Telesales targets advice

[RebeccaD]

Hi,

We have a telesales professional working for us (contracter) to get us appointments and sales. They are doing around 6-8 days of work for us per month.This is not something we have a lot of experience in. Given that we are in the training sector, they are working with an excel spreadsheet of contacts (some of which are warm leads) and the sales value is around £4000. What are reasonable targets to set for:

• the number of calls per day/month
• the number of actual conversations per day/month
  
• the number of appointments per day/month
• the number of sales per day/month

I'd appreciate any thoughts.

Thanks,

Rebecca

 

[HazelC]

just be careful re: number of calls as you could spend all day on the phone and get answer machines or 'gate keepers' - are these still classed as calls? Hard to set targets for that - and then if you have a good 'actual' conversation that could take 45mins and you'll do less calls?

(sorry to not help and just make it more tricky :s)

 

[Rebecca Walton]

Having worked in telesales before I would say this:
Only set targets for leads (appointments) and actual sales.

As Hazel said above, there are too many 'what ifs' when it comes to setting call and time limits. Most sales people like to work at their own pace and on their own schedule. If they only make 3 calls a day but are making 2/3 sales, then that's an effective use of their time. They're taking the time to get to know the customer and make a proper sale. All of this 'call, hang up, call hang up' mindset will get a salesperson (and your business) nowhere. It's good to put a bit of pressure on a salesperson, as that's how they thrive. However, telling them they have to make x amount of calls, lasting x minutes each, is unnecessary pressure.

Think of it this way:
How much do you pay them in total for the month? What ROI would you like to get from them? Perhaps set them a target for the first month and then talk to them afterwards. How did they feel it went? Was the target too high or too low? If they're a professional, they should be able to give you some good feedback on how the first month went.

 

[Bruceflea]

Hi RebeccaD, some good points above and I'll throw my opinion in as well as I used to manage a telesales team booking appointments for telecoms & vehicle tracking.

Generally when I had a new start I gave them 2-3 months without sales targets as they were building and cleansing their database. Within this period, they were expected to get 30-40 leads per day added to their base. 'Leads' were classed as useful information e.g. DM name, current supplier, out of contract dates etc. 3 months was generally enough to have a base of 'leads' of 1500-2000 companies who they could call and have proper conversations with as opposed to cold calling.

After 3 months I was expected 5 appointments set per week. I generally worked off this that 1 would blow out and 1 would be a non-viable appointment so we would get 3 good sales meetings for the reps. I personally targeted on the meetings sat per week and the appointments booked. It was more important for me to target on those sat as if you target purely on the booked, then you generally get loose appointments and the quality drops but if they knew they were being targeted on the quality of sat appointments, attitudes quickly changed to match this.

I only ever started targeting staff on input e.g. number of calls made, amount of call time etc. if they were not achieving their targets for sat & booked appointments. To give you an idea of those targets if they weren't achieving main targets, I expected 80-100 dials (account for gate keepers/ answer machines etc.) and 2 hours plus of call time.

it is hard to say how many appointments per day you should expect as it is all down to the base they are working off along with their own particular skills. When I did the job I managed eventually, I was capable of booking 3-5 meetings per day and having 15+ appointments sat that were sales meetings. That being said, I was one of the first in the business and worked hard to create a good, clean database of companies.

My best member of staff would have booked about 15-20 appointments per week making about 60 calls per day on average. At the other end of the scale, we had a guy who would make about the same amount of calls book 10 appointments per week max but the quality of those appointments were great meaning he had about the same sales conversion as the guy booking double the amount of meetings.

I generally expected 10 appointments per week booked and 5-7 sales meetings sat. As I mentioned, a lot of what results are achieved are depending on the database they are working from and how good the telesales person is.

Feel free to message me if there is anything else I can help you with.

 

[Scott@KarmaContent]

I've managed telesales teams and that's great advice from @Bruceflea above.

One of the issues I've come across before when telesales staff are making direct sales and booking appointments for reps is you have to ensure that there isn't a clash of priorities. One company I worked for targeted telesales reps on both appointments and direct sales. Absolutely fine, except that regarding appointments made by telesales reps, the external rep got all the commission and the internal sales rep got none. Result? Not very many appointments were made! As soon as I change this...BOOM! More appointments, more sales and everyone getting more commission.

Do everything you can to ensure internal and external reps work together and you'll see big benefits.

