script will be transferred on to a second sheet known as a call map for easy call navigation and training. We use a straightforward flowchart to highlight critical decision points and familiar objectives during the structured conversation. Acknowledging when they ask a good question is used methodically and is essential in promoting additional conversation. Silence can be instrumental when used tactfully on the phone. Deliberate pregnant pauses are incorporated in our pitch and highlighted on the call map as an advantage for encouraging the client’s participation.

A mandatory quiz at the end of every training program is necessary to make sure that the agents know how to handle our system and have a confident understanding of your material taught that day. The campaign information plus advanced rhetoric are a minimum of two written and oral exams that must be passed by all team members. As the training is near completion, several test calls will be made to you for final approval of the script and our team members’ ability to properly speak for your company.

We operate all training sessions in a low pressure environment. In the beginning it is very important to build a comfort level with our processes before they are on their own. During this stage, they have to get comfortable handling issues very quickly before they are approved to make a single call for your company. The faster the agents get on the phone and take a call will improve their learning curve, become more efficient faster and would decrease their ramp-up time.