An Agent At The Pitch

Mixing up the team dynamic at the sale table By: Michael McMillan Have you ever thought about bringing a front line call center agent to a sales pitch? Or what about having a quality assurance analyst weigh in on if you should sign a deal or not? I am not at all surprised if your answer is no. Most companies would never think about bringing a member of their frontline team to such an important meeting, but the interesting thing is they are missing out on so much by not doing this. Your frontline staff knows more about what makes a client successful than you ever could incorporate. This is because they are the ones who are actually performing the services in which your contact center is selling. These are the people who know just what it takes to get through all of the hundreds of thousands of interactions they are graded upon with such a fine tooth comb. So what value could your frontline staff provide in a sales meeting, or at the closing table? The value they offer can be placed in three buckets:

1. Makes Your Company Unique: Listen, I have sat through hundreds, if not thousands of sales meetings in the call center outsourcing world on both sides of the table and I cannot remember even one time having a frontline team member sitting in on the meeting. Much of the call center world has become viewed as a commodity, and the ability to differentiate your business has grown harder by the day. The willingness to bring in a front line team member shows tremendous confidence in both your operations, and the abilities of that team.
2. Different Point of View of the Conversation: Like it or not but as humans many times we only hear what we want to hear in conversations. Getting an outsider’s point of view of a conversation can be just what you need to get that deal closed. Not being commonly exposed to these type of meetings, your frontline team member will be hypersensitive to every little thing that happens in that meeting. That level of awareness can provide you with amazing intelligence of the prospect if debriefed correctly.
3. Sense of Ownership: This final point plays the biggest part as to if and when the deal comes in. When a frontline member of the team was able to be involved in the sales process he/she will have a sense of ownership and responsibility for this deal. That is something you want to make sure to leverage in your center, as it will help make the quality of service you provide that much better.

I learned the power of using my operations team in my sales process late in my sales career, but when I did it made all the difference. Allowing my client to get to know their team better, and providing my team with a true sense of relationship with the client helped out so much when things go rough with the client (i.e. – Mandatory overtime, out of forecast peaks, etc…). Just remember your operations team are people too and they want to feel part of something bigger than themselves. Inviting them into the sales process is an easy way to get a big win for both the business and your client. To Your Success & Prosperity! For more helpful tips and tricks on ways to improve your business please subscribe to our podcast on iTunes and visit our website at www.BizSprints.com.