Episode Transcript

[00:00:00] Kevin Dieny: Hello, welcome to the Close The Loop podcast. We are today going to be talking about managing successful call handlers. I’m joined by my co-host Matt Widmyer.

[00:00:14] Kevin Dieny: Matt is the sales development manager here at CallSource. He oversees the ever-growing sales development division while working as a liaison between the marketing and sales department. Whether there is an individual or a team operational gap he’ll roll up his sleeves and go to work. He is a problem solver, he is a mentor, he’s a coach all rolled into one. Matt has a wife and daughter and loves all things outdoors. So, welcome Matt!

[00:00:39] Matt Widmyer: Thanks Kevin, thanks for having me again. Good to be back!

[00:00:41] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, We are really excited to get into this topic because this is Matt’s… Matt lives and breathes managing his team of SDR called handlers all day every day. That’s his primary thing. So we were excited to jump into this and share our expertise with everyone about how you actually go about managing successful call handlers.

[00:01:03] Kevin Dieny: And every business that has called handlers needs to be able to manage them correctly. It needs to be able to manage them so that they provide, they are able to achieve their essential function. Which is answering the phones, routing phone calls, going into discovery, qualifying, potentially even selling right on the phone right there.

[00:01:26] Kevin Dieny: Whether it’s inbound or outbound handling who knows what’s coming in or calling out with a very specific plan. That’s the role of the call handler. From a management perspective how does a business get their call handlers to be successful? How do they hire the right call handlers? How do they train them, onboard them, and send them off with the right behaviors so that they will be successful in the company and move their way up.

[00:01:54] Kevin Dieny: The first question I have for you Matt is why is managing call handlers so much work? Why is it so difficult to help call handlers succeed and be successful?

[00:02:06] Matt Widmyer: I think the primary reason is because the role itself comes with a lot of rejection, right? So rejection could be a little de-motivating sometimes. If you’re having a bad day or you’re just getting beat up over the phones, it’s a you have to muscle through it. If you come in with thin skin you’ll get that thick rhino skin after a while. It’s just it’s tough especially if you weren’t feeling that well it’s one of those roles where the last thing you want to do is make prospect phone calls or field inbound leads and stuff like that.

[00:02:36] Matt Widmyer: It can be a pretty taxing role in itself just because of the all the rejection that comes with the territory. There’s no one size fits all for this role. You get tons of different personalities from different walks of life. So everyone needs their own little management style. There’s no cookie cutter way to do it. It’s a lot of work.

[00:02:55] Kevin Dieny: You mentioned that every single person you hire might be a little different. So is that mean that the expectation is that the managers should be able to be successful… turning any type of person into a successful call handler, or is everyone cut out for it, or is there a certain type of person that’s cut out for it best? And this other type just will never have any success here? How do you look at managing all those unique personalities and types?

[00:03:26] Matt Widmyer: Not everybody is cut out for it right It’s one of those roles where not everybody is successful right out of the gate. I think one of the important things is to be able to know can this person be developed into being successful. I’m very much of the school of thought where anybody can do anything if they put their mind to it. But I’ve also learned that a lot of people don’t want to put their minds into this, which is fine, right?

[00:03:47] Matt Widmyer: It’s the decisions being made either from their side or our side. But I think that if somebody comes through the door with the strong worth work ethic, a great attitude, and a student mentality they will be successful in this role.

[00:04:01] Kevin Dieny: So let’s say you’ve hired a new call handler for your team a new SDR for your team, what does the onboarding process look like for a new hire? What do you think that the core important things are for onboarding a call handler in their first 90 days to be successful?

[00:04:20] Matt Widmyer: Our team is broken down into there’s a senior level and an entry level. The seniors are responsible for most of the day to day training but I make it a point at this point in time anyway just to do some really strong handholding in the beginning. Day one is always setting expectations letting them know exactly what they’re responsible for right out of the gate.

[00:04:42] Matt Widmyer: Letting them know how they’re measured what their quotas are per day, week, month. My role in getting that, their accountability partners role in helping them, and since that’s really day one stuff. Week one stuff, the next few days would be mostly talking about once you’re crystal clear on expectations and I confirm right, and make sure they have all that stuff.

