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The Importance of Training When Developing High Performance Teams

Posted on by Doug Roots

When it comes to training, I have often found that the main objection I’m met with is cost and the potential loss of investment – “what happens if we train our staff and they leave?” My response… what happens if we don’t and they stay?”

Yes, training can be expensive and in businesses, people come and go. However, if the training is right, the relevant benefits far outweigh the cost. Training is vital in the workplace as it aids both personal and company growth. Training also makes employees feel valued and invested in, resulting in a happy environment and increased productivity.

Training can benefit company growth in numerous ways:

  • Best practice: Training expands the knowledge base of all employees within a company. By sharing best practice within the company, all employees understanding of procedures and processes and how to deliver a high standard of quality, can then be replicated daily and maintained throughout the entire team.
  • Consistency: Best practice goes hand-in-hand with consistency. With constant and relevant training from day one, all employees should receive a solid foundation of knowledge, which can then be built upon. With this foundation, all employees will possess the tools and knowledge to carry out and deliver work of the same outstanding standard and quality. 
  • Motivation: It is important to keep employees motivated as it has a direct effect on productivity. An increase in motivation will directly increase the productivity of employees and their overall performance as well as that of a team. In turn, this will generate more return on investment (ROI) for the client and the company, representing the importance of investing time and resources into training.
  • Employee satisfaction: Morale is high when productivity and performance throughout the company are strong. This coupled with personal achievements brings employee satisfaction, whereby employees are happy and feel valued, in turn they perform well. It’s a full circle that all stems from and starts with training.
  • Weak areas: Identifying and addressing weaknesses in a company presents the opportunity to carry out refresher training or upskill sessions to educate and share knowledge. This ensures that everyone is comfortable in what is required from them and the level of performance is once again maintained.
  • Collaboration: We all know that ‘two heads are better than one’. It makes sense then to share knowledge and experience, both within specific teams as well as between them. Coming together to help one another, as well as bringing different perspectives and opinions can sometimes be beneficial for everyone involved and helps to present various aspects of the company in various ways. This can be a training lead collaboration, whereby everyone can learn and benefit while also feeling like they have a voice.
  • Reduced employee turnover: When employees receive the relevant and correct amount of training, they should feel more comfortable and confident in the workplace being able to carry out all aspects of their role with ease. Thus, reducing anxiety, unhappiness and a desire to leave the company.

Training doesn’t always need to be delivered in-house. At times it is necessary to seek out external guidance and assistance. External training really helps with:

  • Access to expertise: When specific training is required, it is always best to go directly to the source and get the experts in, as they will know all the relevant information and the current tips and techniques being utilised and will be able to share best practice.
  • Fresh look: External trainers may be able to provide valuable insight into inefficiencies within the company and help us to see opportunities for improvement that we could implement smoothly and efficiently. By bringing in an outside view, they can suggest changes that we may have otherwise not been aware of or thought of.
  • Stretching our comfort zone: External trainers who are new to the business get employees stepping outside of their comfort zones immediately, as someone new is around.

When our comfort zones are stretched, we find it fosters creativity making us more flexible and adaptable to unexpected change. It also motivates us and increases our overall productivity and performance.

So, if you’re considering implementing a training programme for your team, give it a go, you’ll only know once you try – ‘the proof is in the pudding’ so to speak.

Opinion Piece by Nicolette Karides, Learning and Development Coordinator at Air Marketing.

Hiring Good Inside Sales People Vlog #2

Posted on by Doug Roots

What’s your perception of a good sales person?

In this, our next vlog, Owen discusses how to hire good inside sales people with Simon Murthwaite and Simon Scott-Nelson. They discover how it’s not just a job, it’s a lifestyle commitment!

Sales and Business Tips – [Webinar] What’s Missing in Your Sales Journey? The Sales Masterclass for SaaS C-Suite

Posted on by Doug Roots

Have you you considered each step of the lead journey process from prospect to client? How do you nurture your leads and keep track of the journey?  

‘48% of businesses say most of their leads require “long cycle” nurturing with many influencers’. (Ascend2)

 

Lead Journey Infographic

Posted on by Doug Roots

Have you got your lead journey clearly mapped out?

‘Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales at a 33% lower cost’ (Forrester, 2014). 

Click on the below to view this infographic that easily walks you through the entire lead journey process from prospect to client.

Lead Journey from Prospect to Client Webinar Infographic

Sales and Business Tips – How do you get a decision maker on board

Posted on by Doug Roots

It generally takes thirty seconds for the decision maker to get an impression of you, so finding out their need and quickly aligning it with USP’s is one useful way to get them on board. Take a look at this video to find out alternative ways Team Air get the decision maker on board.

