Another potential buyers question: with your last three clients ... what was the key measure of your action and what were the results?

Last job:

Company: executive interim management provider, 9 sales offices in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Benelux.

Task:

- Set up of a standardized sales appearance (B2B) by phone, e-mail and letter.

- Implementation of a CRM data base

- Generating leads on a soft selling level by phone, follow up by phone, e-mail and letter through training and coaching

- Languages: German, English

Key measure: getting the sales people used to a soft selling but effective cold calling through professional and friendly communication

Results: all sales offices now work with the same CRM tool and follow the same flowchart of first contact, follow up and consistent contact update and reminders.

Critical: all staff up to the age of 40 adapted well to the new system and communication improvements. Some “old-stagers” formed a stubborn unit where I didn’t manage to get through to them. In the end they had to accept the CRM tool but stuck to their “way of talking to potentials”.

Second to last job:

Company: health insurance, in-house call center unit, 25 inbound and outbound agents, at head office in Switzerland

Task:

- Set up of a phone communication guide especially adapted to the high season needs (August to October, when 30% of Swiss households want to change into a cheaper health insurance policy)

- Training and coaching of the existing staff and the newly hired agents (in order to cover the high season call volume)

- Languages: German, French, Italian, English

Key measure:

- Achieve and fulfill service level agreement of 90/10 (90 % of the calls are answered within 10 seconds)

- Enabling all agents to do just one simple and effective step towards sales

Results: all agents fulfilled their sales objectives. With an average of 80/20 service level agreement wasn’t fulfilled.

Critical: most of the callers wanted to change their mandatory basic health insurance. Agents were trained to consistently go one step towards up selling with two very simple questions: “Sir/Man, do you also have additional health insurance?” … “What about checking your actual need?”. All of the newly hired agents without call center experience adapted very well to that sales scenario. But I had a very hard time to get the existing agents and the newly hired agents with call center experience to integrate those simple questions into their communication guide. Must be the force of habit …

Third to last job:

Company: fashion agency, Switzerland, one main brand (revival of a very famous seventies Italian denim brand), 20 employees, 3 sales agents,

Task:

- Training and coaching of 3 sales agents

- Supporting the success of the seasonal exhibitions (Munich, Düsseldorf, Salzburg, Vienna) with a telesales project

- Generating leads and appointments with high potentials plus follow up

- Presentation of a shop in shop system

- Languages: German

Key measure:

- Fast, effective and friendly communication in order to get the decision maker on the phone

- Awake interest for a formerly very famous but almost forgotten fashion label

- 100% follow up with a precise next step

Results: every agent handled about 60 calls per day with a success rate (appointment) of 23 % (downsized).

Critical: With the name of the brand it was easy to get an appointment. But because the project wasn’t launched earlier, most of the decision makers’ agendas were already packed and about 10 % cancelled their appointment later on.