October and November are typically one of the busiest times of the year for sales teams and for focusing on and generating new business leads. It’s at this time of year when a lot of conferences and events are taking place and where clients are discussing potential new business with their prospects. We certainly find that we have more projects on the go and we are busy nurturing contacts to set up meetings and discussions for the end of 2019 and going into 2020.
To be able to manage that additional demand we rely on a team of highly effective Next Call consultants, who are able to jump on to a new project without hesitation and with the minimal on-boarding time needed.
But what does it take to be a highly effective Next Call consultant? We have developed our team over a great number of years, and we only work with consultants who have a particular background and depth of experience. This is to ensure that not only are they effective when executing a project, but that they are able to adapt and quickly respond to new projects.
The experience the consultants bring to the table means that they are able to take an organised, pragmatic and focused approach to all their work, including:
Planning & Preparation
Organised Time Management
Being Goal Oriented
Resilient
Handling Objections and Gatekeepers
Asking good inquisitive questions
Having the experience of being in sales and working within the tech, business information, CRM, marketing and IT industries, enables them to be able to handle these elements expertly and without being phased in any way. This is especially important when working with clients in a new area of business - meaning our team can get up to speed quickly with all the areas of the campaign and fully understand the offering, and most importantly how to deliver that message effectively over the phone.
One of our clients, Workshare, summed it up…
Our experience so far with Next Call has been excellent. The team are a pleasure to work with, attentive to what we need, professional and have been able to build a good relationship with our sales team. It’s early days but so far the campaigns undertaken have been working well and Next Call’s ability to adapt and be agile as needed for each one has ensured that we are getting results quickly.
David Olu, Campaign Manager, Workshare
We have been finding out in our Meet The Team series just where all that experience comes from, as well as learning a bit more about what makes our Next Call consultants tick.
This time, we’ve been chatting to Lyn Stewart-Ashley, who is one of our relatively new consultants, having joined the Next Call team in the last year. Although she has only joined us relatively recently, Lyn brings with her an incredible wealth of relevant experience having worked in the IT industry since the early days of networking and telecommunications and dealing with and managing sales teams across a wide geography. We have been very lucky to be able to welcome her onboard with her skill set already adding value to not only the internal team but also to our clients.
Lyn’s current projects with both Capita IT & Networks and Workshare, where she has been working closely with their internal teams, have both seen some great results so far. The speed and ease with which Lyn has understood the project and message and been able to take that forward is directly due to her experience and knowledge of these types of solutions.
This is also a reflection of our approach at Next Call where we take the time to align and match our consultants with the projects based on their knowledge and experience. We have found that this leads to an even better working relationship with our clients and better results for the project as a whole.
Here’s what we found out when we chatted to Lyn:
Lyn’s background is in networking and telecommunications sales working for hardware distributors, before moving into manufacturing and the sale and distribution of ethernet networking products. Lyn excelled in this area and headed up the European arm of the business, before moving on to the telecoms market, and as the technology evolved, working with VOIP solutions. As a successful woman in the IT Industry back in the day when that was maybe considered more unusual, she caught the interest of the IT media at the time and even featured on the front cover of MicroScope magazine.
We also delved into some other areas to find out a bit more about Lyn...
What item that you don't have already, would you most like to own?
“Back in the day my dream item to own would have been anything from Bang & Olufsen, but now, something less commercialised, it would be to have an amazing view.”
What talent do you have that is not utilised successfully in your workplace?
“I’m really good at doing handstands!”
Can you play any musical instruments?
“I can play the piano a bit”
What is the nerdiest thing you do in your spare time?
“I do like to read about cars quite a lot, I also get quite nerdy about the tech I’m involved in and working on, I really like to read about it and understand it fully.
What are three things are still left on your bucket list?
“To do some campervanning; travelling to places that are a bit less known. I’d also like to spend some more time in South Africa. Machu Picchu would also be interesting.”
You can read more about our other team members in our Meet The Team Series in these blogs:
It’s a team effort! where we chat to Suzie Martin, Next Call Consultant for more than 10 years, and 95 days of January where we caught up with Lawrence Keen, Next Call Consultant for more than 5 years.
To talk about your next event, lead generation, lead nurturing and new business projects, get in touch for a no obligation discussion to find out how we can help.