Sales and Business Tips – How to Navigate Gate Keepers

Posted on by Doug Roots

The gate keeper is the first person you speak to when calling a company, asking them if they can help you out for a moment is a great strategy. In this this video Team Air explore other ways to navigate the gate keeper.

Morning Buzz Meetings – Demotivating or Motivating?

Posted on by Doug Roots

Motivation can be difficult to achieve in an office environment; hard work can often go unnoticed and the constant pressures of a competitive environment can begin to wear employees down. Research has shown, each day, 10% of employees are absent in call centres due to the lack of appreciation felt in the workplace. This research alone highlights the need, especially in my industry, for touchpoints which allow managers to show their appreciation to their staff, highlight individual achievements and deliver motivational objectives. In this blog post, I will share my experience and tips for achieving the above in one morning meeting.

So, how do you maximise your morning buzz meetings to encourage individuals and create high performing sales teams?

  1. Strategise

43% of highly engaged employees receive feedback at least once a week, however, employee reviews should be happening more often and take less time.

There’s nothing worse than a long-winded ‘motivational’ meeting that is set to demotivate from the offset. It’s therefore important that you plan and prepare; effective buzz meetings should be concise and last no longer than 15 minutes, be armed with your objectives, focus on team wins and pinpoint your collective areas of learning.

  1. Set the tone

Our physical behaviour influences our mental and emotional approach to the day.

Think of ways to get your team moving, have a walking meeting, introduce a quick-fire game or play uplifting music to get the blood pumping. Increased blood flow creates a positive mood, resulting in employees being more equipped to handle objections, take on new challenges and meet personal milestones.

  1. Spotlight success

69% of employees say they would work harder if they felt their efforts were better recognised.

This is the perfect opportunity to feature the activity which you want to encourage. Celebrate your teams wins, even if they don’t lead to a direct sale and avoid focusing on losses. Recognising individual and team achievements has become my common practise, as I know this makes the individuals in my team feel more confident and in turn, pushes them to set bigger targets.

  1. Support and encourage

41% of companies that encourage colleagues to support one another experienced a significant increase in customer satisfaction.

If you want to create a great support network and boost team morale, encourage employees to praise fellow team members, this assures no one’s hard work slips past management and brings the team closer together. If your team is feeling positive it will show in their client conversations, resulting in better relationship building, more sales and higher ROI for the company.

  1. Strengthen from learnings

92% of employees agree that negative feedback, if delivered appropriately, is effective at improving performance.

Remember, the key for creating a great buzz meeting is positivity. Take negative feedback from the day before and turn it into takeaways and learnings for the team to overcome together. If a client isn’t happy with an element of your team’s performance, encourage your team to think of tactics that will better engage them and the people they are selling to.

  1. State the day’s focus

90% of business leaders believe that an engagement strategy could positively impact their business, yet only 25% of them have a strategy in place. It’s therefore no surprise that only 40% of employees are well informed of their company’s goals, strategy, and tactics.

It’s time to hit the reset button and introduce a new action plan for the day. Ask each individual team member, “what do you want to achieve today?” I have found that when the whole team acknowledges personal targets, that individual immediately feels more accountability to meet their goal, success is more likely to be achieved and goals are more likely to align to the company’s bigger picture.

 

At Air Marketing, we have experienced great success from our initiative to focus on our internal company culture. Achieving £18 for every £1 our clients invest, we are performing higher than the industry’s £11 average. I personally believe this success is down to the time we take out of selling to promote appreciation, individual achievements and team objectives. The culture at Air is one that I haven’t experienced anywhere else, our team’s positive and supportive nature is infectious, thanks to our daily buzz meetings we continue to deliver fantastic results for the companies we support.

Opinion Piece by Annie Blundell – Account Director, Air Marketing

Setting business development goals will help you win clients and influence your team

Posted on by Doug Roots

We all know how important sales are, without sales your business won’t grow, and without growth, your business will collapse. Therefore, it is essential to account for sales and business development within your company.

Whether you’re managing your business development in-house or outsourcing to an agency, implementing a thought-out strategy will help to win you clients and give you the ability to positively influence the individuals within your company.

8 tips that will help you implement a successful business development strategy.

  1. Identify long-term goals:

82% of B2B decision-makers think sales reps are unprepared.

However, have you ever questioned why this might be?

Tips:

  • Establish what success looks like for your business
  • Ask why you’re deploying a business development strategy. Have you experienced a drop in inbound enquiries, are you lacking qualified leads or are you aiming to make enquires more consistent?
  • Set clear milestones and incentives to achieve the changes needed to reach success and give your team something to work towards
  1. Measure your current performance:

65% of CEOs rated “inclusive growth” as a top-three strategic concern.

