By Jason Stewart - September 5, 2007
What are the most important metrics for your telesales efforts?
Over the years I have worked with a number of third party companies that have specialized in setting appointments and generating leads for my senior sales teams, with varying degrees of success. The hardest part of the process is not really any different than when you have your team in-house -- keeping track of progress and getting visibility into the day-to-day dials so that you can spot problems before they end up blocking the flow of leads. Are my reps calling in at the right level? How’s the pipeline? Do I have enough new names for them to call? What objections are they facing?
One firm I had the pleasure of working with, AG Salesworks, had these metrics nailed down, and quite honestly showed me one of the best dashboards I have ever seen. Run out of their Salesforce.com system, and designed specifically for weekly review of the team’s progress, it flies in the face of conventional dashboard wisdom by only featuring one graph or chart -- but still provides an excellent summary of the previous week’s events. They were kind enough to share an example:
LEAD INFORMATION and LEADS PASSED Very straightforward, simple line item listings of recent leads and overall history of the calling campaign. A summary of the new leads passed to the sales reps during the past week, as well as a listing of initial meetings that were scheduled to occur and what’s on deck next week. Aside from reporting success for the week, it also prompts conversations about whether the meetings occurred, how they went, and what can be learned from them.
DATABASE DETAIL This section features the only graph on the dashboard, a bar chart showing the overall status of all prospects in the database your reps are working from. A great chart that shows you instantly what percentage of names have been dialed, who has been contacted, and how many fresh names have yet to be called. Also see who is interested, not interested, not a fit, etc. No more running out of names because you can see when the reps are running low, and can then go out and purchase a new prospecting list. Below that is a line item glimpse into the pipeline to see how many contacts are close to booking that first appointment, as well as a view into the reasons some of your prospects are not interested in taking that meeting. Extremely useful, not only for coaching your reps on how to handle common objections but also to spot trends in your target industries that might affect overall sales.
CONVERSATION DETAIL Yet more line item charts, detailing the outcome and the prospect title for every single “connect” (live conversation) over the past week. When I was working with them, I was especially fixated on the titles. We had a few “sweet spot” titles we liked for them to dial (Controller, VP of Finance, etc.), but it was always interesting to see where we got directed at these companies after someone “in the know” heard our pitch. As the groups who make purchasing decisions get bigger and bigger (fewer single decision makers!) it was always helpful to understand who was being pulled in to learn about new projects and vendors.
I was so impressed with the AG Salesworks dashboard that I replicated it for use monitoring some of our overseas telesales teams, which were not outsourced. There were some custom fields that needed to be created and reports that needed to be fine-tuned. The hardest part was the coaching on the workflow side, making sure the reps were tracking what needed to be tracked. Adoption is key. Decide what is really important to monitor, make sure your reps are comfortable entering the information you need (drop downs are great -- less typing), and then build your reports.
Before long your dashboard may be the envy of the sales and marketing departments.
