Are Your Sales Calls Effective? Here’s How You Can Monitor Them for Effective Results

LimeCall Team

August 31, 2020
minutes to read

‘’75% of companies say their top sales priority is closing more deals.’’

But how can you close sales deals when your brand is missing out on vital steps required.

Sales is such a process that can work wonders for your brand growth and conversion rates only if you do it right, but the reason why it doesn’t happen is that we tend to miss out on vital steps under the thought that it is not necessary or under the impression that the step has no value.

Now what if you were told that if your sales calls were monitored regularly, your conversion rate could shoot up to 2x better sales results?

This statement doesn’t need statistics to prove it; instead, we want you to visualize this, imagine the number of calls you make every day, observe how many never move further than the first sales funnel, witness how the same mistakes are being repeated over every call.

Interesting Read : Top 12 sales prospecting techniques that can make you a great sales rep

Now, what would happen if you would have done the simple yet impactful job of monitoring the sales calls being made by your team?

Don’t you think that mistakes on calls would be avoided and the focus of catering to prospects would be better?

This is exactly what we want to help you in, when you search online you will get multiple articles of our competitors trying to help you make a sale which includes additional investment in software and more, what we are doing with this article is that we are helping you enhance your current sales activities so that you can perform better.

How can we help you improve your sales call performance?

1 . Describing the meaning of Sales calls monitoring

2. Giving you multiple explanations on why sales calls need to be monitored

3. Giving you tricks on how you can monitor your sales calls performance

4. Providing you with insightful statistics which will prove why sales calls are an important communication medium

5. Expert opinion on how you can conduct sales calls better in 2020

Let’s get started.


Meaning of Sales Calls Monitoring

sales call

This is what a sales funnel looks like, from contacting the prospect in the beginning stage to qualifying them, helping them, guiding them, and finally getting them to invest in your solution.

All of these actions fall under the sales call monitoring process. 

In the sales call monitoring, everything will be taken into consideration, 

  • How do your sales reps manage new and existing leads?
  • How do your sales reps deliver the quality of the sales calls being made?
  • How do your sales reps manage leads as and when they visit your website?
  • How does the sales process start?
  • Where can the sales rep improve better?
  • How are the calls taking place?
  • Where are the sales reps missing out on converting the leads?
  • How many calls are being made by sales reps each day or as per their target?

And there are more other queries that can be answered when you fully understand how your sales reps function.

This process is important because firstly sales are your number one priority and secondly if you have the opportunity to eliminate your mistakes and function better on the right route, why wouldn’t you opt for this process?

Let’s understand this better with an example:

Before Monitoring sales calls:

Adam is a potential prospect and is looking to invest in a callback solution that can give him all that he needs to tap his leads better. He comes on your website and your sales team reaches out to him, during the call, your sales rep and Adam fail to understand each other and the call drops.

Now your sales rep isn’t aware that this was the reason the call failed or rather the conversion didn’t happen, so what your sales rep will do, they will continue with the next call in a similar manner.

After monitoring sales calls:

Now you have this call details in front of you and you have discovered that the reason why the call failed was because the sales rep was busy pitching his or her sales pitch and so when Adam asked questions out of that pitch, the sales rep was lost.

Interesting Read : The Beginners Overview of What Is Inside Sales

What would you do next?

You would tell the sales rep to work on the sales pitch and use it only as a guide. You would go on to educate the sales rep on how he or she should listen more and cater to the prospects according to their needs.

The impact?

The sales rep would be able to sell better to prospects such as Adam and your conversion rates would increase simultaneously.

Let’s give you more details on why monitoring sales calls are better for your brand growth especially with the changing market in your industry.


Perks of monitoring Sales calls

1. Lets you learn better from great sales reps in the team

Now say that you have 10 sales rep working for you, out of that say 5 of them are performing better such as getting leads quicker, capturing lead attention better and are also able to convert the prospects into leads, in this case monitoring such sales rep sales calls can benefit your other average or lower-performing sales reps. 

You could capture data to see how they function, how they speak to leads, what makes leads engage with them for longer, and multiple other similar insights and share the same with your other sales rep. This will definitely make an impact on the sales call performance. 

2. A better way to teach sales reps

If someone told you that you’re doing this activity wrong, you would listen because they are correcting you on the spot, so when you repeat that action the next day, you will remember what you need to avoid, in the reference to sales calls, this example matters too. When you’re able to monitor the sales calls of your sales rep, it will help you explain to them better what they can improve upon. 

