Is There Light At The End Of Your Management Tunnel?

In last month’s article I talked about progressing canvassers who prove themselves successful in the field to the Field Trainer position. Once they’ve proven themselves as a successful field trainer, the next natural position is in the role of assistant manager.

I want to set up this month’s article with a question, “Outside of training new hires, what takes up most of your time in managing the canvassing department?” This will be different for everyone. It’ll depend on how many canvassers you have to manage and how many others in the company will help out, etc.

Here’s only a small sample of things my canvass managers did when I ran my own home improvement company.

Recruiting
Interviewing
Hiring
Training
Scheduling
Map Tracking
Tracking Canvasser’s numbers
Running daily management meetings
Post canvass meetings
Etc

If you’re the owner or marketing manager it’ll be near impossible to juggle all these things, in addition to all the other hats you wear running the business. If you’re the canvass manager, and you have only a handful of canvassers, it’s possible to manage this yourself. But if you have more than a handful of canvassers you’ll need help. That’s why continually developing your canvassers with “the bigger picture” in mind is a win-win situation for everyone.

If you want to grow your canvass department and avoid the ups and downs of turn-over and lead production, one person can’t handle micro-managing everything.

I find it’s often a struggle for the owner or marketing manager to figure out how and where to put the pieces together, yet, in this respect, canvassing isn’t any different than managing sales. There are several advantages to developing a productive canvasser into management.

Unlike other departments your “assistant manager” stays in the field producing leads, they simply take on additional responsibilities to lighten your load so you can remain focused on the “big picture.” Best of all, you don’t have to pay them substantially more money. Often a few dollars an hour more or a small bonus is all that’s needed as monetary compensation. Money is a short-term motivator, especially for aggressive canvassers. Additional responsibility will motivate your star canvassers faster than an increase in “base pay.”

I’ve found the best canvassers are those that develop through your system and continue to climb. Besides, they’ll continue to be compensated by their lead production. The really great ones can actually get more productive with more responsibility. When that happens, you’ve got a “keeper.”

Here’s a look at areas you can ultimately delegate to your assistant manager in order to maintain your canvassing numbers.

Recruiting:
Advertising for the position of canvasser
1. There are many different venues I’ve discussed in past articles for finding canvassers.
  1. i. Placing a display ad
  2. ii. Canvassing for canvassers (distributing fliers, coordinating who’s distributing fliers, where and when)
  3. iii. Job fairs
  4. iv. Craig’s list
  5. v. Facebook
  6. Handling recruiting responses
    1. Follow up calls, emails (If you’re going to stay on top of this properly, it can take up a lot of your time)
    2. Qualifying
      1. Scheduling interviews (group or one on one)

Interviews

Scheduling your time to conduct the interviews (group or one on one)

(My canvassing manual goes over in detail qualifying respondents to the interview process, though it does not detail the actual interview- group or one on one. I’ve considered creating a training DVD specifically on the interviewing process. I think it’d be a valuable tool for managers. If there’s enough interest, I’ll start developing the DVD).

Hiring

Once you find a recruit that’s a good fit and you hire them, your assistant manager can schedule them for and coordinate their training; your formal training program as well as placing them with a field trainer (see last month’s Art of Managing Canvassing article for details on the field trainer’s role).

There’s a lot of work and effort from recruiting a canvasser and getting them to training. The next step is training, but I’m not going into that in this article because I’ve covered the aspects of training new hires in past articles (including last month’s on field trainers).

Next, let’s focus on the daily management of your canvassing and canvassers.

Daily Management

Scouting and mapping your target demographic territory
Tracking
1. What areas to target
2. What areas have canvassers covered
3. Where do you go next?
4. Canvasser’s performance (lead production)
5. Validating leads (coordinating, directing)
  1. Following up on leads that need a “Call to Set” appointment
  2. Daily inter-office communication (phone room & sales department)
    1. Sales appointment schedule (what times are available-need filled)
    2. Lead supply needed by sales
    3. Tracking your leads through the sales process
    4. Daily meetings
      1. Pre-canvass meeting
      2. Post-canvass meeting (gather canvasser’s leads, review leads and results, etc. A meeting checklist is a very efficient way to eliminate inconsistencies on your meetings)

(Members of my exclusive One on One phone coaching program receive, as part of your membership, my Canvassing Manual, which includes the Manager’s Checklist. The checklist details what you must do before, during and after the meetings to ensure you’re taking care of all the details. If you’ve not enrolled in the exclusive one on one phone coaching, you can find details about the program at http://www.canvassking.com/phonecoaching.html)

Your 3^rd Degree of Separation

Growing your canvassing department, and your company, requires systems. Without it, what happens when you’re not there, or want to take a day off? Does everything come to a stand-still when you’re not there; or worse yet, things “pile” up and smacks you in the face when you get back (making it more detrimental to you to take a day off).

Over the past few months I’ve introduced you to my system for developing canvassers to take on additional responsibilities:

Entry level canvassers
Field Trainers
Assistant Managers

I’d recommend you start a list of all the things you do to manage your department. Once you have the list you can identify which responsibilities you can delegate to an assistant manager. If you haven’t looked at all you do in black and white I can guarantee you two things…

You won’t understand how you’ve gotten it all done in the past
You’ll be motivated to follow my system for developing canvassers to field trainers and assistant managers

Once you have your list and you’ve identified what you can delegate, where do you start? That’s what I’ll cover next month. I’ll show you how to bridge the gap (transition) and where you can plug your assistant manager into first.