Are sales call logs worth it? 15 things you can learn from it

Have you ever wondered why people keep scores?

I mean, after a team (or person) has won, what’s the point of logging all that data, right?

Of course, wrong!

There’s a point behind it and we all know it as well –– history teaches!

And when it comes to numbers, history manifests itself in the form of trends.

Statistics is what turns the whole world’s decision-making.

Sales call logs are no different –– if only you know where to look!

Your sales call logs are a treasure trove of valuable data and trends. By learning to harvest the key data points from your call logs, you can maximize efficiency, optimize your overall calling strategies, and get a data-based grasp on what it takes to qualify a lead.

Here’s a list of key metrics from your sales call logs you should be looking at, and what they tell you about your sales process and efficiency.

In this article:

• Quality of your pipeline
• Quality of your calls
• Optimizing your sales call strategy
• Please, don’t waste your time logging
• So, what can you do next?

Quality of your pipeline

Calling any number for the sake of hitting a call dial target is a sheer waste of effort. A simple reason behind it could be a poor prospect pipeline.

This negatively affects your call-to-conversation ratio. Also, it lengthens the sales process and is a complete waste of your sales resources’ time.

How do you know where exactly the glitch lies and what needs fixing?

By looking at sales call logs of your team, you can quickly do a quality check for your customer contact list:

• How many answered vs. unanswered calls? And how many of these calls land in voicemails that never get returned?
• How many dead-ends (not interested in buying ever) candidates in your contact list?
• How many completely wrong (or outdated) contacts details? Is the pipeline as good as it looks? Or is it just old numbers that have no value? –– data will tell immediately.
• How long before you disqualify a lead? As per industry numbers, it takes about 18 calls to reach the right person. However, your baseline could be different. Even your best sales reps can benefit from a better understanding of when to cut bait on a shaky lead.

All the above data will finally solve one of the greatest mysteries of sales calling –– knowing when to pursue and when to stop chasing. This is crucial for streamlining the efforts of your team.

But weeding out poor quality leads and improving your conversions is just one part of having such data.

These numbers can guide in much bigger aspects of the sales process optimisation.

For instance, you’ll know if it’s the prospecting team that’s constantly feeding bad quality leads to the pipeline and needs to buckle up.

OR, does your closing team (bad sales pitch/funnel) need to up their game?

This brings us to our second point...

Quality of your calls

The number of calls made or having a quality contact list won’t help unless the conversation quality and customer engagement are up to the mark.

After all, if dials are all you needed, robots would become the best sales reps.

What can a sales call log tell you about the quality of conversation your reps have with your customers? Plenty!

Look for trends like:

• Are the calls ending too soon? Maybe you’re getting started on the wrong foot and need to fix your sales call openings.
• Are the calls continuing for too long? A long sales call is almost always a good sign for your chances of converting. However, if it’s too long, maybe your sales pitch needs to be made more airtight.
• Does the size of a deal impact the length of the call? If small deals are taking just as long as large ones, it may be time to rethink your lead-generation and calling strategy for smaller buyers.
• What do your best sales reps have in common? Top reps always have something good going for them. By looking at call logs and spotting their call success trends, you can replicate it among your other sales reps.
• What do the worst call stats tell? Similarly, by finding common threads between the worst performances, you can quickly spot what needs fixing.

Optimizing your sales call strategy

You’ve polished your pitch. Now it’s time to focus on your overall call tactics.

This is probably the area that sales call logs can most contribute to. Make sure you scrutinize this bit of data with a microscope.

We guarantee it’ll pay back, quite literally!

• Best day(s) and times to call. Are there golden days and hours when your conversion or response rate is magically rising?
• How many calls does it take to close a deal? By understanding how many calls it takes, on average, to close different types of deals, you can help your reps plot more efficient paths to conversion.
• How many prospect calls can a salesperson handle efficiently per day? Add this data to the above “average call-conversion rate” data and you’ll know what should be your optimal team size.
• Are you making timely and the right number of follow-ups? Industry stats say, it takes a minimum of six to 8 follow-up calls for the prospect to pick up the phone. Your truth might be different. But are your sales reps hitting that average to make sure you’re not losing good leads just because you didn’t try enough number of times?
• Does the source of a lead impact your number of calls per prospect? Inbound calls, where the lead has already shown some interest in your product can have a quicker closing time than outbound calls. If you see a digression from this trend, you know it’s time for pitch review.

Please, don’t waste your time logging

Oh no! Don’t get us wrong.

We are NOT saying don’t have sales call logs.

Obviously, sales call logs are a hardcore resource for figuring out why the sales teams effort are not getting converted into your balance sheet.

That said, if you are still stuck with manual logging, you’re killing the whole purpose of it.

The idea behind tracking sales calls data is to be able to have more focus, time and resources dedicated towards revenue-generating activities.

But when you ask your team to log their call activities after being on the phone with 100-something leads… it can be a drag.

The solution is pretty straightforward and cost-effective –– automate your sales call log and analytics.

Let the machine take over the clerical chores of churning numbers. Let your team focus all their efforts on activities that absolutely need human-touch and empathy –– sales calls.

So, what can you do next?

Get a free trial: Salestrail automatically logs your call activities such as answered vs. unanswered calls, their duration, calculates the total number of leads you've reached out by unique phone number count, and many more interesting statistics that will give you an edge over your competitors 😉 Get in touch and we’ll show how to get personalised data to enhance your sales efforts.

Check our sales resources: The Salestrail blogs has a bunch of practical and actionable advice (no mumbo-jumbo, we promise!) Take a look at our in-depth guides, free templates, researched articles on sales calling. Also, subscribe to our newsletter for regular industry trends delivered right to your inbox.

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