Morning all,
Here’s the time
It’s been an interesting couple of weeks talking to caller after caller in my search for ‘warriors’.
When I say warriors I mean outstanding cold callers.
And some things have become apparent to me during this process –
It’s a wild ride trying to build a cold calling team from scratch but a damn interesting one –
I’ve found that you get ‘journeyed cold callers’ who’ve got years of experience under their belt.
Generally speaking when they have more experience it’s actually more difficult than not to mould them and get them to come ‘to your ways’.
Equally the other challenge can be – is that they’ve got an approach and a way of thinking that can run counter to yours.
At this level – everything is much more of a negotiation than it is ‘do it my way’.
As a sales guy whose got a particular vision and way of doing things I find this challenging at times.
Of course the upside of it – is that you get someone who’s a lot ‘further down the road’ in terms of their experience and ability to get things done.
Then you get ‘new people’ – new people have little to no experience and are there to be trained and molded.
This is the breed of sales amateur’s I prefer –
Those who are enthusiastic and motivated and want to learn.
They start from a place further back down the road – but then you can aggressively train them up to a style and standard that you enjoy.
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That’s why the training that we’ve put together (45-videos strong now) is going to be an invaluable part of the programme.
It’s over 25 hours worth of training that’s currently being chopped up into over 70+ videos by the time it’s complete with worksheets, multiple-choice questions, reading lists and an ‘end of training’ sales interview.
Within one month we’ll have this training in a ‘finer form’ and this will be the initial gauntlet ANYONE will run before they even get on the phone with us to start making calls.
I’ll give you some examples of what I’ve seen and experienced as now I’ve spoken to over 100 sales agents –
- The more experience people have the less they have a desire to learn new things
- Very few people are used to being in an environment where they get very very direct feedback (which is how I tend to give feedback)
- It’s difficult to find great salespeople (I probably can’t afford them either as they probably go get $70k+ jobs)
So with different people, the psychology changes depending upon how I judge the environment.
There are some sales reps I need to be very tactful and mindful of how I communicate and share information. Everything is about making sure it’s framed in the right way.
There are others who I come hard down upon and there have been many many tense moments, many many moments where I wonder if they will quit.
But the process has produced people like Adam – my head of outbound sales. The process is now beginning to fast-track the success of the team – and I’m seeing people develop very quickly.
I’m also hiring people from absolutely all over the place and generally, I am bringing everyone in line with my expectation of success.
I think the reason people are sticking around is because they see the value in what they are learning. It’s something of an extreme learning environment.
These guys come into work feeling a little bit of dread – which I guess is normal when the expectations are high.
But equally, I’m trying to push my own bar now as well with the learning I’m taking on from the books I’m reading on sales, from the daily cold calling I’m doing, from now inviting clients to come onto my live cold calling sessions (started doing this maybe a month ago with my friend Zuka – now did it with another actual client).
So the bar for us all keeps rising as I keep trying to find sales ‘diamonds in the rough’ who could eventually become warriors.
