The following 5 tips relate to things to consider if you are setting up your own in-house telemarketing or telesales team.

1. You must have some form of targets. First it is important that everybody is clear on what is expected of them. It is difficult for you to reward or punish for results when they are not set down. However there are some key guidelines for successful target setting set out below.

2. Get results up on a board. The most effective telesales teams have their results up on a board in the office. Making results public on a whiteboard works for many reasons. First it allows you to see at a glance how they're doing at any one time. It's a bit like the way you use the dials on the dashboard in your car.

Secondly it means that no-one has anywhere to hide. So if anyone is unsuccessful you know it, they know it and their colleagues know it. While you may initially feel that this adds pressure, it is the reality of a sales job. If they're not performing, you will find out sooner or later - better sooner I reckon! Also of course if members of your telesales team are resistant to having public results, it is almost certainly a way of them self-declaring that they're probably not the person for your organization.

Conversely a star performer in your telesales team will like their successes being made public. Many successful telesales and telemarketing people that I've worked with over the years enjoy the recognition and acknowledgement that they get for being successful. In extreme situations they may often be self-motivated and a bit of a show off. But then if this is what drives them to produce fantastic results you don't mind do you?

3. Check the quality of the leads the telesales team is working on. This is likely to be the biggest single variable to affect success. So for instance if you sell mechanical capital equipment and you've got a list that includes hairdressers' salons and branches of retail outlets, the results are going to be poor. This will demotivate any phoner as soon as they 'feel the quality.' Furthermore if they are good phoners they are less likely to put up with it and move on, as they know they can do better and earn more elsewhere.

4. Spend time with them regularly. Appreciate that phoning is a very fast moving environment. Consequently if you don't spend much time with your telesales team, you will miss loads.

This is a particular issue in small to medium sized businesses where you are responsible for selling to customers and or managing field based sales people as well as the telephone telesales team.

5. Keep developing ideas to motivate your telesales team. This will repay the time and effort you spend on the subject many times over. A phone telesales team environment quickly becomes stale so work with the telesales team to come up with ideas to regenerate and reinvent itself frequently. Watch the renowned training video "Fish!" for ideas on what a well motivated telesales team looks and behaves like.

There is an audio CD available that covers the topic of setting up and managing an effective in-house telesales or telemarketing team available through Associated Learning Systems.

BY: Andrew Seaward link