[00:05:06] Matt Widmyer: Then we start going into the products and some of the systems we use as well as the other people they will be working with. So in terms of systems I’m talking specifically about CRM, sales automation, anything that there’ll be that they don’t know how to use or don’t know how to use our instance of. They’ll get some one-on-one training there and then I do it, I’ll do it first, and then we’ll do it together.

[00:05:28] Matt Widmyer: Then I’ll just watch them to make sure they that’s kinda like our mastery, my way of gauging it any way. Then a lot of it’s just products, a lot of Q and A, lot of walking through what our different products do. Once I feel like they’re comfortable enough to discuss those with prospects, we’ll have them dialing outbound in about a week’s time.

[00:05:47] Matt Widmyer: And now it’s not like we are throwing them right into the deep end. We’ll work really closely with them, listen to some calls together, a lot of it’s objections. “Hey I’m getting a lot of this,” and then we work on okay, well if you hear this try this if you hear this try this.

[00:06:01] Matt Widmyer: A lot of that following up it’s usually a daily recap towards the end of the day and several times throughout the day too. But then the ongoing after a couple of weeks then they’ll get deeper into warmer initiatives and that’s when they start dealing with the inbound leads too. I want to make sure that they’re able to discuss our products from an outbound perspective before they start dealing with the inbound leads because those are a little more handle with care, I’m sure you’d appreciate that too….

[00:06:26] Kevin Dieny: More unpredictable?

[00:06:27] Matt Widmyer: Yeah, I mean it’s why they’re wild cards as you know so every single one is whether or not they know what they’re inquiring about they have an idea of what they want and then it’s our it’s our job to best qualify it and send it off to where it needs to be.

[00:06:43] Kevin Dieny: Okay so I got at least three things from what you said, I think that are pretty core to onboarding successful call handlers The first one is it sounds like you have the approach of maybe, the quote, “It takes a village.” You have both mentors within the team, senior members of the team assisting the newbies getting their feet wet and understanding what’s needed. You mentioned that you call them accountability partners, really quickly can you tell us what that means?

[00:07:13] Matt Widmyer: Basically it’s our way of giving the senior members of the team, I’ve already proven that they’re able to do this job right, from a trainer perspective, it’s really a way to scale our team, they’re responsible for the day-to-day, the really in the trenches management.

[00:07:28] Matt Widmyer: A lot of what I do is a larger scale trying to build the team out, work our way into new verticals and stuff like that. They get into the actual more of the call training aspect of it, the one-on-one let’s listen to some calls together, let’s do it, let’s do a power hour, let’s do a blitz real quick. They kind of keep the swords sharp on a day to day basis If that makes sense?

[00:07:48] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, and the accountability aspect are they actually setting appointments or calls with or for the senior SDRs or the senior role of call handlers here?

[00:08:00] Matt Widmyer: Some of what they set will go to the senior member because our seniors are also closing deals too. We also are sending things over to the sales team that there’ll be doing too. So it’s a combination of both they’re accountable for making sure that their entry level reps attain their appointment or demo quotas, they’re monthly quotas, and they get rewarded if that happens too.

[00:08:22] Kevin Dieny: The village the first main one, is a lot of delegation happening. And that is allowing the people who are doing this every day all the time, the senior role, who has proven themselves they’re the ones that are going to be training the new younger guys.

[00:08:36] Kevin Dieny: It’s coming right out of the experience of doing this every day leaving you to do some of the bigger picture stuff. So delegation, you know having everyone in the team contribute or providing mentorship, it seems like a really important one.

[00:08:49] Kevin Dieny: The other thing you mentioned which was really cool was you get them calling within a week or two, like pretty quick, so maybe other companies throw them right in, day one, answering, picking up phones, and calls. But you wanted to make sure they understand that the processes that we have, where information goes, CRMs, things like that.

