I have seen companies' dashboards in their CRM process detail the number of calls all the sales people have made by month, by quarter & year-to-date. The odd thing is that the sales dashboards clearly showed the individuals who made the most calls had the least sales! No appeared to care about that statistic.

Most companies keep measuring the number of calls (dials) their business development & sales people make as an indicator of future sales. In working with dozens of companies I have found there is no correlation between the number of calls a person makes & their sales success. Forcing people to do more of what doesn't work is crazy.

What is thing you can measure that will give you the best indication of future sales success?

It is simple to choose up the phone & dial a number. A person will accomplish whatever call number you give them. In case you require 60 calls in an 8-hour day you'll get 80. In case you require 60 calls in three hours you'll get 60. But with disappointing results.




Meaningful conversations with stakeholders by phone (or e mail). When I did this for a business development group they produced spectacular leads to less time. Why? When they focused on having conversations with people they did the things they needed to do to get their message relevant for the people they were targeting. They took the time to do research on the people and company they were calling on. They took the time to review the notes about the prospect in their CRM process. You took the time to set call objectives. They took the time to generate engaging emails and voicemails.

What would you have at the finish of the day? 60 calls with no progress or one conversation where a key stake holder, from an ideal target prospect, who has agreed to take the next step with you.

After each significant phone conversation with a stake holder the salesperson (or business development person) needs to send a letter summarizing their conversation with the stake holder. The summary captures what was learned about the current situation, the preferred situation, and agreed to next steps.

Set up your CRM process to offer you a dashboard that shows the number of phone and e mail conversations your sales people are having with prospects; read a sampling of the notes and or emails related to each conversation, so you can identify areas for improvement. You'll have a much better view in to how your sales people are doing.


Which salesperson are you going to bet on to accomplish or exceed their quota?

Sales success is all about gathering useful knowledge through significant conversations related to a prospect' current situation - not dials or calls. What if a salesperson has figured out the best time to call on prospects? & has a dial-to-conversation rate of 15%? What if another salesperson has not bothered to figure that out? & has a dial-to-conversation rate of 2%?

Measure significant conversations - not dials/calls.