Practicing What We Preach

I was asked to develop a national sales team using remote sales professionals with very limited resources and without the heavy negative motivation which many sales organizations still think is effective. Recruiting, interviewing, training, motivating, setting teleconferences and webinars, and tracking activities are some of the duties involved. This is possible using a number of “modern” tools and especially having the attitude that previous corporate structures were not needed or possible to achieve success.

What was used? Tools (mostly free) included online listings, mobile phone conferences and interviews, extensive email, teleconferencing, saved recordings, web pages, long distance calls, aircards, personal computers, smart phones, and prospect list development (many services from Google).

The process is simple and in this economy many people are willing to take a chance on a commission based position full or part-time. The challenge is in keeping people engaged and motivated. That is why the ability to communicate through multiple methods is important. Regular contact with these individuals is of primary importance. To maintain a staff of the necessary size the hiring/training process is continual. A certain percentage of those that go through the training don’t actually end up working and some find out that they are not cut out to sell our services.

Within a 30 day period we were able to develop a geographically diverse sales team in the U.S. and Canada of 20 sales people, train them and then support their sales efforts all due to the array of tools available to us and the attitude that things could and should be done differently. We have weekly teleconferences, which are recorded, continual training webinars, one-on-one meetings and activity records, which help to create metrics that we can use to further our efforts.