[00:09:07] Kevin Dieny: The technology and also an understanding of our products. Maybe even an understanding of the audiences and stuff like that we’re going to be talking too, some objections. So in that early period of time you make sure that they’re going to be productive I would call that productivity. So number one, is delegation is a vital component and mentoring and stuff. The second one I would say is probably focus a little bit on the productivity giving them the tools they need to succeed.

[00:09:35] Kevin Dieny: And you’ve mentioned it requires a certain type of motivation for someone who wants to be hungry and take all the tools you’re giving them and all the education and experience from others you’re giving them so that they can run with it. Is that roughly what you’re mentioning?

[00:09:57] Matt Widmyer: No you summed it up pretty good, and keep in mind the week timeline that’s more of a fuzzy timeline. One of my most successful reps only had two full days of training and then they were on the phones, day three and beyond and never looked back. It is more of a fuzzy timeline but if it takes much longer than a week there might be some additional things that we didn’t account for in the hiring process.

[00:10:19] Matt Widmyer: I think a lot of the hiring process is, does this person look like they are able to get ramped up like anybody else in in roughly a week’s timeline? And if it’s like a day or two after it’s not a big deal but I don’t want to be sitting in a classroom setting with somebody for a month because it’s not a great use of either one of our time for something, it’s probably not going to work out if it’s that long.

[00:10:39] Kevin Dieny: Let’s go to the next phase, of a maturing call handler. So they’re past the onboarding period a couple weeks months they’re out of their period of time where they’re just continually feeling like this is the first time I’m doing this. And now at this point they’re doing something for the nth time. So how do you foster a more successful call handler from that point? How do you incentivize them? How do you motivate them? How do you help them to succeed once they’ve got their legs and they’re running?

[00:11:13] Matt Widmyer: I think first things first you have to let everyone know that they’re important piece on the team, right? Where they’re all contributors at an individual level, and their contributions are getting factored into a team goal. Acknowledging it’s not an easy job, I’ve worked in environments before where the call handlers or the entry level people are looked at as the peasants.

[00:11:34] Matt Widmyer: They’re a cog in the wheel. Doing the day in day out smacking a yard stick on their desk and making sure they’re making phone calls and hitting the minimums and everything. And if they don’t then there’s write-up and stuff like that. I think keeping them motivated it helps you prevent a lot of that collateral damage that could come down the road.

[00:11:52] Matt Widmyer: I think the most important thing is just to get a gauge on what they want to do, where they want their career to head. There’s a linear path here for the entry-level reps, they moved to senior, and then they moved to sales, or they can do more training if that’s what their strong suit is.

[00:12:09] Matt Widmyer: But I think just giving them a vision of where the team’s headed and right now we’re headed into a good place. So it’s a little bit easier for me to give that vision. But just letting them know that, “Hey we’re going places and you know you’re on the bus as long as you continue to put your head down and work hard and ask questions.”

[00:12:27] Matt Widmyer: If you aren’t doing well that’s fine cause everyone goes through difficult times. I still remember back as an SDR myself three days in a row of not getting an appointment you go to really dark places. Now I’m able to sympathize, empathize a little bit, and just be like, “Hey, look I’ve been there before, it’s not easy but chop the day up.”

[00:12:47] Matt Widmyer: And I can give a little advice a little things I tried before if you’re just getting crushed on the phones: go get something to eat, take a walk around the building, or something you know. I see all of the stuff that I’ve gone through myself and I see them going through and it’s just kind of refreshing because I know it wasn’t like a just me thing.

[00:13:08] Matt Widmyer: It comes with the territory, so it’s cool to be able to offer that from that side of things. I think that’s where I do have a little bit of an advantage managing this team because I’ve actually sat in the seat before doing it for so long.

[00:13:18] Kevin Dieny: Yeah I think that does help and I think you come at it with a perspective that at first comes with a bit more empathy before you know stick to your numbers, why are you down, what’s going on.

[00:13:31] Kevin Dieny: That does lead me to wondering how important is it for your team to know the numbers? To know how they’re measured, what’s important, what’s okay? Like, is calling a hundred people without an appointment or without a result that you’re going for is that okay? How important is it for your team to know the numbers you’re tracking and how they’re being measured?