Today, businesses are no longer assessed on traditional metrics, instead their relationships with workers and their impact on society is just as important as financial growth and this, in turn, heavily affects success.

Tips:

  • Combine revenue growth and profit-making with the need to respect and support the people which make up your environment
  • Invest in a performance management tool. The Performance Climate System for example, is a management tool which can extract information on the current productivity, climate and perception gap between your team and the leaders
  • Allow your leaders to implement the changes needed for a more positive environment, a boost in team engagement are highly linked to an increase in sales
  1. Establish what clients you’re looking to win:

42% of start-ups failed in 2017 because there wasn’t a market for their offering.

Not everyone wants to buy what you’re selling, which is why it’s so important that you identify the needs of your target market.

Tips:

  • Think quality over quantity
  • Create a client profile to give you a clear indication of who needs your product or service, understand their pain points and what long term goals you can help them to achieve

If you’re looking for ‘The Ultimate Guide To B2B Sales Prospecting’, Air’s Group Director, Richard Forrest has all the tips in this world-class book.

  1. Hunt down your next opportunity:

80% of buyers are those which you must go out and find and it may take an average of 8 cold call attempts to reach them.

Tips:

  • Pick up the phone and be persistent in your efforts to build rapport.
  • Focus on your prospects need and be prepared to objection handle. For 3 killer ways to handle objections, take a read of our blog here.
  • Don’t become a sales robot, your priority is client satisfaction, so don’t let the relationship go cold.

 

  1. Make sure your new opportunities qualify:

Business Development Executives make between 100 and 500 calls for every lead they qualify.

Setting qualifying criteria is a way of making sure your business is concentrating on leads that can really benefit you.

Tips:

  • Be clear on the decision makers you need to be talking to and what makes a good meeting
  • Analyse your prospects BANT (Budget, Authority, Need, Timeframe)

Need more tips on the golden questions you should be asking to qualify leads? Read more here.

  1. Top ‘Sales Professionals’ don’t sell:

1 offline word of mouth impression drives sales 5x more than one paid impression, and as much as 100x more for higher-consideration categories.

Being a sales professional is not actually about selling, it’s about building relationships and solving problems.

Tips:

  • You must be out there, have a presence and be the expert. Offer guidance, regardless of whether it results in a sale or not. You can guarantee that the person you helped, with no immediate benefit to yourself, will come back or refer your next customer
  1. Use your marketing resources:

Only 54% of professionals across service industries said their marketing and business development activities were strongly aligned.

Lack of integration between the two can result in wasted efforts and lost opportunities.

Tips:

  • Partner with a marketing agency or department! Events, content and consistent company messages can really help nurture leads through your pipeline and close deals
  • Checkout our sister company, Roots to Market, who can offer a full-service approach to your marketing strategy or aid in bespoke projects such a nurture campaigns
  1. How do you know you’ve achieved success?

Business Development is a long-term investment.

Tips:

  • Remain realistic when visualising what your success looks like, how much you’re prepared to invest and how long success will take you
  • When you have reached your initial end goal, it’s time to start the process again, establish what success looks like now, set a more ambitions turnover, find new competitors, hunt for more rewarding opportunities and create new milestones in order to progress further up the ladder

Done well, Business Development has the potential to transform the dynamic of your business and get you working with more of the right clients. Whether in-house or outsourced, everyone who touches your Business Development Strategy needs to be fully engaged in your long-term ambitions and understand what needs to be achieved to get there.

Get in touch:

Need help with reaching your audience, increasing your client base and growing your business? Contact #TeamAir today on 03332 581394 or via contact@air-marketing.co.uk

Cold Calling Vs Social Selling – Let’s settle the debate.

Posted on by Doug Roots

There is a long-standing debate raging among sales professionals – which is more effective, social selling or cold calling? To me, the answer is simple.

Now, I am not going to bore you to death with stats which, depending on who you speak to, can be validated both ways. Instead, I’m going to give you some insight that I have gained as a Sales Professional who has sat on both sides of the fence, sometimes stuck in the middle, for over a decade.

So, my insight:

Logging into a webinar recently, I watched keenly as the debate in discussion swung from side to side, with each team offering their opinions. On one side, the UK’s top social seller and on the other, a Canadian based CMO from a well-known Sales Engagement Platform provider and advocate of cold calling. Both camps provided stats to back up their arguments, making it a close call. Although either could have come out on top, in my opinion, cold calling won this round. However, was this down to the geographical benefit of the stats, a more engaging presentation or more tangible evidence? I’m still unsure.