3. Assist sales reps on the spot

If a sales rep is stuck somewhere or it has issues when engaging with a lead, you can help them get assisted since you’re monitoring their calls. This will help the sales rep to learn better. 

4. Quality of sales calls will be improved

When you’re monitoring the sales calls, you are also helping your sales teams to grow better and enhance their sales actions, so when this starts to take place, the performance of your sales calls is bound to look better for your brand. 

5. Monitor team performance

With constant monitoring, you have the ability to take charge of your sales team, from improving their sales actions to ensuring that minute mistakes are eliminated, when all of this happens, your team performance is bound to be better.

6. Understand prospects better so catering to them becomes easy

With the monitoring of sales calls, you will be making an impact in your sales teams but with this, you will also be able to capture the vital information that can help you understand your prospects better such as the common issues they face, what frequent questions are being asked and more. This will help your sales rep serve them better.

Now that you have understood the purpose of why monitoring of sales calls need to take place, let’s move to helping you understand how this action can be conducted by you.


Top 12 tricks on how you can monitor your sales calls performance

1. Number of closed records as per agent and as per the team

Closed records refer to sales calls that were either lost or won. When you have this information, it lets you understand your sales team better, it gives you the image on how well your team is performing, whether the productivity level is good or bad and this can make an impact on your business growth. 

2. Calculate the conversion rates made by sales reps each and per team

Your team’s conversion rates need to be higher and when it comes to a lower figure, that means your team isn’t performing well. By monitoring the conversion rates of how much a sales rep can bring or how much your sales rep can bring in your business, calculating the figures is important. With this information, you can understand the capabilities of your team and each member and set realistic sales targets which can be achieved with ease. 

3. Identify how sales reps qualify leads

Leads are not easy to capture and when they are captured, managing them will take a lot of precision and attention. You need to ensure that your team or your sales rep is doing this right, for instance, they can’t just categorize a lead as not interested just because the lead didn’t pick their call once. Ensure your leads know when to qualify, how they should qualify, and more. This will make a difference in your sales call performance.

4. Observing the average handling time 

If you have a hot lead on the call with your sales reps and the call ends in less than 30 seconds, you have a problem, you need to understand that the average handling time of your sales reps matters because that is when you understand whether your sales reps are managing and enticing your prospect attention for longer.

The longer your prospect stays on call, the better opportunity your sales reps get to cater to them. To calculate the average handling time, divide the length of all calls by the total number of calls. 

5. Seeking the help of modern technology

You’re in a modern market where all your prospects expect faster service from your brand. If your sales teams are still using traditional technology to cater to your prospects, don’t be surprised by the reduced number of sales figures. Instead, ensure that your sales teams are always using the right technology to cater and manage the leads better.

For instance, they can make use of callback solutions as it helps prospects to connect with sales reps quicker, and managing leads becomes a lot easier. 

6. Calculating the percentage of sales calls as per the record

In this process, you will be calculating whether your sales reps are equally contributing their time to each prospect in order to capture more contact details from them. In simpler terms, getting in touch with prospects for the first time and then engaging with them again based on the sales funnel they are in. 

Interesting Read : 10 Vital Real Estate Sales Tools for Closers

7. Calculating first sales calls closed

Trying to convert your prospects into leads in the first sales call isn’t difficult when you have the practice to do it in such a manner. Recording how many of your sales reps are able to do this can help you influence your other sales reps to do in the same manner. This will help you close deals quicker and increase your conversion rates higher. 

8. Calculating the cost of one call being made

This refers to calculating the cost of one call which needs to be lower. Since the calls can get costly, it would be good if your sales reps make use of each call as a medium to engage with prospects quicker and get them to engage with your brand. 

9. Calculating average hold time

No one likes to stay on hold, especially your modern prospects who are aware that asking for a quicker service is not a bother. By calculating the average hold time, you are able to understand which reps have a higher hold time and work with them to bring the figures down.

When a prospect stays on hold for long just to be connected with your sales rep, they can either conduct a call abandonment or have a bad taste of your business in their mind, refrain this from happening by taking care of your sales reps’ hold time. To reduce hold time, you can add a voice message.

10. Calculating the number of callback messages

Giving your prospects the opportunity to engage with your sales reps later is a great way to retain the attention of such potential prospects. What happens is your prospects would be busy and staying on hold or on a long queue just to get connected isn’t what they would like hence by investing in smart solutions such as callback softwares you can get the prospects to schedule a call as per their convenient time. 