[00:13:53] Matt Widmyer: Sure, so in any situation really for any job, if you’re going to lay out expectations you gotta manage to them, right? If you feel like somebody is fully onboard and those expectations aren’t being met that’s something that we need to address.

[00:14:05] Matt Widmyer: Luckily we have a nice little dashboard in Salesforce our CRM and they’re able to see every metric that they’re responsible for. They’re able to see at any given time just by going to that page and hit it refresh.

[00:14:18] Matt Widmyer: I think at most places this is a basic function but to all of them they say it seems like the coolest thing in the world which is cool for me to hear. It’s almost like we’re living in the future here but to know exactly where you’re at, how you stack up against everybody else.

[00:14:34] Matt Widmyer: Because expectations, they have to just come out of thin air until we see what’s realistic. And then we can adjust and we have to decide does this make sense, does this do, are we on metric? Does this add up into our team goal? If it does then that’s the expectation.

[00:14:49] Matt Widmyer: If we fall short we need to work on identifying what aspect we’re falling short on and then manage to that. If I see somebody making a hundred phone calls every single day and usually not getting any appointments and then it’s whatever they’re saying on the phone.

[00:15:05] Matt Widmyer: We look at connections too, are we even connecting with anybody who’s capable of committing to it appointment. If we aren’t, then we’re having gatekeeper issues usually. If we’re connecting with a ton of people and not getting appointments then we’re botching whatever it is that we say on the phone to them.

[00:15:21] Matt Widmyer: It’s called training right? Which, I don’t disappear when new people start so even though the call training is a lot on the accountability partner or the senior SDR level I’m always available for that kind of stuff too. I’ll make phone calls, I’ll listen to phone calls, and we can usually pinpoint out exactly what we need to address.

[00:15:41] Matt Widmyer: If the efforts all there and the results aren’t, it’s usually nine times out of ten, it’s either a gatekeeper issues or it’s just whatever they’re saying to the actual decision maker on the phone.

[00:15:52] Matt Widmyer: Every once in a while it will be a list that we thought was a lot better than it actually was. It’ll sometimes happen with a brand new initiative, if it’s the actual list itself it might need a little bit more cultivating from whoever manages the partnership, or whoever got the list. So it’s an ongoing process.

[00:16:10] Kevin Dieny: I can totally see that and I also like that the things you’re doing to track your performance of the team, there’s layers there. Where you’re tracking the performance of each individual person and the metrics in-between are telling you what needs to be worked on.

[00:16:29] Kevin Dieny: You mentioned if any one of these metrics is falling short you know what conversation to have, what to focus on. Whether that’s the conversation itself, whether that’s seeing who they’re calling, what kind of conversation they’re leading in with, what they’re saying on the phone listening to some recordings, having a one-on-one time with them that’s helping you to know what’s going on with them.

[00:16:53] Kevin Dieny: Now that the improvement itself is where I want to go next, which is incentivizing the team. How do you quickly boost the motivation or the improvement of your team, how could you?

[00:17:09] Matt Widmyer: Quickly boost the motivation or improvement… yeah, so there’s a number of ways. One way is just straight up bribery by using gift cards and stuff like that.

[00:17:19] Kevin Dieny: That you do use?

[00:17:20] Matt Widmyer: Yeah I do, yeah, and now this might not be practical for every business but even just praise, acknowledgement, walking over their desk, “Hey, you’re killing it today!” That’s enough for most businesses. And it was enough before we started doing gift cards but I just felt like adding that layer into it on top of that.

[00:17:38] Matt Widmyer: It doesn’t mean the praise stops, the praise is still there, it doesn’t have to be anything crazy. You don’t have to give away $500 at a time. $10 Starbucks card, 25 bucks here and there a couple of times a week. That’s enough to keep people motivated.

