Proven Training Techniques for Teleprospecting Agents - TeleNet Marketing

Proven Training Techniques for Teleprospecting Agents

At TeleNet, our teleprospecting agents or as we refer to them – “Marketing Communications Specialists” – are our product; therefore training them is of the essence. Some may consider it the equivalent of R&D.

Training our teleprospecting team at TeleNet requires a mix of technical knowledge transmission, calling strategies, communication skills development and market intelligence. A good dose of inspiration goes a long way too.

So, what do we do when we launch a new client campaign and need to train the agents to perform and produce? While we utilize many techniques, here are some of the most consistently effective ones:

  1. Give them the big picture. A teleprospecting agent needs to understand the client’s primary marketing mission, objective and market. We find that if an agent understands our client’s overall goals and objectives, they can picture themselves as a real extension of the marketing team and more readily generate quality leads for that company.
  2. Understand what motivates an agent. Agents drive the day-to-day results of a program and are work in close sync with management to produce great results. In management, knowing your agent profile is paramount. You can adjust your training approach, incentives, program calibrations and deliverables based on your knowledge of your talent (in this case, the teleprospecting agents).
  3. Train & Re-train. Since we work primarily supporting the high-tech  industry, our agents need specific product training when a campaign launches. However, it’s also necessary to have follow-up training sessions and a Q&A with the product experts after a campaign has launched. Real learning happens through regular and repeated exposure to something.
  4. Play it again Sam, At TeleNet, we have digital recording software that allows us to record most of our outbound calls for training and quality purposes.  So while all the action is happening on the operations floor, our Program Managers are listening to calls in order to provide quick feedback to our agents for improvements.
  5. Multi-media training approach. Varying techniques to train the agents keeps their work interesting. All options should be used – such as webinars, printed collateral, live meetings and role-playing to keep the learning environment dynamic.

To put it in a nut-shell,training techniques should be varied to be successful and the focus should start broad, before getting into granular detail.