After a very successful financial year here at Air, we chose to treat our team to a well-deserved lunch and the afternoon off on Friday, which was made even better by the sun shining!
We achieved 357% growth in revenue in our 2nd year of trading, and we are looking to keep this level of momentum going to propel growth even further this year.
During the team lunch we celebrated 3 people who Team Air felt went above and beyond in the last quarter of financial year 2017. Voted by Team Air, we were pleased to celebrate Hannah Shearman, Richard Street and Ashley Heyworth, each receiving £100 in John Lewis/Waitrose gift cards as a thank you for their contributions.
A big thank you to Team Air for your continued commitment, results and drive. We simply couldn’t have done this without you. And a big thank you to all our clients and partners for working with us and trusting us with your brands.
We are delighted to be shortlisted for three categories of the Express and Echo Business Awards.
Featuring in the categories of:
Best New Start-up Business
Business Growth of the Year 26+ employees
Owen Richards, our MD, is up for Entrepreneur of the Year
2017 has been a fantastic year for us, having achieved a 357% growth in revenue compared to the first year of trading and increasing the staff base from 11 team members to now nearly 40. This simply couldn’t be achieved without the hard work of the whole team and the vision of Owen, our Managing Director, leading the business.
Winning an award to recognise this hard work, would mean the world to Team Air – so everyone’s keeping their fingers firmly crossed.
It can sometimes feel like we never leave our workplace! A popular saying amongst colleagues is ‘we spend more time together than we spend with our families’ – and when you come to think of it, this is fairly true. Which is why the culture of a workplace and the personalities that you work with make a huge difference to how motivated you are, how much you enjoy going to work and how long you may stay with the company.
According to Gallup people who have a best friend at work are seven times more likely to be engaged in their jobs and people who simply have good friends in the workplace are more likely to be satisfied.
Your workplace presents a perfect opportunity for you to meet a whole diverse range of individuals who you may have never had the opportunity to meet otherwise. Different genders, ages, ethnic backgrounds, cultural preferences, beliefs – bring us together. Its obvious that you are never going to get along with everyone but creating a workplace of inclusion and team mentality that acts as a support network builds a bond between people.
Creating a good healthy working relationship between colleagues can be achieved through nurturing the right internal culture. This is by no means an easy task but comes with many benefits including the building of bonds between individuals.
Simple things like sharing company lunches together, we have Pizza Friday on the first Friday of the month, or socialising outside of work, we have quarterly work socials – opens an opportunity to informally get to know those you’re working with. Having an interview process that includes different members of the team meeting the new candidate provides an opportunity to see if they are the right candidate for our culture and will they fit in. Understanding the direction of the company and how you are involved gives a great sense of ‘togetherness’, we do team meetings every Friday as a de-brief for the week whilst enjoying a beer!
Connections happen with those you sit near, the people working on your campaigns, the people you go to lunch with or even those you bump into when making tea. #TeamAir prioritise our culture. We welcome like-minded individuals who love our team mentality and we are proud of our diverse workforce who have bonded to become a work family.
An office full of sales people – some people thrive in this environment, others would rather be anywhere else! It is a challenging environment and not for the faint hearted, with some big personalities and lots of diversity. But the biggest challenge and one of the most important factors for success is motivation for the whole team.
No matter what job you hold, you want to feel motivated and engaged. This is not easy to achieve in our industry, nobody wakes up in the morning thinking, ‘Ooh I can’t wait to jump on the phones and do some telemarketing today’. So, instilling motivation, providing the right incentivisation and a great culture means people enjoy their work and look forward to coming in day after day.
How does Air do this differently?
Motivation is key to ensuring sales people hit weekly, monthly and annual targets. We know that our team of Business Development Executives who are calling on client campaigns are our service, without them we simply wouldn’t be successful at what we do – so we have to look after them. From our experience it takes more than just commission to keep a happy workforce.
Of course, commission is important to most sales people. Being motivated by money and the opportunity of earning more means that we have a healthy commission structure in place. But this is based on results and client retention not purely speed of dialling and quantity of appointment made. Giving our whole team more motivation to work hard on retaining client accounts and delivering.
But on top of commission, we understand that internal culture makes a huge difference to motivation in a sales environment. Internal incentives tailored to help individuals meet client KPI’s and individual targets prove very effective for us. Team socials, rewards, identifying when people do the right things and the freedom of not micromanaging, all make our sales environment stand out from the crowd.
Our Aim – Motivation
As Head of Performance (Account Director), my role is to identify and understand an individual’s motivators, what is it that makes them tick? This can be a whole range of things, some people are purely financially motivated, whereas others are looking to progress their career by gaining more responsibility and further opportunity to do this – and of course those that are in between.
Working alongside colleagues in the leadership team we nurture a very special culture here at Air, where the team are performing at an optimum level and maintaining momentum, clients and crucially motivation to deliver and succeed.
Our workforce understands how important they are to Air and we respect their importance – so together we work to grow the company, our client base and team members careers by keeping people motivated and excited to be part of #TeamAir every day. Can’t believe it, why not come and see it for yourself!
Opinion piece by Marco Alfano-Rogers, Head of Performance (Account Director), Air Marketing Group
Culture is a massively used term in rugby union. The top teams love to refer to theirs and the losing teams aspire to get it. There are many ways to define the culture of a winning team but the best way from my time was simply the team closest to finding their True North.
Different from magnetic north and grid north, True North is the direction along the earth’s surface to the north pole. We used to substitute our team goals for true north and then explore the behaviours that would get us there.