Since this debate, I’ve viewed multiple posts, blogs and podcasts to try and determine a winner for myself. I came across a recent Hubspot blog which appeared to settle the debate in favour of social selling, boldly stating that prospective customers and sales people alike “hate” cold calling. The blog consisted of impressive conversion figures, with the origins of these stats referenced, however, what is often left unclear is the industry, target, sales cycle, resource or end result of these stats origin. Without knowing the full picture, how can we possibly judge what is best for our businesses?

My background includes an enjoyable period as an Event Manager, assisting in the growth of the largest sales and marketing expo in Europe. At this event, exhibitors included direct sales people, cold callers and, what appeared to be, the more passive social sellers. All evidenced by the solutions which they were there to present. There has always been one impression that stuck with me after this event. Whilst the direct sellers had a constant sense of energy and approached any delegate who came within talking distance, the social sellers would wait to be approached – usually sat on their mobile phones. I’ll leave it to you to conclude whose stands were busier…

Now, it seems that these characteristics are commonplace, as shown to me by a recent experience. A well-known, international sales trainer recently posted on LinkedIn, “I have an associate looking for support in their telesales process.” The post had received dozens of comments and recommendations, however, with the benefit of having their phone number, I picked up the phone and introduced Air, asking how we could help. I was astounded to find out that from a 2-day old post requesting TELESALES SUPPORT I was the first person to pick up the phone and call. Now, yes, I was connected to and known by this person through social media, we’d swapped some niceties and a few messages which supported our conversation, but I was the only person to call and actually have a conversation! Whilst multiple people had attempted to social sell, guess what? The prospect wanted a conversation and, funnily enough, I was the only one introduced to their associate.

If this doesn’t settle the debate, I don’t know what will… it pays to use both!

Both cold calling and social selling have their place, it’s not really a matter of which one is better. When used together, they maximise the effectiveness, reach, efficiency and quality of your process. Each prospective client will buy in a different way and their more likely to notice your company if you get on their radar in 2 or 3 different ways. Any marketeer or sales professional worth their salt will tell you that a multi-channel, multi-touch approach will always maximise effectiveness.

Here at Air, we have multiple ways to win new business for ourselves and our clients. We run targeted email campaigns, sponsored LinkedIn mails, Facebook ads, engage traffic using IP trackers, networking events and referral channels. I will social sell, but I will still pick up the phone and cold call too. One shameless stat I will give you is that we’ve seen 257% growth in a year. We’re an award-winning company who are about to go through our second office move in less than 12 months due to increasing demand and our work with well-known household brands. And do you know why? Because wherever our clients and their customers are, and however they like to buy, we ensure we’re there too. Simple.

If you would like to discuss how we can help your business, give us a call: 0345 241 3038, or email: contact@air-marketing.co.uk.

Opinion Piece by Simon Murthwaite, Sales Director, Air Marketing Group

It Pays to be Patient

Posted on by Doug Roots

At Air, we pride ourselves on our honest and transparent approach towards our customers. We want those who we work with to succeed and so we keep nothing from you, you can have as much or as little involvement in your campaign as you would like. As one of Air’s Account Directors, I sit down with our prospective and retained clients, making sure to spend time with them in order to create the right strategy for their budget and business goals. But also, I want to ensure that clients understand that developing returns on their investment takes time. Markets are saturated with new businesses and whilst outsourcing telesales is a step in the right direction, clients shouldn’t expect a quick fix. The clients that I work with are often looking to invest in a long-term telemarketing campaigns, have long sales cycles and therefore need to understand that telemarketing does not instantly create ROI.

Despite this level of client engagement, when it comes to the end of the first month I sometimes find that clients have concerns if they haven’t yet closed a big deal or aren’t yet receiving high ROIs. Whilst I understand that clients put a lot into their businesses and obviously  want them to be a success, it seems that often people forget that success isn’t always instant. More often than not, it pays to be patient.

It is for this reason that, as part of our business proposals, myself and the other Account Directors at Air recommend a long-term commitment after the initial 3-month trial pilot period. During this pilot period, the outcomes teach us learning’s about the business’ message, the target audience, the objections and the sales cycle of a client. This time is essential for a business, it allows us to test the messaging of the campaign, the data we receive and actually get hold of the right people for the client – all of which takes time if done right.

We don’t want our clients to stress or be kept in the dark, which is why we have created our unique client portal, where they can have a clear view of their campaigns progress – our clients are able to follow the peaks and falls of their entire campaign and see the feedback or objections we receive. It is most important to listen to this information in the beginnings of a campaign and not be overly concerned if sales are slow to begin with, as brand and business development should be nurtured not rushed. By considering this information, we are then able to use it to adapt the campaign and help it develop with momentum in the long term to generate the client impressive ROIs. After all our average campaign ROI is £18 for every £1 spent, so your investment is in good hands.

Opinion Piece by Keryn Seal, Account Director, Air Marketing Group

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