Continued motivation
There are many ways to try and motivate your inside sales team, but finding a way to continue to motivate them over the long term is much greater of a task. “Working in inside sales is a grind. There are lots of highs and lows – sometimes some of each every day,” said Eric Bluhm, inside sales manager at Zywave. With this rollercoaster of everything from big sales to getting hung up on comes a great need to provide your producers with continued support and motivation.
Long-term goals
Use your inside and outside sales teams not only as form of checks and balances, but also as mentoring interactions at your agency. “By assigning an inside producer with an outside one, you can create a mentoring relationship,” said Eric. Avoid “cherry picking” by separating the mentoring relationships with the relationship the members of your inside sales team have with their direct manager. This helps to create this guiding relationship without using the mentor as a disciplinarian for the producers.
This will also give members of your inside sales team a chance to gain insight on what it would be like to be a part of the outside sales team. Use this as a learning opportunity to show your inside sellers where they could go in the future. Connecting with mentors will lead to members of your inside sales team being better prepared and having a greater understanding of what the outside sales team does – and what they could do in the future.
Vision of the future
A clear vision of the future is an essential component of the success of your inside sales team. “Because this job is so demanding, and producers can easily get burned out, managers need to do everything they can to avoid this,” said Dave O’Brien, chief marketing officer at Zywave. And it is essential that this vision includes a positive philosophy.
Obviously, management must set a positive example for their team, no matter the job, and inside sales managers are no different. Maintaining a positive philosophy and culture, especially in a time of economic downturn, will help your team find success. Even if they’re not the top seller of the month, help each member of your team find success through the highs and lows.
This is part five in a five-part series on building a successful inside sales team.
Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
© Copyright 2009 Zywave, Inc.