Sales Culture

[newdir]

I recently took a position as director of an inbound sales campaign. My 5 years of experience has been with customer service and no sales. So I was well aware that this would be a challenge from the gate.

Now only 1 week in to my new position and only 4 weeks in to production of the new campaign the client is getting pushy and upset, and we are struggling with our conversion rate.

I need to take this center (in a rural community) which is very service oriented and make them sales people. Can anyone suggest concepts, ideas, best practices, or even good reading? I refuse to fail, but need help.

[ctaylor]

You certainly have your hands full. There are a number of underlying isuues you wil need to recognize and address before you can become sucessful in this endeavor. These include;
1-Realize that the skills and competencies that you would look for in hiring service staff and sales staff are not the same. Yes there is a lot of over-lap, but also alot of difference.
2-If the staff was hired for service they will resent the change. Likely to them it feels like a 'bait and switch'.
3-Human nature is to resist change. At some level they will be expecting that if they just 'tough it out' the company will realize its' mistake and let them get back to service only calls.
4-The staff likely doesn't have the training or a comfort level with 'selling'.

The first three points above are issues and/or perceptions that you must deal with directly and immediately.

Speak with the staff and acknowledge that you know that they may lack some of the skills to excel at sales, but tell them you will offer each of them support and assistance. Tell them you will help them to broaden their skills. This will make them more desirable employees.

If the company is unprepared to move these staff back to service tell the staff that they will either succeed or be looking for new positions as their old ones are gone.

You should invest in some additional training and/or workshops on selling. Work from the basis that selling a customer a product/service they want is a service to the customer, who otherwise might not know about the product or purchase an inferior one elsewhere. This positioning can appeal to the staffs service focus and customer alignment.

Be prepared to lose staff, both to non-performance- some simply cannot ( or will not) achieve acceptable results, and through attrition, some staff would rather leave the company then complete and 'unnatural act'.

There is no doubt that turning service staff to sales staff is challenging, frought with perils and is often unsuccessful. Case and point is a mail order company that wanted to get its agents to upsell weekly/monthly specials. For 3 months they struggled with very low conversion ( and even attempt rates). The company trialed a virtual agent to offer the upsell to all callers and in the first week their sales more than doubled. So why did this happen? The biggest reason was a consistent 'ask' rate- the agents could no longer determine when and if to ask the caller (it was a negative call, unhappy customer, I could they were in a hurry etc... so I didn't ask them). Another key to sucess was the consitency of the ask itself. No longer were customers questioned, "you wouldn't be interested in buying..."

If this is a permanent change you may also want to consider personality testing for your staff. A test like DISC can help you identify those with the personality traits to succeed and those who do not. This can help you to make the people investments where it is likely to pay off. This can also help you to root out the malingerers that will undermine your efforts with the other staff.

I hope I have added some value to this discussion. If you would like to contact me directly please send me an email to ctaylor@thetaylorreachgroup.com .

Colin