The best practices for coaching telemarketers

Coaching your telemarketing staff correctly is crucial for your business to thrive and get the best results from your campaigns.
Consistent and thorough coaching allows not only your employees to develop, grow and learn new skills, but it is also an investment in the development and progress of your business that will in turn be hugely beneficial to the quality and performance of the work carried out.
Lack of career growth for employees can be demotivating and cause a high turnover of employees, so coaching plays a key part in the retention of your staff’s services and job satisfaction.
Not sure where to start? No problem, Team Telemarketing have some great tips on the best practices for coaching telemarketers.
Set goals and targets
No two employees are the same so setting realistic and actionable goals for individuals to progress and develop at their own rate is essential for getting the very best out of all of your telemarketers no matter what their strengths and weaknesses are.
Some of your employees will learn faster than others, and some will be more advanced in their roles so there is certainly no one-size-fits-all when setting goals and targets for your telemarketers to meet.
Understanding this and implementing these considerations into your coaching will help you inspire career growth and improved performance for all your employees.
Role Playing
Coaching your telemarketers through role play is a great way to not only learn what your employees need to work on but allows them to strengthen their skills.
- Telemarketers can polish up their skills in an environment that is not working in live customer interactions to take some of the pressure off, allowing them to make mistakes without consequence, try out new methods and scripts and practice their calls in a less intimidating manner
- You can offer on-call feedback much faster when you are coaching individuals because you can quickly note the mistakes or habits they have picked up that don’t align with the standards you expect from your employees.
- Role play is especially beneficial for new telemarketers and can help them to learn their roles much faster by providing them with the experience of making calls without the reality of contacting live customers.
Giving both positive and negative feedback
Giving both positive and negative feedback is vital for telemarketers to grow, develop and understand where they can improve, and if executed correctly the negative side of feedback will not be hostile or give the impression of being in trouble but instead be communicated as an opportunity to strengthen skills and deliver better results.
Feedback should be given in the instance it is needed to make sure it is relevant to the telemarketer, there is no point in noting feedback just to deliver it a week later which will not benefit either the business or the employee.
Avoid making feedback critical or personal, instead, focus on how they can address their weaknesses or problems and offer solutions to keep the balance of positive and negative feedback in check.
Ask questions
Whilst coaching your employees it is extremely important to ask questions to get their perspective and insight on the quality of their experience and to make sure you are both on the same page as to what is expected of them and to make sure they understand everything that has been delivered in the coaching session.
Asking your telemarketers what they have found that works for them can help you develop those positive interactions and results, learning where your employees rank their performances and where they feel they can improve can help you to adjust your individual coaching to give them the best possible opportunity to develop their skills.
At Team Telemarketing, we understand the importance and value of having a high-functioning telemarketing team which is why we coach and develop our agents to provide the best service for our clients, if you are in need of a professional telemarketing team that can take your business to the next level – get in touch today.