3 Things That Limit The Number Of Calls Insides Sales Reps Make
Posted by
Chris Lang on Thu, Feb 10, 2024 @ 04:34 PM
When it comes to getting ready and getting out the door, I am the slowest person in the world. It drives my wife crazy. I get distracted by side projects all the time when all I should be doing is putting on my shoes, brushing my teeth and getting out the door. “Ok just have to brush my teeth and I’m all set…..wait….this medicine cabinet is so disorganized. I’ll just clean it out real quick. Ugh, the stupid tooth paste got on the shelf; I’ll just clean it off. Hey, the shelf is crooked…where are my tools?” Before you know it the toilet is off its bolts and in the hallway, there’s water everywhere, the bathroom door is sawed in half and my teeth aren’t brushed. None of the projects get finished and I’m late and unprepared for whatever I am doing. The same thing happens with inside sales teams when they are trying to make calls. Here are a couple of time killers to keep an eye out for.
Little Distractions: Distractions happen and there is nothing you can do about it. Since I began writing this blog I have gone to the bathroom three times, thrown a football around, run a sales call, made some tea and ate Tara’s last 100 Grand Bar (which was delicious). To combat this, set certain times throughout the day and make them call only hours. I suggest having 3 – 4 hours of this. During that time reps aren’t allowed to research companies, go on Facebook, have company meetings, or eat 100 Grand Bars. I would bet that just doing this step alone will drastically raise your call number.
Research: How much do you really need to know about a prospect to get some basic qualification information? A lot of people think you need to know a lot. They research the management team, recent acquisitions/mergers, product information, and stock price and before you know it they’re looking at information that they will never need on a qualification call. You don’t need to know that Bob likes long walks on the beach and 80’s hair bands, just ask if he is responsible for network security issues. I understand wanting to know what your prospect does before you call them, but avoid prospect stalking. The more time you use researching, the less time you have calling. I would take 100 dials with enough research versus 30 well researched calls any day.
Side Projects: I used to love it when a manager would give me a side project, any side project at all. Hell if the month were bad enough I’d clean toilets rather than get on the phone and get beat up again. I could make a side project that should take 5 minutes turn into an hour easily. I was like a mechanic on an oil change job. “Hey the oil needs to be done, but your whole (insert car part name) is shot too, that’s going to take a while”. The goal was to make the job bigger than it was so that I wouldn’t have to go back to the much harder task of cold calling. A lot of inside reps do this very same thing. Managers should remember that their inside team shouldn’t be running reports, doing analysis or anything else that isn’t going to directly add to their pipeline. Don’t give your inside team any tasks that will pull them away from the phones. You may be swamped, but you can’t load managerial tasks on them to help yourself.
If you follow these steps, your reps shouldn’t have a problem making about 100 activities per day with 75 of them being calls and about 25 emails.