[00:17:52] Matt Widmyer: There’s individual, there’s team contests, there’s challenges where, “Hey, I bet you can’t do this.” And then if they do then they get a gift card. Sometimes I don’t even tell them I’m having a contest and I just walk over and hand somebody a gift card because I was having a contest without telling them I was having a contest. So secret contest will work pretty good too.

[00:18:11] Matt Widmyer: There’s a number of things but I think one of the one of the most successful one of the most engaging one is like a point system. So for every call you make you get one point, for every appointment that you set you get 10 points.

[00:18:26] Matt Widmyer: And then at the end of the day you have to set a cutoff time. But at the end of the day at that cutoff time we tally up the points and then it’s the points are all based on what it was being entered in the CRM.

[00:18:37] Matt Widmyer: And then whoever gets the most points wins and there’s no, “Oh, I didn’t get it in in time!” Well, too bad because that was the cutoff time. The points are the points, right? You have to just be very black and white with contests like that.

[00:18:47] Matt Widmyer: And then every time you do run a contest like that there’s going to be one or two things that come up. “Well, oh, I didn’t, I didn’t, I clocked in late or I had another couple of phone calls.” So you have to account for everything and you’re going to keep modifying and adjusting and creating new rules based on every time you do it. But it ends up being pretty advanced after a while.

[00:19:06] Kevin Dieny: I know some of the contests that you’ve run over there and I know the impact it has in some comradery, some competitiveness. It does align well with the emotion that exists over there. Matt has an area of our office where his team operates and it’s definitely has a different feel.

[00:19:24] Kevin Dieny: Everyone there is trying to push. It does take a lot out of you emotionally. A day can start out well and then go bad like you mentioned just a few days of things not going great has a pretty severe emotional, mental impact.

[00:19:36] Kevin Dieny: So let’s flip the question how do you disincentivize or how do you keep people using the processes and productivity you have in place? How do you make sure that they’re having the right kinds of conversations or keep them on the right path here?

[00:19:51] Matt Widmyer: Keeping them on the right path in terms of the conversations that they’re… you’re talking about outside of contests?

[00:19:57] Kevin Dieny: Yeah, like how do you disincentivize the wrong things? How do you keep the behaviors you don’t want happening from happening? How do you try to continually reinforce the right stuff and so that they don’t get off track?

[00:20:09] Matt Widmyer: Got it, if somebody is performing and then they’re no longer performing or they haven’t performed in awhile, we will have more of a serious conversation with them. First things first, this is about you, and you’re in a performance-based role. This is why it’s so important at the beginning, day one, just to go so clear clearly over expectations.

[00:20:31] Matt Widmyer: Because then when performance related conversations happen you know what you signed up for, right? And we talked about this week one and I can confidently say that to anybody out there right now. And if someone’s not performing, hey we talked about this, we knew, you know this was coming.

[00:20:47] Matt Widmyer: Usually if you see something start derailing we have all the metrics tracked on a dashboard, so as you see things start steering in a way they shouldn’t be steering you have the ability to still grab the wheel and steer it in the right direction before it gets to that point.

[00:21:01] Matt Widmyer: But if it’s someone who you’ve been working with and they used to have it and they lost it or they’ve never had it, then yeah if they’re working a really warm affiliate they could be pulled off of it. We do improvement plans over the period of a month and if they don’t improve then they may be terminated.

[00:21:17] Matt Widmyer: I don’t like to hover that over anybody’s head like, “Hey, if you don’t do your job you’re gone,” but that is the reality of it. There’s a reason why we’re paying everybody to be in a seat. It’s because there’s an expectation of performance.

[00:21:32] Matt Widmyer: So if that’s not there we can’t justify the spend on a seat. Before it gets to that point we will address it well before it gets to that point usually. I’ve learned over the years is you can’t save everybody but there are some people that you can turn around and we’ve done a pretty good job with a few of them out here, and they’re still here today too.

[00:21:51] Kevin Dieny: I don’t feel that as someone who looks onto your team I don’t feel that there’s any sort of animosity there or that there’s anyone who has overly complicated conflicts with each other.