11. Calculating the after time work spent on sales reps 

The sales calls aren’t the end of the sales process, for the sales rep to engage better with leads and contact them again, they need to record all the details in the sales calls. For that, your sales team needs to have a good sales system that can help them to manage their leads better and contact them immediately all in one place. 

12. Conducting analysis of sales calls quality

The last trick you need to analyze is how your call quality is, whether your prospects are engaging in the right way for example explaining more benefits rather than just the features, whether prospects are satisfied with the answers your sales reps are giving them, and more. When your prospects are happy with the service you provide them you are aware that the call quality is going in the right direction. 

Now that you have everything you need to monitor your sales calls, we would like to share more information to make you believe why this action is required.


Top 3 statistics to make you believe that calls matter even in 2020

Calls are important and when you make them better that is when the process of sales takes place which is the main aim we want you to understand from this article. 

1. In 2007 it took 3.68 cold call attempts to reach a prospect. Today it takes 8 attempts (Slideshare)

The difference that happened here is the change in the way information is retrieved by your clients. For instance, previously, either through word of mouth or through referrals, your clients will learn about your brand. Today, your social media account will speak about your brand much louder. Right from your company description to your online reviews every information matters to your clients.

2. Nurtured leads make 47 percent larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (hubspot.com)

The more you take care of your clients, they will be interested to learn better about your brand’s solution. A well nurtured lead has been assisted well, has their queries resolved and are confident to take their next step forward.For example, Two leads have arrived on your page. You assist both the leads on time.

You conduct constant follow ups and through every communication taking place between you two, you’ve managed to build a trustful and fruitful bond with them. Since you assisted both the leads on time and was at their every call during the sales process, you were able to convert them into a sales lead much quicker.

3. Almost 90% of marketing managers claim telesales and telephone follow-up calls are an effective lead nurturing technique. (LinkedIn)

The top businesses today are the ones that started their growth with cold calling. Their clients today have a better relation with them because they were able to build that strong bond via every communication they conducted.For instance, even today when you interact with your clients on any of the platforms you use such as social media or email marketing, they will always request  to get on a call with you.

The reason lies in cold calling. It is a tool which restores human touch that is still an important factor required for a business to grow better with their clients.

Lastly, we understand that sales calls are a big thing and if done wrong it can impact brands in a huge way, while we helped you understand how you can enhance your sales calls better via monitoring, we would also like to help you do better in your job as a sales rep by sharing with you the expert opinion on how to conduct efficient sales calls.


Expert opinion on conducting result oriented sales calls in 2020

1. Mike Scher, CEO and Founder of FRONTLINE selling stated,

‘’Cold calling should be included in every sales strategy. The creation of demand is absolutely crucial, and calling is the most effective way to connect with potential clients.

Social networks and other channels of active selling are far more popular these days, but cold calling still shouldn’t be left to the wayside.

Bad cold calling results identify unprofessional managers, not inefficiency of the channel.

Cold calling should be done responsibly. That’s the core reason as to why you need to have a structure for all your selling processes. When I say everything, I mean that you have to take care of all of the processes, from information search and mailing or calling the subject, to the frequency and intervals between the contact points.

Properly written instructions of cold sales will allow managers to solve problems, correct mistakes, and easily create “appropriate” habits.

More personalized sales processes will be created if the marketing and sales flood increases in the email. The managers who mastered cold calling will be 10 steps ahead of their competitors.’’

2. Joel Goldstein, President of Mr Checkout Distributors stated,

‘’I communicate with 30 to 40 entrepreneurs a week. Those who can talk to an unknown person on the phone as if they were best friends are the most successful.

The most important skill for any good sales manager is the ability to establish contact from the very first seconds. One more important skill is the ability to listen and understand how the product may alleviate the client’s “pain”.

Don’t start by telling your potential client all about the product you offer, statistics, or facts. Let the client speak. Learn to listen, otherwise successful deals will be a stroke of luck and not a usual thing.

Include suggestive questions in your sales script. While answering them, the client should realize that your product is exactly what they need.’’


The Bottom Line…

‘’86% of buyers want to be able to ask in-person questions before buying, while 84% want to buy from someone they know and trust.’’

Be that person whom your prospects want to engage with and that can happen when you’re making your sales activities better each day by applying simple yet impactful techniques such as monitoring sales calls you make.

You have everything you need to get started, hence there is no doubt that your brand will convert into an enhanced lead generation machine that will grow your business better for the future.

If you found this article useful or would like to add more on this, we would love to hear from you, to reach out to us, all you need to do is tweet us

sales call - Limecall

, August 31, 2020, LimeCall Team

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