Coaching Positive Mental Attitude in the Contact Center

Let's face it, telesales can be emotionally draining. The ups and downs of everyday life can be overwhelming, especially when you’re worried about your commission checks. 

Many of your telesales reps may have anxiety about hitting their sales number. I’ve been there and seen this so many times.  I’ll never forget my first panic attack when I looked at a commission statement full of chargebacks and there was no money left to take home. 

Now, I’m on a mission to cure commission breath with "Compassion Before Commission™"

Here are 5 tips to help insurance telesales reps not worry as much and close more sales: 

1. Monitor calls

When I get the privilege to help a struggling sales rep, I’ll listen in on them in between calls. New telesales reps are unaware of this monitoring feature. Listening to how an agent responds to adversity is how I get to know the person in “salesperson”. This is how I get to see what a sales professional is truly made of.

Simultaneously, this technique helps me as a coach determine whether or not someone is approachable immediately following a call.  As an example, I had an agent I wanted to coach, but he was in the middle of a tirade, so I realized I needed to give him a moment to decompress.

After the tirade, I asked him to put on the headspace app and meditate. After he meditated, we connected for a one on one coaching call. Later that same day, he came out of his sales slump and sold a policy. 

2. Look for coaching opportunities

With coaching, we can help our reps grow and achieve peak performance with our feedback, counseling, and mentoring. I always start a post-call coaching opportunity with a simple question, “how do you feel that call went?”

By asking someone how they feel about something, it connects their emotions with their commitments. I had a coaching opportunity with a young lady that was dealing with her ego and jealousy. She was a new agent that we were training. She had a friend that she worked with at a previous company onboarding with us as well.

Both of the agents came to our organization from a toxic cutthroat overly competitive company. I had the privilege of letting her know that at our company, it’s not about competition, we’re all about collaboration. Both of these young ladies are high performers at our company today.  It’s important to focus on the reps’ improving their mindset and their skills vs. how many applications they submit. 

 3. Be more than a manager

On several occasions, I’ve listened to some agent's negative self-talk saying things like, “I’m just a loser, I’m not cut out for this.” When I go into a coaching opportunity aware of the agent beating themselves up, I’m excited that I get to speak life into them. I’ve found it’s always best to start a conversation with the reps' desires in mind, so I will ask questions like “how can I be of service?” “what exactly do you want out of this role?”

Sometimes you’ll find that the agent you want to help doesn’t even want to be at your organization and it’s in the best interest of everyone to cut ties. I had a top producer that expressed to me that he really wanted to become an HVAC electrician. I felt like we were holding him back from what he really wanted to do with his life so I gave him permission to give his two weeks' notice if that’s what he really wanted to do. Today, he’s the most sought-after HVAC electrician in his Tri-State area. It’s okay if your organization is just the stepping stone for someone to pursue their potential elsewhere.

4. Increase confidence from clarity

Oftentimes, the lack of confidence comes from a lack of clarity. Ask your reps, “what are 3 things that you need clarity on right now?” For example: if a rep is unclear on how they get paid, it’s imperative for us to clear that up. Otherwise, a rep will lack confidence and conviction in our organization and that will transmit on the telephone.

Putting an emphasis on clarity helps reps become self-aware. Being clear and confident will make your reps sound like subject matter experts to your prospects. 

5. Goal setting 

“How much money do you want to make?” Never ask, “how much money do you need to make?” Proper goal setting is best built around the desired outcome of the rep while focusing on the journey. A sales manager I interviewed was telling me about an organization that asked her how much money that she needed to make and she expressed regretting answering it. I told her that it was the wrong question to ask and she replied, “it was the wrong question to answer.” It’s vitally important to know what you want out of your career and to guide your reps to what they want as well.

Encourage your reps to emotionally detach from an outcome (policies sold) to enjoy the journey of the process (meaningful conversations).  

 Conclusion

Focus on the heart of what matters and the words that are spoken. Whether we are successful or not successful is directly connected to our hearts and the words we speak.

For out of the heart, the mouth speaks. Take advantage of coaching opportunities to speak life into your agents so they will learn how to speak life into your prospects.