[00:22:02] Kevin Dieny: There’s some pretty good teamwork going on with everyone there even though there might be pods of people who are on teams and other people on other teams. Things are kept light enough and friendly enough and everyone’s on aligned and on the same kind of page they’re on your team too. Everyone knows what’s expected and everyone’s trying to do that, and I’ve been over there where they walk over and they’ll share, “Hey this is working for me or whatever.”

[00:22:29] Kevin Dieny: The openness of being able to have that environment where people can share and move forward together is pretty great. It’s not if I’m successful it means someone else in the other on the team isn’t, everyone’s working together towards similar and shared goals.

[00:22:42] Kevin Dieny: So, final question for you here sort of to wrap it up a little bit is, the call handler oftentimes is the frontline. They are the one having the one-to-one conversations with somebody. The phone is a pretty expensive seat, every second they’re on a conversation they’re really can only be talking to one person.

[00:23:05] Kevin Dieny: They can’t have a window open with 10 call conversations happening, it’s not possible. So it’s an expensive touch point for a business to have with its consumers. And if they mess that up it can cause people to get upset.

[00:23:20] Kevin Dieny: I’ve heard a lot of stories where people were mistreated or rude on the phone and it sends someone away from the business. So it seems to me to be a really really important role for a business to focus on.

[00:23:32] Kevin Dieny: So if you’re the type of business that hasn’t really spent a whole lot of time, hasn’t focused on coaching, mentoring, providing the assistance, or maybe the type of management you may want to your front office, your call handlers, your secretary, whoever it is that’s managing your phones what would you say to them?

[00:23:51] Kevin Dieny: Why would you say the call handler is so important to a business?

[00:23:55] Matt Widmyer: They’re the first impression that business gets usually. So, if somebody is wanting something and they’re inquiring and as you know it’s not cheap to get the phone to ring in the first place. If somebody on the front lines botches a phone call it’s not a good look.

[00:24:08] Matt Widmyer: It can go a lot further than just that one sale. It can destroy any future sales opportunities for that prospect. It can destroy it, if it’s bad enough that they could start talking to their friends, “Hey don’t do business with CallSource.” It could end up being pretty bad.

[00:24:23] Matt Widmyer: We as a business, and here’s the plug here we actually have all of our inbound calls are recorded through a tracking number and through our tracking number we do drink our own Kool-Aid here at CallSource. So through our tracking numbers those calls are being recorded and play a disclaimer and everything.

[00:24:42] Matt Widmyer: Each call handler that picks up the phone is scored on their call. So, there are things that need to be mentioned on every single call. The call needs to be answered a certain way and we need to be asking the right questions.

[00:24:55] Matt Widmyer: What’s the person’s name, what’s their contact information, what’s their phone number, what is the problem they’re trying to solve for within their business? Are there next steps? There’s a laundry list of probably 30 different things and they’re all yes no very objective things.

[00:25:10] Matt Widmyer: It would be pretty tough to get a hundred percent on every single call, but if somebody is very far away from that, then I’ll have a conversation with them. We have the ability to pull them off of inbound leads, from fielding inbound leads which would be a lot harder to hit their numbers that way. That’s the light warning like, hey you need to get your scores up.

[00:25:28] Matt Widmyer: Opting to be able to field inbound leads you’re taking some of the outbound workload off yourself. Therefore you need to abide by this scorecard. Every single one of them, I think, has it printed out and put it on their desk. Every box they need to check. The only issue with that though is when you first introduce it they just go down the list like a checklist, and, hey do you do this, do you do that, what’s this, what’s that.

[00:25:52] Matt Widmyer: Making those key points as conversation points into a back and forth dialogue is the tricky part. So there’s an art to it but they all get better at it over time. Everyone here has been on the team for awhile. They’re all pretty good at answering the phone.

[00:26:05] Matt Widmyer: Nobody’s score is like glaringly bad to where we need to have performance related conversation as it pertains to it. But that is a must If you’re spending money and get your phones to ring measuring the performance that people are picking up is a must.

[00:26:18] Kevin Dieny: Okay, so let me try to summarize a little bit here. The first one that we talked about before was the importance of setting expectations, right? And delegation making sure that they have all the tools they need to succeed.

