What are your ratios?
Telesales is a numbers game, the more calls you dial the more sales you will close. No disputing that. It’s the same with appointment setting. The more people you phone the more appointments you will set. It’s not rocket science is it? Yet who knows the number of calls they have to dial on average to close a sale or get an appointment?
How many calls do you dial in an hour? How many contacts do you make? How many voice mails do you reach? How many invalid numbers? Out of the people you speak to in an hour how many genuine conversations do you have that might lead to something?
Do you know your numbers? What are your ratios? If you don’t know them then I encourage you to keep track of your calls during the next week and find out what they are.
To do this just take a piece of paper, draw some columns down it depending on what information you want to record then each time you finish up a call add a stroke under the appropriate column and keep a tally. For starters I would suggest the following columns:
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By positive final outcomes I mean if you are making sales calls then the number of sales closed, if its appointment setting then appointments made, if it’s to send out further information then information packs sent out, if surveys then surveys taken, and so on.
You may also like to record tallies for non-positive final outcomes such as ‘Not interested’, ‘Already have one’, ‘Can’t afford one’. Down track we’ll look at this type of response in more detail but the more information you have as to why people are not responding positively then the better you will be able to fine tune your script and perhaps if appropriate the product or service you offer. Oh and don’t forget to record the date and the start and stop times of each calling session.
Some of you will have been tracking this sort of information for years. If that’s you, what other comments on the topic can you make? What are you ratios like? On the other hand if this is new to you then please give us your feedback, what did you learn about your ratios when you took note of them? How many calls do you make to close a deal?
