Keeping Outsourced Telemarketers Separate or managed?

Is your current TM making you money? Then keep them doing what they're doing.

Skill at something does not translate into being able to teach it.

IMO you should train the salespeople yourself for now.

Get recordings of your pro guy to use as training material for your new guys.

I am assuming you trained your current telemarketer. If so, then it's better for you to train new ones. The current one will still work proficiently while you're training more instead of taking his time to train others.

There is also a slight possibility that a current telemarketer may train others badly to make himself look better (minimal chance but it does happen. I have seen it myself when I used to manage call centres.)

I agree which the others. I think u should train them yourself.

So what's worse? Removing some time from a tried and tested TM to train others at what he/she is good at or removing the (surely more valuable time) of the PM to train the new boys?

Some of these answers seem rather over-simplistic. Who's to say your goto TM isn't going to be the best trainer in the world? Surely it's worth investigating whether they may be any good at the role? I'd certainly set aside a little time to talk to them about it and get a feel for how they think they might be. Simply writing them off as a trainer seems ludicrous. That person *knows* what they're doing - and hopefully knowing that what they're doing (from your feedback) is adding value to the enterprise.

This business of not empowering people to better themselves and offer promotion and/or incentives to improve their standing is exactly what is wrong with the mindsets of many here and harmful to the longevity of enterprise and small business growth, in general.

It's also the fast road to losing your best employees to competitors or going alone and stealing your business plan.

I agree that you should keep the productive TM as a TM.
Good at selling does not mean good at managing and training.
Also, some people do not want to manage. (More on Organizational
Development and employee retention later.)

Do the recordings. Also, pick his or her brains for how they
learned to be good at what you are having them do.
And for the tweaks he's come up with that work for your
business.

Do the training guide yourself and provide them with
effective training like Jason's, and what the guys and gals
here have on their reading/listening lists.

Also, don't hire a VA or the current TM to manage
the TMs. You don't sound like a big enough
organization, yet, to require a manager
between you and the TMs.

I think too much vital information would not reach
you, or not reach the TMs from you. Either some
kind of power grab, sabotage or just incompetence
("I'm sorry, I forgot to tell you ..." or "I'm so sorry,
I forgot to tell TM1 that you wanted to change that...")

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As for Organizational Development and employee retention,
it's a myth that everyone wants a promotion, or that
promotions to management are what people want for
recognition and to stay at a company.

Picking the brains of your TM should be one good recognition
of his value to you. As one heavily recruited executive
said; he chose to stay where he is because he loves the company
and what they do, is paid enough, and they keep letting him
doing what he likes to do. There are effective non-monetary,
non-promotion ways to recognize and retain employees.

---------------------------------

A professional acquaintance of mine was VP of Training and
Development for a large banking organization. Time after
time they would promote a good employee to management
and this person would then discover that they really did not want
to manage for such reasons as the staffing headaches or the
new duties or hours.

Sometimes, they would find out that the newly promoted
person just did not have the management and leadership skills
needed to do the new job.

They ended up incorporating testing, and developed films
that demonstrated what people actually do in certain jobs
and so on.

This allowed them to filter candidates better. And, it allowed
people to decide ahead of time that they really did not want to
be promoted to management.

They also developed what they called management track and
a professional track. This served as a way to retain employees
by giving them more career choices and recognition, and esteem
regardless of which path they chose.

As for rewards and bonuses, or other ways to retain talent and grow.
You can do a lot by paying attention to the culture you develop. And,
by developing a positive culture that rewards individuals in the unique
way they want to be rewarded and recognized.

Maybe your TM just wants flex time and wants to continue or begin
working from home... Maybe an employee wants the cash equivalent
of the bonus or perk because he does not want the trip to Hawaii
or whatever. If they are worthy, recognize and reward according
to what they want.

(I hope this makes sense and helps. I'm getting sleepy.)

Dan