Use these strategies to get qualified appointments from your ISA fast
When you bring your Inside Sales Agent ( ISA ) onboard, you’ll want this person to be a legitimate phone crusher as soon as humanly possible.
No doubt, there are a lot of moving parts involved in the process and getting bogged down in the details about what to do and when could easily derail the results you get.
However, if you follow the steps we’ve prescribe below, your ISA can hit the ground running in no time and start producing qualified listing appointments in virtually no time.
In fact, when you do it right...you’ll be able to change the trajectory of your business forever.
Get your Inside Sales Agent ( ISA ) Hired and Producing in 90 days
In our world, we believe you need to win before you start. When it comes to hiring and onboarding an ISA, here’s what we do to ensure we win:
1. Hire the right person for the job
As silly as this recommendation may seem, it’s not as obvious a choice as you might think.
From our experience in working with real estate agents over the last 20 years, we’ve noticed when many of them hire for the ISA position, they usually choose:
- A friend or someone they know that they think can do the job
- The first person that “seems to be” the right person for the job
- A company that says it has ISAs, but really can’t deliver on the promise
Unfortunately, this is almost always the wrong approach and it usually yields catastrophic results.
Gosselin/Martin and Associates - 2015
If you want to win before you start and get your ISA, hired, onboarded and producing in 90 days, you must hire the right person.
The right person must have prior phone sales experience setting appointments/selling for someone else, setting appointments/selling for themselves or have sold products door to door and know how to close a sale.
You need someone who knows how to sell and preferably over the phone.
In addition to that, the right person must exhibit resilience, openness, empathy and ambition in doing their job.
For what it’s worth, you want these skills in any salesperson you hire, but they are a must for someone who works with prospects solely over the phone.
Lastly, you’re not a babysitter. The right person must be willing to do the job you ask of them. If they aren’t willing to do the job at hand, then they don’t make the squad.
Plain and simple.
In the end, hiring an ISA who doesn’t meet at least these minimum criteria is will keep you from employing the right person for the job.
2. Start training them before their first day on the job
The person you bring on to be your ISA is likely going to need to give some kind of notice at their prior job, likely two week’s notice.
Your goal is to maximize the use of this “free” time to get your ISA ahead of the curve - so to speak - by training them prior to day one on the job.
You’ll do this by giving your ISA scripts and dialogues to learn, audios to listen to and videos to watch so they can start to internalize what to say, how to say it and when to say it.
In addition to that, you should get them access to any online training for the CRM, Dialer and technology they’re going to use in doing their job.
The sooner they get started learning what they know to do their job, the sooner they can get rolling in setting appointments for you.
Your goal is to have your ISA making calls the first week they start working for you and getting them trained ahead of time is the way to do it.
3. Have your leads set up and ready to be called
The longer you wait to contact a prospect, the less likely it is that you’ll be able to do business with that person.
To that end, you want nothing more than to have your ISA get to leads quickly and efficiently and that all starts setting the right precedent on the first day they start making calls for you.
By having your lead sources set up in your CRM, ready to be called with a clear course of action, you communicate to your ISA the importance of quick response times and how it will lead to better response rates.
The ancillary benefit of having your leads on standby is that your ISA can start generating nurtures and setting appointments as soon as they hit the phones.
Sure there’s ramp time to becoming an effective and efficient ISA, but there’s nothing saying your ISA can’t catch lightning in a bottle and get some appointments right out of the gate.
4. Make sure the metrics and goals are clear
Confusion kills momentum.
Your ISA is already going to be fairly overwhelmed by having to learn how to speak a new language and use some technology with which they’re not familiar.
To make sure that you don’t crush their spirit completely - and put them in position to produce qualified appointments in the first 90 days on the job - you’ll want to provide clear direction on what’s expected for daily activities and goals.
You should provide your ISA with a sheet that details the metrics you’re looking to track, including, but not limited to, how many dials, contacts, nurtures and appointments are expected each day.
You should also give them a tracking sheet that lets them track how they did in each of these areas on a daily basis.
By doing this, you give them clear expectations on what’s required of them, freeing their mind up to learn the skills they need to master to be a great ISA and more importantly, to produce effectively on the phone.
What’s also important to note here is tracking these numbers allows you to make adjustments to, and do training on, their skills and activities so that you can fix problems before they sabotage your ISA’s efforts.
Taking this approach helps put your ISA in position to be more productive, sooner.
These strategies are easy to implement.
At the same time, they’re extremely effective in getting your Inside Sales Agent making calls and setting qualified appointments quickly. As with all sales efforts, time is of the essence.
The better job you do in setting your ISA up for success, the sooner they can start cranking out legit listing appointments for you.
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