Image via Wikipedia

At Phoenix we always place a great emphasis on understanding exactly what it is our clients are trying to achieve.  This part of the training process is so valuable and yet it is so rarely done as effectively as it might.  At best, it involves a meeting with a selection of key stakeholders, whereupon broad objectives are agreed and content is designed around these.  In many cases it is simply based upon managerial observations and anecdotal feedback which does not always get to the root of the real development issues.  What’s more, the participants themselves are rarely involved in this process which is also not ideal.  By consulting with at least some of those who will actually be attending the training, you not only get a better chance of designing something relevant but also of establishing participant “buy-in”.

This is a particular concern when designing content for telephone sales workshops.  We are often told that the participants need help on a particular skill – for example, closing, negotiating or questioning.  No problem – we’ll design something around these and in many cases, what we design will work pretty effectively and provide the participants with some key tools and techniques that will improve their results.  But how much better could it have been, had we been able to do some real analysis and actually listen to the quality of calls that the participants have been making to their potential or existing clients.

Call recording equipment has been around for many years, however, it is expensive to install and has usually only been utilised at larger call centre operations.  Improved technology has however now made it very easy for any type of organisation to benefit from call recording and here at Phoenix, we have really begun to see just how useful it can be.  Phonecoach provide a very straightforward system which enables call recording simply by adding a prefix to the number dialled – there’s no hardware involved and all the recorded calls are automatically saved as MP3 files.

By being able to listen to exactly what is being said, by both sales person and customer, we are in a much better position to identify what’s working and what skills need further developing.  From a design point of view this “reality check” enables us to focus only on those areas that really need it, ensuring that the training is lean and extremely relevant.  Where appropriate, we can even use the recorded calls to illustrate key learning points during the training itself – which can also be very powerful for the participants.

For just £24 + vat, we can record up to 500 minutes of calls, which is usually enough to get a good selection of a team’s telephone sales activity over a week or so.  After some thorough analysis, we report our findings back to the client and only then, will we design a course based on what’s actually happening.  This ensures that any sloppy techniques can be instantly identified & addressed, leading to a direct impact on an individual’s sales performance. Which is, after all, exactly what any high quality sales training should do.