5 Secrets To Successful Sales Call Frequency In Salesforce
Last week we explained how Tony Richards now creates effective Call Lists in salesforce.
But who should Tony and his team call? And when?
In other words, how should Tony manage call frequency?
The answer is that Tony manages sales call frequency in salesforce. Here’s how he does that.
1. Territory Management Sales Call Frequency
We often start with good intentions.
We’ll call this customer once a week. This one, once a month. And this one, once a quarter.
However, those best of intentions can quickly go out of the window.
We lose track of which Accounts to call and when.
Consequently, it quickly becomes impossible to track whether our team is adhering to the call frequency plan.
Let’s say you are a medical equipment provider and have 2,000 dental customers in your territory. It’s not possible to visit them all. Even if you could, it would not be an effective use of time and effort.
Zimmer Biomet is a world-class leader in the manufacture of medical devices and consumables. Like many companies, they have an Inside Account Management team to look after these relationships.
Here’s how they manage sales call frequency in salesforce.
A field on the Account, Call Frequency, defines how often the customer or prospect is be called. The options are weekly, monthly, fortnightly, quarterly, six monthly and annual.
After each call, the Inside Account Manager logs a phone call or web meeting activity in salesforce. The Next Activity Due Date populates automatically, based on the Call Frequency picklist.
In other words, Zimmer Biomet drives the process by calling customers and prospects at the right time using a small amount of automation.
To increase productivity, the team use the Sales Console to create their Call Lists.
Reports and dashboard charts provide team leaders and managers with robust information on the number of calls made; and the number due to made.
Here’s the result:
Inside Account Management team focus on what people do best – delivering high quality, value-adding calls to customers and prospects.
Superb Pipeline Visibility and Sales
Performance Metrics from this free Dashboard.
2. Sales Call Frequency on Campaigns
Get the sales call frequency right on Campaigns means you significantly improve marketing return-on-investment.
For example, let’s say you’re running an event or a webinar. You have a list of people that have expressed interest in the topic. Perhaps they downloaded an eBook or whitepaper previously. Or the event relates to products and services they have already bought.
There are four points in the process at which you might make a phone call.
- To invitees. After you have sent the invitation email, you make a follow up call to the customer.
- To registrants. You make a pre-event call. Remind the people that have registered of the details, find out if they have any specific issues they would like the event to address.
- To attendees. After the event, you follow up with everyone that attended.
- To no shows. After the event, you follow up with everyone that said they would come, but didn’t turn up.
The secret to managing this sales call frequency is Campaign Members.
Think about this for a moment:
The relationship between an individual person and your event changes over time. For example, you might define the following relationships:
- Not Sent. You have identified the person as a potential attendee, but not sent the invite.
- Sent. Invitation sent to the customer.
- Attending. The person has registered to attend.
- Attended. The person came to your event.
- No Show. They registered, but didn’t show up on the day.
- Declined. She wanted to come, but said in advance she couldn’t make it on the day.
- Unsubscribed. “Don’t bother me with this sort of thing again!”
To get the right sales call frequency, you need a list of people that are in each category at any point in time.
In other words, you need people whose relationship with the event is currently either Sent, Attending, Attended or No Show.
Use the Campaign Members function to create the relevant call lists.
In the Classic salesforce user interface, you set these Status values by clicking on the Advanced Setup button on the Campaign.
Instructions for managing Campaign Member Status in Lightning can be found here.
Use Campaign Members to manage sales call frequency in salesforce. This little-known gem is the hidden secret to radically improving your marketing ROI.
“Let the sales people do what they do best – delivering high quality, value-adding calls to customers and prospects. Let the system do what it does best – automating the process.”
3. Sales Call Frequency To Follow Up Promises
We frequently make promises when we have a phone conversation.
We promise to the customer that we will call back at a certain time. Or we promise to ourselves that we’ll circle back on a given day.
Fulfilling these promises means managing our sales call frequency effectively.
The best way to start this process is to use the Log A Call button.
The Log A Call button lets you do two things.
- Make a note on the conversation you’ve just had.
- Create a follow up Task.
So far so good.
However, how do you manage call frequency based on these promised, future actions?
The secret is to work from your Home page.
The Home page lists the calls you have promised to make. Use the filter on the right to list these calls for specific periods.
The Home page is a simple but effective way to manage your sales call frequency and keep your promises.
4. Sales Call Frequency On Pipeline Opportunities
Sometimes there’s no substitute for getting on the phone and following up your open opportunities.
So how do you manage sales call frequency on these opportunities?
Simple.
Create a List View on Opportunities. Include a filter on the Close Date. For example, Close Date equals This Month.
Next, manage your sales call frequency in the Sales Console.
The Sales Console allows salespeople to open multiple mini-tabs. This remains open whilst they make attempts through the morning to contact the prospect. Have the conversation, use the Log-A-Call button to make notes and create the follow-up Task. Then close the mini-tab.
5. Sales Call Frequency By Cherry Picking Leads
Many businesses have a large volume of Leads. It’s impossible to call them all.
So which fit into your sales call frequency plan?
The (ideal) secret to managing sales call frequency on new Leads is to use a marketing automation tool such as Marketo or Pardot.
These applications have advanced lead scoring, nurturing and tracking capabilities. This means they enable sophisticated sales call frequency plans to be created. Base these on the extent to which your lead has interacted with your web site, marketing campaigns and other activities.
However, if you don’t have an advanced marketing automation tool then try the next level down.
Many mass email tools such as DotMailer have robust integration with salesforce. Create your sales call frequency plan based on whether the lead opened your email and clicked through to the web site.
Even if you don’t have a mass email application, you can still manage call frequency in salesforce. For example, create a Call List that identifies everyone that downloaded an eBook or whitepaper.
So, we’ve explained Tony’s 5 secrets to effective sales call frequency in salesforce.
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