There are dozens of cold call metrics you could explore. Here are the three that actually make a difference to your business.

Whether you’re running a large call center or you’re an independent insurance agency, you want to make the most of your calls. One of the simplest ways to get better is to look at your metrics to see what’s working and what could use some improvement. The problem? There is an overwhelming amount of cold call metrics you can explore. 

Which ones should you worry about? What’s more important–longer or shorter calls? Does it matter how many messages you leave? Is a conversion rate even that big of a deal as long as you hit your numbers? 

A few cold call metrics and a little knowledge can give you a ton of helpful information. 

Maintain customer profiles, automate processes, and reach more customers with Call Logic’s call management software. Check out a free demo to see what we’re all about!

These are the cold call metrics you can’t ignore

Before we dive in, let’s answer those previous questions. Depending on what you’re looking for, different cold call metrics could be more or less meaningful for you. For example, while there is a lot of emphasis on short call times in many call centers, you may want and need longer call times to close deals if you’re selling high-ticket items. And those messages? You absolutely should be leaving messages, but you also don’t need to spend a lot of time on them. If you have the right dialing software, you can use voicemail drop to move on to another call while the software leaves a message for you. 

Conversion rate? That’s one of the cold call metrics that can impact your success for several reasons. Let’s take a look.

1. Conversion rate. Your conversion rate is the ratio of the number of calls you make to the number of people who follow through with your desired outcome. It’s not specifically about sales, though. If your goal is to set up meetings, your conversion rate would depend on how many meetings you set up. 

Why is this important? Your conversion rate is one of the cold call metrics that’s loaded with information. For example, let’s say you run an A/B test on two different cold call scripts. When you test script A, you connect with and talk to 100 people, and 10 of them agree to a meeting. That’s a 10% conversion rate. When you run script B, you find that 10 people out of 50 connections agree to a meeting. With a 20% conversion rate, script B is clearly the winner. 

There’s more, though. You can look at the conversion rate for different days to determine if there is an ideal day for your business to make cold calls. If one agent has a much higher conversion rate than anyone else, you can listen back to the recordings of their calls to find out what they’re doing differently than others. 

Your conversion rate can also tell you if you’re connecting with the right people. Targeted calling will always give you a higher conversion rate than just randomly dialing numbers out of the phone book, but even within that, you may need to narrow or change your audience. 

Be aware, however, that it’s important to step back and look at your conversion rate over time, too. It’s one thing to set up a meeting in one phone call, but high-priced services or complex software sales and other, more complicated products will likely require several calls. Just because you don’t convert a prospect on the first call doesn’t mean you haven’t made progress.

2. Call time. Call time is one of those tricky cold call metrics that can be quite deceptive taken out of context. If you leave a lot of voicemails, your overall call time will go down (assuming you have a voicemail drop option). You may want to consider these calls if you’re trying to determine how much overall time you spend making calls compared to how many sales go through. If you’re more interested in how much time you spend talking to a decision-maker, you may want to omit the voicemail calls, but consider adding in the time you spend talking to people who return your calls. 

One place that call time can be helpful is in determining how much of a hook your opening has. A high percentage of short call times may indicate that your introduction needs some work. On the other hand, longer talk times that don’t lead to a goal (either an eventual sale, meeting, donation, or whatever your desired outcome is) could indicate that you don’t have a compelling call to action. 

3. Follow-up calls. It’s hard to overstate the importance of these calls. In most cases, you’ll need to call a lead multiple times to get through and connect with them. Add these calls to your calendar, so you don’t forget to call back, but also because you don’t want to inundate your prospect with call after call after call. 

Beyond just the number of calls you make, however, you can also look at the eventual conversion rate of these calls, the time you or your team is putting into follow-ups, and the revenue generated by these calls. 

Again, there are other cold call metrics you can track. If you have to choose, though, these three can give you a phenomenal amount of information. 

Just remember to look at these and other metrics holistically. Look at patterns and numbers over the course of a week, a month, or even a quarter. You may be surprised by what you discover. 

Make more calls in less time with Call Logic. From client profile management to automated voicemails to built-in compliance, we’ve got you covered in every aspect of your business. Schedule a free demo today to learn more!