 

[MBPH]

Remember it's a contact game! I've just spent an 1 and a half hours calling. I made around 100 calls probably got through to about 25% I got 20 leads. The more calls made the more leads, simple really.

 

[Deleted member 244558]

I have a Telesales team who are making 60+ calls per day per individual and booking 1-2 meetings per week, this is acceptable in my industry (IT's a tough one) We are working from a CRM. What really helped recently was spending lots of time identifying our specific target market, so more time has been spent on research, this has obviously had a knock on effect of quality meetings and conversions.

Personally I rather someone spend 1- 2 hours a day cleansing and researching decision makers, (Risk Disc) credit scoring making sure the quality is there.

Theres lots of criterion so it depends on your industry, I would say don't get caught up in the numbers game as quality over quantity always wins.

I hope that helps.

 

[Ahmed Patel]

We are in the utilities & telecoms industry, currently finding it difficult to get sales from cold calling, we found that direct mail is much more effective nevertheless sometimes it just depends on the salesperson, they have to have the 'gift of the gob'. Our team members each make an average of 50 calls a day from which they get 10 leads i.e. useful information like contract end dates etc, out of which maybe converting around 2/10 into sales.

We found that pestering businesses will not get you anywhere i.e. email them after the first initial phone call and keep a balance between staying actively on top of the sale but be carefully not to bombard them with cold calling.

Some really great info here, thanks all you guys

 

[kate1]

Hi Rebecca, what is it you are selling?

 

[MBPH]

I think the days of selling over the phone are over! A combination of so much info on Google etc and the blasted PPI hammering people! I use cold calling for a quick intro and to see if they would like some info sending. Most say yes, as they have nothing to lose, and those who say nod, you're never going to close then anyway so what's the point! I then follow it with a visit to better explain even though I said the info was going in the post, I make some excuse that I was in the area etc. I can then better explain the service, and close the easy people. Those who aren't so easy get a phone call a day later and then get hammered until they buy or die.

You see the thing is because they've said yes to the info getting sent they've opened themselves up to be closed, you know they are closable! Make your job east instead of trying to hammer people who would never have bought in the first place

 

[Bruceflea]

I'd disagree with you @MBPH with regards to selling over the phone being a thing of the past however I would say that it is totally dependent on the industry and what you are selling. The likes of telecoms companies are still doing very well at this particularly B2B. The company I used to work for are based in Northern Ireland but have a team of about 25 selling mobile and landline deals over the phone to businesses based in England and doing seriously well at that.

 

[MBPH]

That's great but at a guess I'm saying I bet the people buying aren't buying cold?

 

[GRDCredit]

Remember it's a contact game! I've just spent an 1 and a half hours calling. I made around 100 calls probably got through to about 25% I got 20 leads. The more calls made the more leads, simple really.

Sorry - cant let this go.
In 90 minutes you made 100 calls?

Really?

 

[MBPH]

Yep. No rest call hang up, call hang up. You see it was a qualifying call. Even the people who requested more information I was only on the phone 2 max!

 

[beasty]

When doing telesales or any sale you do not think about the MONTH you think about right now, you cannot focus on a MONTH only the sale you are doing.

Short term focus is very useful in high volume sales environments

Mini targets, like USE THIS KEY PHRASE (I am not sure if I could but if i could would you) on every call in the next 30 minutes (Or to anyone that complains on price lets say)

Or a sales target for 2 hours that doubles commission for the winning rep or something useful

First person to get 3 in a row wins something (Or appropriate number)

Anyone that can top their previous best for an hour gets a bonus (Pushing their focus to the max)

Doing this will push callers in subtle ways beyond the obvious, they will try and use the killer phrase (Means they will not quit when someone says no and they should convert more too)
people are only good for about 2 hours real focus before they fade, try that and see what miracles they produce! It lets them KNOW what they can do when they go flat out..

Monthly targets should fall down as a result of good daily management, the only real target that actually matters is how much profit did they secure for the business.

Number of calls is an irrelevant measure or at least very unimportant, more important is the telephone DOWN time, i.e. the number of minutes per hour that phone was not being used, you should be able to track call average durations and so on to understand the people that are just dialling and hanging up.

My advice, is keep any targets and incentives short as telesales is a fast moving environment and if they are expected to get a sale NOW then you should focus on the NOW

 

[MBPH]

It may depend on the area Beasty, but round these parts (Yorkshire) the ones who do answer most of the time don't let you get into your presentation, never mind a sale.