One of the best features of being a professional seller is that small, incremental improvements in your execution can result in significant increases in your results—and in your personal income. So, it makes a lot of sense to measure everything you
do and compare it to industry norms so that you can judge how you are doing and make improvements where necessary.
As far as prospecting is concerned, the key ratios to measure are as follows:
❏ Completed calls to dials ❏ Meetings to completed calls ❏ Opportunities to meetings
I have studied these ratios over many years and Figure 4.4 presents my results. While these results may seem impressive, keep in mind that these are the results of sales professionals who have worked with us for relatively long periods of time (4 to 6 months per person). I am not sharing these results to brag about the success of our program but, rather, to allow you to benchmark your prospecting skills against those of high- performing sales professionals.
Keep in mind also that our client base is skewed to-
FIGURE 4.4 Key Prospecting Ratio—Overall
Completed calls to dials 40%
Ratios Norm
Meetings to completed calls 49% Opportunities to meetings 50%
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ward larger, global corporations, though the results also reflect smaller, local corporations. Sellers in many large corporations have the advantage of working under the umbrella of a global brand, and global brand recognition can do nothing but help your prospecting efforts. If you work in a local corporation, with- out the benefit of a global brand, consider scaling the results down by 20 percent. These new results are presented in Figure 4.5.
To compare your results to those in either Figure 4.4 or Fig- ure 4.5, track your results over a relatively long period of time. It can be misleading to compare your results for a single week to those provided here, for example. At the least, record your re- sults for one entire quarter, if not longer, before making any comparisons. Using results for an entire quarter or longer you average away any unusual events that might have been tempo- rary setbacks.
Remember that you compare your results to the benchmarks for remedial purposes. Underperformance in any of these areas
FIGURE 4.5 Key Prospecting Ratios for Non-Branded Companies
Completed calls to dials 32%
Ratios Norm
Meetings to completed calls 39% Opportunities to meetings 40%
has specific diagnoses and corrective paths. On the other hand, overperformance should lead you to understand that you are doing something special. If this is the case, try to understand what it is so you can replicate it and also share it with others in your company.
If your ratio of completed calls to dials is consistently less than 25 percent, there are two remedies. First, check the times that you are calling; they may not be prime prospecting times. In the United States, prime prospecting times are before work (i.e., before 9:00 am), during lunch (i.e., 12:00–2:00 pm), and late afternoon extending into after work (i.e., 4:00–6:30 pm). However, best times vary by region and culture. In certain cul- tures, businesspeople take an extended lunch and often work much later into the evening. In other cultures, mornings start much later. To determine what prospecting times are best for your business, track the ratio of completed calls to dials by hour for several weeks. The hours with the highest ratio of completed calls to dials are prime times for you.
Types of Completed Calls
Relevant to this matter of prospecting ratios is the definition of a completed call. Completed calls can take place in two different ways. The first is when you call a prospect and the individual happens to pick up the phone (a ‘‘call out’’). These calls most likely occur during prime calling times. The second is when you leave a message, and the message has such an impact that it motivates the prospect to call you back (a ‘‘call back’’). To count these as completed calls, you must speak to the prospect when he or she calls you back. If they are motivated enough to leave you a message on voice mail, though, assume that you will even- tually speak with the prospect in the near future and count this as a completed call as well.
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The call back is the more likely result than the call out. The success of call outs directly relates to the quality of the message you leave. By quality, I mean the potential impact on the pros- pect’s business of the issue you cite in your message. If the ratio of your completed calls to dials is less than 25 percent, consider reviewing your script.
The only significant difference between the script you use for leaving a voice-mail message and a completed call is that you omit the trivial, ice-breaking question at the beginning and make a few other minor changes to accommodate the fact that you are leaving a message and not speaking to the prospect. A voice-mail script based on Figure 4.2 is presented in Figure 4.6.
The Invitation to a Meeting
The second ratio in the prospecting benchmarks is that of meet- ings to completed calls. Figure 4.4 suggests that this should be 49 percent. Figure 4.5 suggests that this ratio should be 25 per- cent for less branded companies. If your results are less than expected, there are again two diagnostic procedures you can em- ploy to improve your results.
FIGURE 4.6 A Voice-Mail Prospecting Script
Hello, Bob. This is Paul Goldner of the Sales & Performance Group. The reason I am calling is that we are seeing an interesting trend in the market. One of the chief concerns we are hearing from others in your position is the need to improve sales and sales margins while minimizing the opportunity cost of taking sales people out of the field. I was wondering if this is the same issue impacting your business or are there other more pressing concerns? As you might imagine, we have been very successful in helping companies like yours overcome issues similar to these. I'm going to be in your area next Tuesday and would like to stop by and introduce myself. Please let me know if you are available at 3:00. I can be reached at XXX-XXX-XXXX.
This ratio reflects the quality of your customer interaction once the prospect starts talking to you. The first way to improve your results is to improve your basic script. Another way is to check your objection-handling skills. Since this topic is dis- cussed in Chapter 6, let’s defer the discussion on how to imple- ment this improvement until then.
The Opportunity Realized
The final ratio in the benchmarking process is the relationship between your meetings and the opportunities for making a sale. Here, the big area for improvement resides in the sales discov- ery process, which is the focus of Chapter 5—so again, we wait to show how to improve in this crucial area.