Just got off the call with the brilliant Peter Ostrow, Senior VP of the Aberdeen Group. Peter is a prolific writer and researches some innovative sales and marketing best practices. He noticed and asked “why isn’t anyone writing about inside sales?” so he decided to put together a very important study which benchmarks inside sales.
Aberdeen is sponsoring this highly popular Inside Sales Enablement Benchmark Study and this morning, Peter shared some of the early findings with the vendor community. The final report will be released in early January so there is still time to participate in this survey. Even if your inside organization is different from the rest (that’s what they always say) it’s still valuable to learn what others are doing in your space.
I was so surprised by one finding that inside sales teams are dialing more but connecting less? What is the deal? Is this what our Sales 2.0 world is leading to? Well, I’m not surprised as I’ve known call activity is low all over the board and have noticed that it is being replaced by email. But this finding is about dialing more but not getting live voices.
These are my reasons why people are connecting less:
1. Addicted to my dialer enhancer- Inside sales need enhancers to make more dials and some of my clients are addicted to the ConnectAndSell tool - the only times they dial is when the tool dials for them because this tool guarentees live connects.
2. Press 0 and # keys- Automated receptionists, complicated prompts, caller ID’s- everyone is using technology to keep people out. Get out of automated hell- press keys to get to a live voice.
3. No Sales Intelligence- It’s a proven fact the more time you take to do your homework and research your prospect, the better chance you have of connecting with them. Speaking of Sales Intelligence tools, I will be partnering with InsideView on December 3rd for a killer webinar- stay tuned.
4. Demotivating Metrics- The stubborn inside sales organizations who still impose some hard core metrics like 75+ outbound calls per day and measure dials are leading these freaked out and paranoid inside team members to dial up their room-mates, their moms, sisters and plan their next bike marathon.
5. Email follow-up- Many of you hear me talk about the Dynamic Duo which means all phone efforts must be supported with simultaneous email communications. I’m doing the circuit on this topic and here is my recent interview with B2B Power Exchange and my next one with Chris Bjorklund with AllBusiness on November 9th.
What do you think is the reason people are dialing more and connecting less?
1 Comment
[...] Dialing More but Connecting Less- The phone is no longer the primary tool simply because there are more tools to choose from and we are selling to a busy, distracted, slipper audience who tend to view the phone as an interruption. [...]