Don’t overlook call quality parameters as a way to measure your success
How do you monitor call quality? Parameters on an outbound sales call aren’t always as clear cut as, “whether or not you make a sale.” And you can’t realistically monitor every single moment of every call your team makes. Nor would you want to. Why?
Imagine going to the grocery store. You have a busy night ahead and need a quick, easy dinner, so you make a short grocery list: one box of pasta, one can of sauce, some parmesan cheese, and a pint of ice cream because why not? Your “parameters” for this trip could be the entire store. You can walk through the produce section, checking to see if they have lettuce and oranges, then walk to the baking aisle to see what kind of flour is on the shelf, and, as long as your there, tour the paper aisle because it would be good to know how many rolls of paper towels are in stock.
That’s probably not what you’re doing, though. Your actual parameters are much more straightforward. You want to walk in the door, go straight to the four items you need, and get to the checkout. Do they have the pasta you want? Check. The sauce? Check. Were they easy to find? Check. Were you able to get what you wanted and get out quickly? Mostly.
Not only is that a more efficient way to measure your experience, but it’s more useful, too. If your goal is to get pasta, does it matter how many kinds of lettuce they have? That’s not to say you can’t get more specific and detailed.
Was the parmesan cheese reasonably priced? Yup. How about the ice cream? Did they have your favorite brand and flavor? Yes, they did. Did the checkout line move quickly?
And while your outgoing sales calls are very different than a trip to the grocery store, those call quality parameters can be just as focused – or they can be unfocused and unhelpful.
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The essential call quality parameters and how to monitor them (without overwhelming yourself)
Be clear on what you are monitoring
It’s evident from the grocery store example that not all call quality parameters are important. However, what precisely those parameters are is your decision. For instance, if you were making a salad, that walk through the produce section would be essential.
The same is true with calls. What, precisely, are you measuring? What are your goals? Are you trying to qualify your leads? Set up appointments? Both? Or is your campaign strategy to contact hot leads and attempt to finalize a sale? Maybe you’re monitoring customer response?
Whatever it is, design your call quality parameters around that goal, so you know how effective you and your team are.
Be clear on what constitutes success
Once you have your goals in place, the next step is to determine what you and your team need to do in order to achieve success. In one version, that may be a 10% increase in the number of voice messages you leave that result in a returned call. Or that 25% of your prospects request a follow-up email. Or that 100% of your hot leads follow through on agreeing to work with you! (We can always hope for the best, right?)
Consider also that if you aren’t reaching your goals, it’s not necessarily indicative of poor call quality. Your goals could simply be unrealistic. You aren’t going to get a 100% success rate on people returning your calls. You could, however, get a 100% success rate on getting fined if you skip the next parameter.
Be up-to-date on compliance
The fines for failing to abide by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) regulations are no joke. In 2017, one company was ordered by a federal court to pay $280 million in fines for violating the FTC’s Telemarketing Sales Rule and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act, as well as state laws. It’s safe to say you don’t want that to happen to you. And it won’t.
With carefully considered call quality parameters in place, along with the help of auto-dialing software like Call Logic, you don’t have to risk calling a wrong number. In fact, Call Logic offers real-time scrubbing of the Do Not Call list microseconds before each call. Not to brag, but we may have just saved you millions!
Be smart with your follow-up calls
The last thing you want on a call is to repeat a fact-finding mission that you’ve already gone through. Your prospect will see you as disorganized and may very well reconsider working with you. Fortunately, this is an easy issue to deal with. How?
Auto-dialing software (like Call Logic) can save all your data from previous calls, so you can pick up a conversation right where you left off. And you don’t have to go hunting for the information, either; you get a screen pop-up of your contact’s information, calendar, and call history notes.
Don’t be afraid to monitor
If you want to monitor your call quality parameters and find out how your team is doing, you will occasionally need to… what? You guessed it: monitor calls. And with auto-dialing software, you have convenient means to do just that.
You can opt to look at real-time reports, listen to live calls, or record calls and listen back later.
When you record calls, you have the opportunity to sit with your sales reps and review interactions with successful and unsuccessful calls. Find out what went wrong, what went right, and learn how to improve.
Listening to live calls gives you an instant window into how your staff is working with prospects. You can even engage in whisper coaching without being overheard by the person you’ve called.
With reports, you have relevant data such as the average talk time, how many calls your sales rep makes, progress for a specific campaign, coaching history, and more.
When you have the right systems in place, and the right technology to help, sales success is just a phone call away.
The best way to improve your selling skills is to improve your outbound calling technology. Find out how Call Logic can boost your numbers and shrink your call times by scheduling a free demo.