How to Save Your Inside Sales Reps From A Losing Streak Part II: Diving Deeper Into Conversations
Last week in my blog, “How to Save your Inside Sales Reps from a Losing Streak” I discussed the idea of bringing your inside sales reps back to basics when they experience a downturn of generating opportunities. I talked a lot about having them focused on increasing the amount of conversations they have in order to uncover more opportunities. Typically, for a seasoned rep, the increase in their connect rate will easily translate to an increase in lead volume. My question is, what do you do if you have a new rep that might be having the conversations, but is not turning over the amount of leads needed? Here, I present three ways to dive deeper into your team’s conversations and ensure they are converting potential sales opportunities:
- Review conversations daily. I’m the first one to say that things get too crazy around the office every day to look at each and every conversation, but it is crucial to do this if you want your struggling reps to succeed. As long as you build a report in your CRM to review quickly, it shouldn’t take long. By glancing at these once a day, you’ll be able to gain visibility and offer advice on what was said in a particular situation and coach them accordingly. Unfortunately, you can’t listen to every rep every second of the day, so by reviewing their conversations of substance, you can offer guidance.
- To maximize the value of your one-on-one training sessions with your reps, listen in on calls during an auto dial session (technology that is purchased from an outside vendor that automates the total outbound dialing process for your rep). As I said above, we can’t be there every second of the day for each rep, time just doesn’t allow for it. When you do find an hour to listen in on dials, maximize your time with your rep by purchasing an hour of these auto dialing hours, which will in turn allow you to hear 10+ conversations per session!
- Tune into scheduled calls that your reps have set up for themselves. As we all know, prospects often brush inside sales reps off the phone and say they are busy when trying to catch them live when cold calling. Odds are your reps ask them when a better day and time would be to reach them. Your reps should be following up with a quick 5 minute calendar invite for the date and time that the prospect tells them to reach them at. On average, I find that reps have 3-5 of these calls scheduled each week. A great way to make sure you can catch live conversations to help from a training perspective is to jump on these scheduled calls so you can hear actual conversations. The great thing about scheduled calls versus sitting in on auto dialing calls with your rep is that you and your rep can strategize beforehand in preparation, and make the call very tailored to the prospect’s company so they are more likely to open up and talk.
When a rep is struggling and on a losing streak in terms of turning over qualified opportunities, the first piece of advice you can share is to tell them to increase the amount of conversations they are having. If at that point the volume of opportunities still isn’t increasing, it’s time to really take a closer look at the actual conversations they are having, and find ways to coach them from there. In an ideal world, you may have the opportunity to sit with each rep and listen to everything being said on a project, but we all know there is not enough time in the work day. By reviewing conversations daily, scheduling one-on-one call training sessions, and listening in on scheduled calls, you’ll be able to have clearer insight as to what might be going wrong once your rep gets prospects live. Are you diving deep enough into your inside sales team’s conversations to pull them out of their losing streak?