The business benefits of some products and services extend beyond their original purpose. Call recording, call evaluation, and outbound call tracking technologies are good examples of this. In addition to providing crucial lead identification and follow-up capabilities, they can also be used as effective tools for coaching and instructing your staff.

An outbound call tracking solution provides you with a complete picture of your staffs outbound call activity, including sales and service calls, making it a great resource for in-house training. In fact, you can easily create an atmosphere of continuous learning by leveraging your existing call tracking solution.

Here are some tips for improving staff performance without spending an extra dime on technology:

1. Set benchmarks for collecting data from customers. Establish goals and then hold your staff accountable for meeting those goals. With call recording and outbound call tracking solutions, you can easily measure how well your staff is performing against their goals.

2. Score calls. Create a scorecard for each salesperson based upon appointments received, emails received, and other data. With performance metrics readily available, each employee can quickly see how well he or she is doing. Creating incentives to reward improved performance will quickly establish new norms at higher levels.

3. Review calls regularly at staff meetings. Highlight especially good calls and use them to encourage discussion. Use positive coaching techniques such as role playing to practice critical skills and improve overall performance. Build scripts for ideal conversations and seek constructive feedback from staff. Playing actual examples of successful and unsuccessful calls at meetings is an excellent training technique. If you do it right, youll also boost employee morale.

4. Establish a daily routine for reviewing calls. One GM I know drinks his morning cup of coffee while listening to his recorded sales calls. This gives him immediate insight he can use to coach his staff effectively. He also sets up his staff to receive the after hours call report every morning via email, so that low hanging fruit is quickly-followed up.

5. Dont let hot leads get cold. Hold twice-weekly meeting to swap leads that didnt pan out. Use your call recording solution to determine what went wrong. Maybe there was a personality conflict or perhaps someone was just having a bad day. Ask another sales rep to follow up, and see if that moves the deal forward.

Heres a story I enjoy telling about Gordon Watson, the sales manager and chief trainer at Glendale Nissan, a busy dealership in southern California. He routinely uses the call handling report generated by his call recording solution to improve the performance of his sales team by reviewing their calls and coaching them to avoid common mistakes.

It enables me to see how well individual sales persons handle conversations on the phone, Watson explains. I can see if theyre asking the proper questions and seeking the right information. For example, its always better to ask for more than one phone number from a potential customer. And its never a good idea to discuss price on the phone. Its also a good idea to ask the caller if he or she know how to get to the dealership. You should always be ready to offer them good directions. Its amazing how many more people will show up at the dealership if you follow these simple practices.

Always remember that the telephone remains the strongest ongoing connection between you and your customers. Inbound calls represent the single most important source of fresh leads. Outbound calls are absolutely crucial to closing deals and generating revenue. Use your existing call tracking and call recording technologies to improve your staffs call handing abilities-and watch your profits climb.

Stuart DePina is CEO of Whos Calling, Inc. For additional information, please visit www.whoscalling.com or call 866.WhosCalling.