[00:26:31] Kevin Dieny: The second one was walking them through the processes walking them through productivity and making sure that they know what they need to do, what’s expected of them but also how they’re measured.

[00:26:42] Kevin Dieny: Making sure that you’re having those conversations with them. You’ve just also highlighted that managing successful call handlers it doesn’t have to be so intensive, consume all your time. It is doable.

[00:26:56] Kevin Dieny: And if you utilize a tool that scores the calls for you, shows you who’s trending up or trending down that can save you a lot of time from having to listen to the calls yourself.

[00:27:08] Kevin Dieny: Bringing them in right, setting the expectations right, giving them the right environment, delegating some of those things to other people and your team and the training to other tools that could help. All those things help you manage the call handlers.

[00:27:23] Kevin Dieny: We talked about incentivizing the right behaviors. Starting with empathy, rewarding with gift cards or with praise or finding something with each unique person that would help them feel motivated to keep going.

[00:27:36] Kevin Dieny: It’s part of the call handler trade to have the rollercoaster emotions of up and down, and success and not success, and this list works great but I need to go to another list. That’s tough, a lot of that you don’t have a whole lot of control of and that doesn’t ever feel good.

[00:27:51] Kevin Dieny: So as the manager, managing that, helping them getting their legs and helping them move forward in the right direction. Another thing you mentioned somewhere in the middle, being able to know the numbers, being able to know what to improve with each call handler, looking at the team as a whole keeping that process very transparent…

[00:28:10] Kevin Dieny: That to me, connects the dots of setting the expectations and then like you mentioned, managing what you’re preaching. So was there anything else you wanted to add to all of this Matt?

[00:28:21] Matt Widmyer: Yeah I would say just to add to the daily motivation or keeping the temperament of each individual SDR is so important. Right? Because the emotional roller coaster, you have one day where you just blow away expectations and then you have another day where you connect with a bunch of people and you strike out every single one of them.

[00:28:38] Matt Widmyer: “Nah, we’re too busy,” or every single call goes bad. My advice it’s gonna happen, and I always let all my people know do not get too excited on those really good days. Don’t walk around beating your chest because when those really bad days come it could come back to haunt you.

[00:28:55] Matt Widmyer: But also try to stay away from those dark places. Continue to put your head down and work hard and then you can work your way out of a hole. Hot streaks go cold, cold streaks go hot. It’s just a by-product of the role itself.

[00:29:06] Matt Widmyer: Everybody comes through the door a little bit soft and then after a few weeks they’ll there’ll be carved out of wood. It’s kinda how the role goes. I would make the roller coaster a little bit more even rather than just like you know you want to keep the you don’t want to keep the highs super high and you don’t want to you don’t want to have the lowest super low either. Because then that can really mess with their mindset on a day-to-day basis right?

[00:29:30] Kevin Dieny: Yeah that’s really tough. And the call handler is so important to the business. They’re the front lines oftentimes and they set the stage for what could be months or years of revenue for the business, it’s really important.

[00:29:45] Kevin Dieny: And every business can successfully manage successful call handlers. They can do it. You can. You’ve showed me not every person may not be cut out for being the best call handler in the world but everyone does bring something unique and every call handler is unique.

[00:30:02] Kevin Dieny: So it is possible to manage them if you can onboard them right, set expectations as you mentioned right. You can train them help them know what they need to improve on continually.

[00:30:13] Kevin Dieny: You can hold on to them and retain them so that your business can grow, can make the call handling part of it, not a bottleneck, not a thing anchoring the business down. Call handlers are very important and you can manage successful call handlers.

[00:30:32] Kevin Dieny: So that’s it for today, thank you again Matt.

[00:30:35] Matt Widmyer: Absolutely.

[00:30:36] Kevin Dieny: And I appreciate everyone for listening. Go out there and set some appointments or bring in those calls and answer those calls. We really appreciate you listening, thank you!

[00:30:46] Matt Widmyer: Thanks!