More Agents or Lift the Ones You Have? Part 1

If you are a carrier or a Master Agent, do you need more agents or do you need to give a lift to the ones you have?

There’s a sales management theorem that when you use Pareto’s Principle, you should spend you time with the Top 20 percent of your sales force not the bottom 20 percent. Why? Because the people bringing 80 percent of your sales are the ones you want to keep happy. Also, the more efficient and less bumpy you can make the sales process for them, the better for all the sales team, but especially the top dogs.

If you have a bunch of agents who signed up, what are you doing with them? Is your Channel Manager talking with them? What’s he saying? The more you know about their business, the bigger the opportunity for you to actually work together.

Knowing the goals and strategy of your agents can help you target training, leads, case studies, white papers, and tips to them. The more relevant, the better.

Right now, I would be looking to add value to my agent channel. How?

1. Seminar with a tax specialist right now.
2. Seminar with a Financial Planner about IRA and the market.
3. Seminar with a sales trainer for improvement in Consultative Selling.

What? None of this has to do with telecom, you say? No kidding. But it shows that you value them as business people and want them to be successful. Sure. You could give them more webinars on MPLS or whatever the new acronymn is for cloud-based WAN connections, but are you really adding value? Do you know the Kawasaki 10-20-30 Rule? Do you survey your channel anonymously to get feedback on any training you give? IT

Peter Radizeski is head of RAD-INFO (News - Alert), Inc., a consulting agency specializing in the telecom industry.

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