I asked – and you answered.   And I’m not surprised at the response.  In brief, here was my question: “I'm asking them if your CSR's are SELLING enough.  When I think of "selling" and CSR's, I think of four things:

1. Selling prospects on inbound calls,

2. Selling clients on the "cross sell,"

3. Successfully convincing clients to give you referrals, and,

4. Successfully "selling" your agency so that clients stay with you year after year.

If you had a "magic wand" so that your CSR's would sell better, what would you change?”

We’re always looking at tweaking and upgrading the curriculum for our CSR Mastery Program, and I got some great insights from your responses.  If you’re wondering how YOUR agency “stacks up” with other, these responses are typical from the hundreds that I received.  (And, to protect the innocent, I left all your names off and kept them anonymous!)  DOES ANY OF THIS SOUND FAMILIAR?

we have left a lot of sales on the table.

My CSR's sell when it is easy.

After changing over to voice over IP phones, I discovered how many calls were REALLY coming into the agency everyday and how many opportunities were being missed.  The phones log exactly how many incoming and outgoing calls at each phone.  I now saw the missed opportunity and how many calls were going out.

Generally most of us are too worried about processing the tons of change requests, certificates Fax's etc. to even think about cross-selling. Most agencies I've worked at have no scripts in place nor to they train their CSR's on cross selling.

Most CSR's only care about how fast they can process a given item. Most people see this as a job, it takes a special person to look beyond this.

I would like my CSR's to be more pro active. How do we make them CARE as much as we do?

I do agree with you that the CRS's are the first gate to the agency and usually have the client's ear. Having said that, I am afraid that I have not a great job of convincing my CSR that there is money to be made just asking a few simple questions.

my csr's don't have the time to take the initiative to ask for referrals or cross selling.

My magic wand would create a CSR that would just ask. Sounds simple, but with three things on the back burner and the phone ringing, most CSR's find it difficult to get into the kind of lengthy conversation that questions create.

We do not have a process for handling every call.

My 2 employees are not selling enough. Their initial role in the agency was more "administrative", now I would like to merge them into more sales.

What can you do about it – and where do you start?  As my friend, Dan Sullivan says, “ALL PROGRESS STARTS WITH TELLING THE TRUTH.”  And the basic truth is this: that if your CSR’s are not selling, it’s almost certainly not their fault.  If you’re not measuring their closing ratio, their cross-sell ratio, their referral ratio…if you’re not giving them SYSTEMS, SCRIPTS & PROCESSES that deliver the results that you want for your agency…if you’re not giving them the same level of coaching and training you’d give producers, what else can you expect?

In a few days, we’ll be launching our Industry Wide Survey on CSR Sales Performance.  I hope you’ll participate.

Dominate Your Marketplace!

Michael

PS: For those who are truly HUNGRY for high level CSR performance, I’ll be delivering a training teleseminar on May 7th.  Click here for more info: www.freecsrwebinar.com