I learn therefore I am
Professional training for real people
teamwork recipes
Old-fashioned fun leads to team success
Old-fashioned fun = contact centre success
Collecting debt isn’t an easy job and is probably one of the toughest in the contact centre industry. You are exposed to people suffering extreme hardship through to those who just don’t like to pay their bills.
Through it all you need to keep your cool and focus on the objective – to provide a “win-win” for everyone! When you look at it that way, it’s also one of the most complex customer interactions in the industry.
Last Friday night, was the Australian Teleservices Association academy Awards for Contact Centre Excellence (yes, we proudly sponsored) and the collections team that won the Under 50 FTE category was inspiring.
Who are these people? They are the Collections team from FlexiGroup. I was blown away by the sense of togetherness, teamwork and good old-fashioned fun that emanated from them as they celebrated their nomination – and then their win.
The business reasons they won (the numbers if you like) are truly impressive. Over the past year, the team has saved the company $4 million and increased productivity 25%.
It’s clear to see these results have been achieved through teamwork, support, training and people who care a great deal about each other. Indeed, the CEO was there on Friday night, celebrating the team’s success right alongside them. (The FlexiGroup New Business group also won their category of 50-120 FTE, no accident I am sure.)
While I don’t know the team members personally, I bet many of them are friends for life. When you spend so much time at work, sometimes engaged in stressful activities, isn’t it fantastic to do it with people you like?
That’s what we aim for at academy.
FlexiGroup’s wins are a compelling argument for ‘people-first’ management and I, for one, would like to learn more about how they make this work so well.
Congratulations to FlexiGroup, iiNet (who won the 120+ FTE contact centre category), the nominees; and all the incredible individual nominees and winners. The contact centre industry is about people and service and it’s inspiring to see how you all ‘walk the talk’.
Intergenerational leadership – A marketing furphy?
Managing teams ‘by the letter’ too simplistic
The challenge of intergenerational leadership is often raised in academy leadership programmes. Over the last five years it has become something of a tabloid ‘pet peeve’: railing at the overweening ambition of Gen Y, the lack of humour of Gen Xers and the Boomers inability to “hand over the reins”.
But is the study of intergenerational leadership a useful model for the modern leader in Australia? academy students of eastern European origin tell us that this type of generational politics is non-existent in their countries of origin. Many of these people’s parents and grandparents were all but wiped out in global conflict. Many Asian cultures automatically defer to their eldest, and approach the intergenerational discussion with a cultural, as opposed to marketing-oriented, perspective. In the all the marketing hype, we just might have forgotten that intergenerational politics are a social construct specific to wealthy, western, English-speaking nations.
Australia is just such a wealthy, western, English-speaking nation so in that case the model has value here doesn’t it?
A recent report shows 44% of Australians were either born overseas or have at least one foreign-born parent. Asia is fast becoming a rival to Europe as the dominant source of arrivals; of people who arrived in Australia between 2002 and 2006, six of the 10 most common birthplaces were Asian countries.
So based on these numbers, should the modern Australian manager make a judgment on a leadership issue while factoring the generational make-up of their team? Considerations about people’s experience and knowledge may come into play, but with people having up to three (if not four) careers in their adult working lives, inexperience can be a feature of any demographic group.
Surely it becomes more and more unlikely that intergenerational leadership is the answer to good leadership practice. Indeed it could be the source of some uncomfortable questions like “…..am I be judging people’s abilities based on their age?”
Australia’s next MasterManager
Adriano Zumbo's V8 cake: Perfect teamwork
As a manager you have to hope your team is not going to be as hard for you to wrangle as an Adriano Zumbo creation is for an aspiring MasterChef.
Did you see that angelic-looking V8 cake on the show last night? For those of you who did not, it was eight thin layers of cake heaven (well, Adriano’s was, anyway!)… eight layers of vanilla used in different ways, with more than 140 ingredients and four hours of cooking. The picture is to the left and the recipe link is here.
The reason the cake is such a showstopper is that each layer builds on a theme and is very different from the others, but (and it’s a big but*), they are perfectly complementary and would not work nearly so well without the others. Hang on… isn’t that how a team should be?
It really made me think… if managers (and I am one) put as much effort and passion into understanding the ingredients of their teams, how they work together and how they work as a whole, many businesses may just be in even better shape.
I certainly can’t tell you how to do that in one blog post, it takes different combinations of training, personal development, mentoring and coaching, passion and plain old hard work, for different people. But if we think of Adriano Zumbo as manager and cake as team, we can better understand how important care and attention to each element is when you are creating something greater than the sum of its parts.
* Madly trying to avoid a joke about eating too much cake here
The yin and yang of sales
The yin and yang of sales
Some people may be able to ‘sell ice to Eskimos’ and others may be ‘born salespeople’, but I tend to disagree with the notion that great sales people are only born and cannot be made.
I believe that anybody who is passionate and believes in their product will inspire others to buy.
Furthermore, a natural ability to build relationships, through an empathic ability to identify people’s needs and wants (even when they cannot voice them!) will also close many a deal.
So all of these traits will bode well for a sales person’s potential to generate revenue.
However, I have also worked with many competent sales people who achieve solid results largely through hard work and discipline. These people may not necessarily be ‘naturals’ when it comes to relationship building and management, but their persistent dedication often gets them across the line.
I always hesitate to generalise, however perhaps we can conclude that there are at least two distinct ‘types’ of high achieving sales people. Leaving each ‘type’ with a variety of skills that can still be developed. Indeed, to be a truly great sales person, I believe people need to use tools from a variety of sources, with a range of leaders and mentors.
Sometimes this means training yourself (or being trained!) to go against a natural inclination. Good sales people who are strong on relationships can be coached in disciplined processes. And good sales people who rely on top notch systems can have their people skills developed, by good managers and training.
Having a mix of these natural skills sets in your sales team can only help. Companies that develop a range of attributes in their team may just elevate their sales from good to great.
What do you think makes for a great sales person?
