Inside Sales Telesales Tips Blog

World’s most challenging telesales environment? Bet you can’t top this!

Part of what makes delivering inside sales training courses interesting is discussing the tough challenges with which each team is faced. Sometimes the working environment itself is an issue, but if you think your working conditions are challenging, you'll love today's post.

Last week I visited a client in Bangkok, and his office is near the corner of Rama IV and Silom roads. If you've been reading or seeing the world press reports, you've heard about the huge protests and Thai military deployment. This is all happening outside my client's door. On Thursday, three M79 grenades were launched from an adjacent area. All of them exploded, one of them no more than 100 feet from my client's front door. Those are tough working conditions!

My client's building has been shuttered, the Sala Daeng skytrain station which most of my client's employees access when coming to work has been damaged by a grenade and is now occupied by government troops. Public transportation to and from that station does not currently exist. Telesales people are working from their homes using a duplicate CRM, but now there's a concern that because the building's power was shut off during these 95 degree-plus days, internal IT systems may not be found to be operable when the power returns.

So my client gets my vote for having the most challenging telesales working environment I've seen this year. Would you agree? People from many countries read my telesales tips blog, so if any of you have an unusually challenging inside sales working environment story, write back and tell us about it!

Speed interviewing: is this dodgy hiring technique based on speed-dating?

This blog was begun as a way to share some of the best practices in inside sales techniques that we discuss in my telesales training courses, but has evolved to encompass inside sales management techniques and practices as well. Last week's post on the concept of yearly commission checks prompted both blog responses and a number of telephone calls. One of the most interesting communications I've received about the whole process of interviewing came from Barbara, who emailed the following story about an uncomfortable interview experience she went through with a well-known high technology company. I'm reprinting it here because many inside sales executives and managers are readers of this blog, and I'm sure they'll want to avoid having interview candidates feel as badly about their companies as this candidate feels about the company she just interviewed with. Multiply that number by 20, as that is the number of people that were "mass-interviewed" that day. At the end of Barbara's story, I'll have some specific recommendations for things to avoid when interviewing someone.

About the candidate: Barbara has 10 years successful experience as both an inside and field-based sales rep selling hardware solutions. The company she interviewed with sells both hardware and software, and Barbara was interested in an inside sales position. Here's her story:

"I, along with at least 10 other candidates, was brought in at 8:15 am on the morning of the interview. The in-house recruiter finally came down stairs about 8:35 to bring all of us up to a conference room on another floor. We were all in business suits. I was told there would be  another session starting at 11:15 am, more candidates, with the same format.

"We all sat around for another 15 or so minutes, tension building, until the director of the sales group for which, if hired, we'd be working, came in and gave a 10 minute summary of what was happening and introduced the "interview team" of probably 7 other people. One by one our names were called (not quite like the Registry of Motor vehicles, but close) and we were escorted into individual conference rooms for the first of our 30 minute interviews. I was last.

"The in-house recruiter made small talk until the person I was supposed to interview with arrived about 10 minutes later. It started off badly, because the first person I interviewed with had no clue about the industry I came from or how we go to market. He proceeded to grill me asking what CIO, CEO and every other high level IT executives I knew. I told him I dealt with hardware people and he became angrier. Then we started role playing. He told me I had no inside sales experience and wondered why I was there. I told him I did, and that I was already interviewing for senior management, director VP roles. I totally threw him off. We started to role play. I had to set up a call, and close him He just didn't get it, or me, or my background, or how to interview candidates. We ended our "hostile" chat with him saying, because of my hardware background, "If you are willing to give me 200% then we will ‘take a chance' and bring you on." He asked for references, my reply was to check my LinkedIn profile (my references are there) and he was very put off by that as well.

"The second guy I interviewed with was so desperate for someone who knew even a little about hardware and how a system worked, that about five minutes into the conversation he said "we need you" and "I'm going to put my recommendation in to hire you." He asked me zero interview questions. He briefly scanned my resume, made a comment about how good it was that I was well familiar with a certain microprocessor, then repeated himself on how I had such a great background, and how he would strongly recommend me for a role with the company. He told me he was asked to interview candidates early yesterday morning and that all the people interviewing were given questions to ask the candidates.

"The 3rd person I interviewed with was the inside sales manager. She asked me a few questions, then we started a role play where I set up a cold call. She asked me how I felt about making 50-100 calls a day and I said it was no problem, but felt quality of quantity is what really mattered. She ended the interview.

"At the end of the 3rd interview I walked back into the conference room and the in-house recruiter was standing there, more small chat. I felt I performed well and was still quite dumbfounded about the whole process. We made small talk, and she told me to "call me next week." At that point I knew I did not get the job. I was also not escorted down to the lobby. Not one of the people I interviewed with handed me a business card or any company collateral. The only common thread was that they all asked me why I wanted to work for the company. The following week, I got a two liner email declining me as a candidate and a thank you."

So there's Barbara's story. My guess is that with the exception of the inside sales manager, none of the people doing the interviewing knew prior to one day earlier that they would be interviewing inside sales candidates. If they received questions to ask during the interviews, they certainly didn't follow them.