If everyone can identify the target and agree on the behaviours that will get there and those that won’t it suddenly becomes very clear. However, this list can often be quite broad, by coining a cover all phrase like true north we were able to have a reference point to consider actions and behaviours… ‘is that true north’ we could often ask one another when perhaps behaviours suggested otherwise.
Having worked as a team to agree on the direction we could then self-police one another and create a peer led culture rather than one with direction from above. This made it easier to adhere to (after all, we’d designed it) and created an arena where the critical mass stayed on task.
Stab in the belly
‘Et tu brute’ – the immortal last words from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar as his close ally joined the assassination party. It was at this moment that his will to fight back erodes and he bowed to the Machiavellian plot. Being stabbed in the back is a term that still exists today and can cause a huge amount of problems with trust eroded, reputations tarnished, and teams damaged.
In sport as in business things go wrong and people make mistakes. This isn’t a problem but dealing with things going wrong often is. Its human nature to deflect and try to play down problems, nobody likes to be told off or have mistakes highlighted but this can be turned to a positive if you are on the same wavelength and willing to face issues head on.
During my time in rugby the culture was always to ‘stab in the belly’ and highlight problems you can foresee as early as possible. This wasn’t a freedom to cause consternation or have arguments but a strength of character to give and receive criticism, appreciate that it’s for the good of the team and move on.
This maxim only works if the team has the trust to accept, as well as give, honesty. Quite often the challenge is to be robust enough to take a criticism on the chin, appreciate its aimed at a ‘true north’ goal and move on positively.
Opinion piece by Chris Bentley, Client Relationship Director, Air Marketing Group.
How do you introduce yourself in a sales call? Are you straight to the point or do you start with a general question of ‘how are you?’ or talk about the weather. But do you feel you are doing it in the most effective way possible? Find out the tips for how to introduce yourself in a sales call from our MD, Owen Richards.
What do you think when you hear the term telemarketing or telesales?
The first thought that may come into your head; those PPI calls that the industry has been renowned for? ‘We understand you were recently involved in an accident?’. The process is simple for these organisations. They call large amounts of data, with the aim of getting the highest amount of ‘leads’ possible. This means you receive calls that are not relevant, you are called more than once – and you’re left feeling harassed.
But why?
Often the people making the calls will be incentivised with commission or bonus payments linked to the number of ‘leads’ they generate. Which is exactly why they are making so many calls to produce the highest amount of ‘leads’ possible.
But what does this actually achieve?
As we’ve seen from the example of PPI calls, this method of incentive may make your workforce produce a higher quantity of ‘leads’ but often at the expense of individuals you are calling and the brand you are representing. Focusing merely on quantity, may give the perception that you are extremely efficient at creating ‘leads’ and ‘opportunities’ for your brand or client – but bad quality, un-qualified individuals are unlikely to become customers in the short or long term.
The answer? Focus the incentive on quality.
Producing well qualified, high quality ‘leads’ and ‘opportunities’ for your brand will give you a much higher chance of converting that opportunity into a customer. And whilst this may mean a lower quantity, all you’re eliminating are those who would never have bought from you anyway, saving you time and energy on chasing shadows. Quality will also be what sets you apart from your competition – understanding your customer, being relevant and meeting their requirements or desires will make these conversations easier and make your brand the choice for them. This style of incentive still works for keeping your workforce motivated, we know because its exactly what we have always done.
Opinion piece by Owen Richards, Managing Director of Air Marketing Group.
Having left the Exeter Chiefs to join sales and marketing agency Smithkin Baker, Chris Bentley will be heading up support for Air Marketing in the new role of Client Relationship Director.
Chris is well known within the City after being part of the Exeter Chiefs, playing seven seasons and 125 senior games for the club. After retiring from the game, Chris transitioned into corporate life and fronted sales at the club through six seasons of continual growth. Having made the move to his own agency, Chris is looking forward to helping take Air through it’s next stage of growth.
Air Marketing Group is an outsourced business development agency specialising in B2B telemarketing and lead generation. Launching in Exeter in March 2016 we have grown exponentially, from a start-up to a team of 35 people. Behind this success lies our competitive nature and the delivery of outstanding results for clients; but also having firm company values such as our relentless positivity, and attitude to ‘saying yes’ and ‘finding a way’.
After a chance meeting, Owen Richards, (Managing Director of Air) and Chris knew that they wanted to find a way to work together. And so, this role was born. As Client Relationship Director, Chris will be helping Air to grow our market share and continue our rapid expansion. Chris will be helping businesses to implement a successful growth strategy, build their sales pipelines and shape an Air solution to fit their business development needs. As a face for the brand, Chris will most likely be seen at events representing Air locally too.
This partnership represents a huge step for Air Marketing Group and we are excited about the opportunities that this venture could bring.
Quote from Chris.
“I was bowled over by Owen’s passion for Air and the blueprint he has for the business. Over the course of the last few months we’ve had a fair few discussions about how we could help enhance and further build on his fantastic brand. I’m confident we’re there and can’t wait to get cracking!’
Quote from Owen.
“We’re delighted to have Chris join team ‘Air’. Chris is a well-known community face and he shares our drive and passion for all things sales. The ambitious nature of this partnership is one that excites us all.”
Should you use a script when making sales calls? Our guidance is both yes and no – we create what we call a ‘call guide’. Find out the tips for writing this from our MD, Owen Richards.
