March 14th – or 3.14 – it’s international Pi day!
In mathematics, Pi is a constant, representing the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter. However, this is not a math lesson—it is a lesson in sales intelligence. What do Pi and sales intelligence data have in common? Consistency.
When we think constant in sales, what we want to see is a consistent performance by sales reps. Call activity data in the form numbers provides the insights to ensure your reps are performing to a standard. Further, just as Pi is constant no matter the size of a circle, sales intelligence has proven to consistently improve the performance of sales teams both large and small.
Data-Driven Insights
To demonstrate this, let’s start with some call activity pie charts—pun intended.
This widget measures the volume of inbound and outbound calls going in and out of your organization, office, or team for a given period. Using this data is the first step for sales leaders to gain insight into the call activity of their teams or branches.
From there, having accurate numbers in real-time, right at your fingertips is a manager’s best tool for making improvements across their teams and ensuring consistent performance. Diving deeper into this data, managers can determine if reps are making the right amount of calls, if they are calling the right people, and so on.
Optimized Call Results
Looking at call results gives managers the tools they need to increase their team’s numbers and establish consistent, successful patterns of behavior. This widget shows the status of phone calls for a given time frame, and it shows the outcome of each call including set appointment, left voice message, not interested, and more.
Over the years we have learned that whether you are managing your own leads or an entire sales team, tagging the outcome of each call provides a quantified analysis of effectiveness. Only a consistent lead follow-up process can drive higher activity and better conversion rates. Further, a high level of activity (outbound calls) that leads to disappointing results can alert sales managers of systemic issues.
In addition, this widget shows the status of phone calls for a given timeframe and shows three different call statuses: Contact, No Contact, or Blocked.
To optimize calling results, your organization can set a duration threshold that determines whether a phone call should be considered a contact. For example, an organization that sets the contact duration threshold to 30 seconds will consider only phone calls that last at least 30 seconds as a contact, indicating that progress may have been made on the phone call.
Having access and customizable control of this data ensures that rep performance is accurately measured. Managers no longer must rely on manually input, estimated data to see who is achieving success over the phone, and where improvement is needed. In addition, customizable data not only makes it easier for managers to coach their reps towards consistent, successful behavior but also allows reps to see exactly where they can improve as they can access the data as well. This tends to foster healthy competition and give reps the motivation to get their numbers up.
After having access to this data and identifying areas of success or improvement, managers can set realistic and effective goals to improve the overall performance of their reps, teams, and even branches, no matter how many there are.
The Numbers That Matter
When it comes to Pi and sales intelligence, the numbers are truly significant. However, unlike Pi, which has no repetition or sequence pattern, the aim of sales intelligence is to determine a pattern of behavior of your reps by using data. From there, managers can either recognize consistent successful behavior or coach reps to improve performance and establish a pattern of success.
Further, Pi may be an irrational number, but sales intelligence is based on rationality. Call activity data is the most accurate way to manage the performance of reps, and sales intelligence is a manager’s best tool for doing so.