Putting a bunch of candidates in a room and "speed interviewing" them may not make the eventual "winner" feel very good about wanting to accrue any longevity with the company. Professionalism starts at the top, and issuing a "cattle call," not giving out business cards, and not even bothering to walk the candidate to the door sends loads of messages about how the company operates, not only to candidates, but to everyone who works at the company. I imagine this company's attrition rate is significant.

Putting together a list of Best Practices often consists of listing poor practices and resolving not to do things that way. If you're a hiring manager, insist on treating every candidate that walks through your doors the same way you'd like to be treated when you yourself are engaged in interviewing with a company with whom you'd like to work. If you do, you'll have great candidates wanting to work for you, and your attrition rate will be lower, too.

Those of us who work in a high tech environment do so for a number of reasons, which generally include a high level of professionalism, easy access to management, and a philosophy of focusing on solutions rather than problems. Taking the "high road" in interviewing practices gives a company the best shot at hiring effective individuals that will reciprocate with the same degree of professionalism they were shown in the initial interview. And I'm trusting that Barbara's interview process was an industry anomaly, rather than an emerging trend.

Commission paid once per year? That’s a new one on me!

In my telesales training classes, reps tend to crab a bit sometimes about company policies. Often, these are about how Marketing could do a better job getting them leads, or how cumbersome the CRM is to use. I tell them that I've yet to see a company whose sales reps didn't have the same concerns, and these generally are the result of a red hot company growing real fast, fast enough to easily outgrow systems that would have been adequate if the company were not growing at all. In other words, hot companies have growth challenges, while failing companies don't. My recommendations are to do a better job with the leads you have, and leave the CRM headaches to someone else (I remember the days of keeping prospect info on 3x5 cards, so any CRM is a joy, compared with that). And, as just about all of us in high tech telesales know, change is constant, and embracing change is a big part of what makes superior reps superior.

Last year, several pay practices that drew complaints did cause me to raise an eyebrow, although these came from companies outside my customer base. One concern was the practice of paying reps commissions quarterly instead of monthly, and I blogged about this, because it has the opposite effect of motivating sales people to close sales fast, which is one reason I'd like companies adhering to this practice to rethink it.

Recently a blog subscriber of mine encountered a new one that I hadn't yet heard of, and it's being offered to Managers who are interviewing for sales management jobs. If you're a rep, it's worth reading this as well, because payment packages do have a way of eventually filtering down to the rep level. This individual was offered a decent yearly base, but would have to wait a year to collect the accrued commission. The benefit to the individual would be a huge commission check at the end of the year. What are some of the drawbacks? Here are the first few that come to mind:

1) If the individual leaves the company before a year elapses, he or she gets zero commission.
2) The individual can only leave the company within 30 days or so after haven received the commission check, in any subsequent year. Otherwise, again, any accrued commission will be forfeited.
3) And therefore, the individual sacrifices career mobility, unless he or she chooses to stay in that particular company, and somehow negotiates a pro rata commission if moving to another position within that company.

I can see what's in it for the company. People won't want to leave "prematurely." When people do leave, the company can just about predict the month he or she will be leaving. And overall, this practice locks in solid performers for years. Great for the company, but not so great for the individual.

One of the characteristics of the high tech world is that startups are always introducing fascinating new technologies, progressive companies are improving the ones they already have, and this environment of continual and rapid change tends to benefit everyone down to the consumer level. So when you're interviewing, do a thorough job of reading your offer letter, and don't be afraid to question elements of the employment contract that may have an impact on any potential career moves you may eventually want to make.

A technique to increase your online chat sales rate

Many of the companies with whom we work in our inside sales training classes are making increasing use of online chat with sales prospects. Much of the time, they're not maximizing the full benefits of chat, either because they're not collecting all the data they might have, or not attempting to engage the prospect in a telephone conversation as soon as the chat session has finished. That second situation is what I'll discuss today.

Although chat has the real benefit of engaging a prospect through your website, nothing works as well to increase sales as having a real conversation. During the chat session, the prospect controls the communication, and the rep is essentially in response mode. In most cases, reps give far too much information, enough that the prospect doesn't feel a need to talk with anyone. This is akin to sending a prospect to your website, or sending sales literature through the mail.

The remedy for this is to break the chat by finding a clue in the discussion that will lead to an opening for you, and responding by writing "that's a question that I can probably faster answer on the phone, because there are several variables that are easier to explain if we talk for a moment. I'm free for a couple of minutes right now. If you'll give me your number, I'll call you within 30 seconds." By telling the prospect that it will only take "a moment," you'll appeal to the immediacy that is a characteristic of the chat experience, and it makes it easier for the prospect to agree and actually have a conversation with you. Then you can make the call right away, do some qualifying, and learn a lot more about the prospect's business. You also have more control over the conversation, and might be able to make a sale or move the prospect more fully into your sales pipeline.

This is a great way to accelerate the sales cycle when using Sales 2.0 technology. Add it to your Best Practices Playbook.