What is outbound call tracking? Simply put, it is technology that allows managers to track and record all of their outgoing sales calls to prospects. Traditionally this has been used primarily to simply keep sales staff accountable for making the required number of outbound calls every day. I wrote an article last year detailing the correlation between outbound call placed and appointments set for a dealership group. So, I won’t belabor the point here, let’s just all agree – CALLING PROSPECTS SELLS CARS (or whatever it is you are trying to sell).
But what does that look like in real life? How is it being used? Pretty simple, Salesman Sam is supposed to make 20 calls today, so before he checks out for the day, I look at his report for the day in CRM and make sure he got his counts. Are there 20 calls? Great, you can go home for the day. But wait!? How many people did he talk to? What does 20 outbound calls really mean? We built Outbound Humanatic to answer that question. As it turns out, the data shows that the average success rate for reaching the intended party is just under 20%. So those 20 calls that Sam placed? If he was having an average day he really only talked to four people! All of the sudden the 200 calls that Sam placed last week doesn’t sound quite as impressive when you realize that he only spoke to 38 of the people he was trying to reach.
So, this is good information, but WHAT DO YOU DO WITH IT? A dealership in North Carolina figured out exactly how to use it. Their GM caught on to what this data meant immediately and he made a very simple change. All he did was change the checkout metric. He told Sam that he didn’t care how many calls he placed, he would just hold him accountable for the number of people he actually talked to. So now to check out Sam has to have talked to 8 people every day instead of just place 20 calls. So, what happened? Something quite amazing actually. The success rate at that store for outbound sales calls jumped dramatically as Sam realized that he needed to actually connect with his targets vs. just log calls. The entire sales staff success rate basically doubled in just a month. The report below shows the results.
Think about that for a second. Without adding a single sales associate or working one hour longer, this GM doubled the number of prospects that he his sales staff was talking to every month be simply changing a metric. Nothing else! Don’t miss this: BY SIMPLY CHANGING THE METRIC OF IMPORTANCE THIS DEALERSHIP IS SELLING MORE CALLS. Sam went from talking to four people a day to talking to eight people every day by just being more intentional about when he called. It doesn’t mean that all of the sudden he needed to place 40 calls; he just has to pay attention to when he is having the most success in reaching his intended party. The Hawthorne Effect teaches us that what gets measured, gets improved. So start measuring the calls that matter. Go beyond just counting calls and use Humanatic to track the calls that count. Humanatic gives you the power to focus on the important calls. All of the sudden listening to your sales staff outbound calls isn’t such a burden, because you can run a report that only includes those calls where the salesperson reached his intended target. By spending 15 minutes a day listening to a few of these calls, you will always stay in tune with your sales staff’s phone performance and keep them accountable to your standard. That’s useable data. Got questions? Give us a call and we’ll get you started watching the data that mattered.
Tags: call tracking, car dealership, measurement, outbound call tracking