What Does Quality Mean to Advance Group

Firstly, as always, I would just like to thank you for taking the time to read this article.

You may have seen some of our post’s on LinkedIn either from me, my fellow directors, our team or if you follow our company page then the posts on there, all around ‘Quality’.

This article will hopefully put some context behind what quality means to us, from the early days of when it all began to what it means to us moving forward through 2020 and beyond. 

In the beginning…

So, if you haven’t heard our story or met Simon and I to discuss Advance, you may not know the narrative behind us setting up Advance Group and wanting to go into business for ourselves.

It began at one of our former employers, I received a less than happy call from a client to advise they had travelled from Liverpool to Brighton to be at a site meeting for 9am with a principal contractor. The meeting, however, could not take place as when they arrived the site was an empty field, with the development having not yet begun. Obviously, you can imagine the frustration from the client at the whole situation, with the waste of time, resource, money & not to mention the unnecessary early start at 3am!

When looking into the matter further and discussing this with the account manager responsible for scheduling the appointment, to understand what went had led to this outcome, I was shocked to hear the answer, that they were more concerned about hitting the 30 different metrics (maybe a slight exaggeration, but you get the picture) for their personal bonus rather than what the clients was looking for as ROI from the meeting and for the campaign.

You can look at this a couple of different ways;

• This could just be 1 bad apple who was not concerned about client retention and only interested in trying to line their own pockets and achieve an unrealistic bonus.

• Or that they were in fact a product of their environment and if you have an unachievable bonus with unnecessary metrics that it is human nature, they will try to hit them all.

By now you may be asking yourself the question “What has this got to do with why Simon and I set up Advance and more to the point, what does Quality mean to Advance Group?”!

Well I will tell you; it was this example that led us to choosing Quality as one of our core values underpinning our very business and using quality to drive the right behaviour from our team.

Needless to say, when we set up Advance the company in question then became one of our 1st customers and the relationship went from strength to strength as they were soon receiving hundreds of thousands of pounds in return for their investment.

When we created Advance, we wanted to be different from the run of the mill telemarketing companies, we wanted to apply an intelligent approach to construction telemarketing and have our team focusing on delivering ROI for our clients rather than trying to hit 50 different internal targets (it’s gone up, I know) that meant nothing to our clients.

We apply the same level of thought and quality to every aspect of our business and every process within it, whether it be the business development calls we make for ourselves, the training the team receive or the projects we undertake, holding each other accountable within his or her role.

How is quality applied today?

During the course of the last 4 years we have had to evolve and adapt to changes within the business to enable the growth & success without compromising on the quality along the way, you will understand the saying ‘what got you here won’t get you there’.

So, how does our business look now moving into 2020 and beyond?

New Starter induction training

• Any new member of our team joining the business will receive up to 4 weeks training, 2 weeks none calling making followed by a further 2 weeks undergoing training calls.
• They will be assigned a mentor selected from our senior account managers.

 Introduction of a Quality Review Team

This is managed by our very 1st team member Lisa Duvall-Brown, who has been with us since 2016, we couldn’t think of anyone better to manage this area of the business.

This new aspect of the company adds a greater level of quality assurance for our clients and partners giving them the peace of mind that all appointments scheduled, CPD’s booked and enquiries to price from our lead generation all meets these superior standards.

Advance – CRM

This is our new bespoke CRM system, this is an investment for the company and will enable the team to be even more efficient than they currently are, it will provide more detailed quality reporting to our clients, drilling down to the important information in a clear and understandable way.

In the months and years to come as we grow and build on Advance CRM it will also include live access and campaign trackers allowing for a completely transparent view on each campaign, via web and mobile app access.

Core Values that we stick to

It is true that quality is harder to manage with more people, however, not impossible.

Yes, we have changed (or as we like to call it ‘evolved’) as a business since 2016 and we have grown from a team of 4 to that of a team of 20 plus, but for the better and we have not compromised in our beliefs of ‘quality over quantity’. This has always been led by us wanting to continually be better at what we do and feedback from our clients during this period has been pivotal. “Quality” means something a little different to each client and certainly the end goals and return from our campaigns come in many ways. We make sure we take the time to listen and implement this for each campaign.   

So, when you ask us what does Quality mean to Advance, it means everything!

If you would like to discuss any our quality driven call campaigns, please feel free to drop me a line on 0151 357 2166 or email me mike@advance-tm.co.uk