Brandon Welch: 0:00
The average is like 2% success on cold calls, but 70% of people essentially will accept it when they feel it’s relevant to their needs. Right, that sounds like no duh, but cut all the crap and get straight to their needs. Man, Welcome to the Maven Marketing Podcast. Today is Maven Monday. I’m your host, Brandon Welch, and I’m here with Caleb. How many hours of sleep have you had this week, AG?

Caleb Agee: 0:25
I’ve been doing pretty good. Honestly. We’ve got a baby in the house, but she freaked us out. You remember when your baby slept all night long the first time, yeah, and then they don’t. And you wake up and you’re like, is she okay? Yeah, yeah yeah, we did that we literally did that this week but, I’m thinking it’s the first of many, so I’m going to sleep a lot Gotcha there you go.

Brandon Welch: 0:44
You know what I’m saying.

Caleb Agee: 0:45
Good yeah.

Brandon Welch: 0:46
In the spirit of love. We had a faithful listener. Point out that I looked pretty tired last week.

Caleb Agee: 0:53
Oh, and I was, because I just got back from 17 hours of driving and.

Brandon Welch: 1:00
I think I got four hours that night and then we did the podcast the next day, so I just want to apologize. You deserve better than that. Yeah, Not that there’s a whole lot to work with here, but listen, you deserve my best and you didn’t get it.

Caleb Agee: 1:11
But it was a good episode. I think we’ve got a face for radio, yeah, or a face for podcast.

Brandon Welch: 1:22
Face for podcast. Yeah so, hey, this is the big dream and we have 15 big dream bullets for you. Today. We were doing some consulting, we do sales training events, we do some strategic planning events for companies that we just we love to do. That it’s on mission for us and put me back into the just research mode of the modern state of sales and it’s worse than I thought.

Caleb Agee: 1:48
Yeah, harder. It’s rough out there, harder than it was.

Brandon Welch: 1:50
Yeah, and so what’s happening is that this idea of there’s a market that is ready to buy, that’s just a fewer and farther between in any given category. People require more handholding, more pursuit in this season that we’ve been in and maybe that we’re going to be in, and so we just gathered these and they were like some of the biggest takeaways from our time with this company that we did this strategic engagement for, and I was like you know what Our audience needs to hear that. So, without further ado, today is 15 sales stats that will make you a better pro.

Caleb Agee: 2:34
That’s right, yeah, yeah. So we’re going to just jump right into it and we’ll cite our sources so you can go read more if you’d like. We’re not just making these up.

Brandon Welch: 2:44
Yeah, yeah.

Caleb Agee: 2:45
I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said you can’t trust everything you read on the internet.

Brandon Welch: 2:49
But you can trust everything you hear on this podcast.

Caleb Agee: 2:51
Yeah, so here we go. Number one 80% of sales require five one, two, three, four, five follow-up phone calls after the meeting. 80%, four%, so Four out of five, yeah, of your sales appointments.

Brandon Welch: 3:07
I’ve talked to some salespeople this week that literally were like, man, you know, those leads didn’t work out or they didn’t you know. You know there was there’s just a poor performance in December and or the first part of January. And that was the thing I asked and it was like, well, I called him, you know, and it came out to like two follow-up points of contact for like the last 10 sales of this salesperson. And I’m like, think about how you buy. That’s a really good filter for all this. Like think about what it takes you to get you across the finish line, like all the way from. I don’t think I’m going to do that to. Maybe I’ll do that to. I think I’m interested. Just that journey, it’s at least five follow-up phone calls right.

Brandon Welch: 3:54
So that’s from Invesp, that is a sales research organization Number two with that 44 sales. Sorry, 44% of salespeople give up after one follow-up call. It takes at least five, yet we’re giving up after one.

Caleb Agee: 4:13
Yeah, you can or your people are giving up after one. You can find the challenge in that that hopefully you’re in the majority, not the minority but, also realize that if you’re in competition in your sales, if they’re shopping you with other people, um, be the one that gets to five and I, statistically, you will be more likely at that sale.

Brandon Welch: 4:37
So, yep, I’ve got a guy, I’ve got a sales professional, like he’s like sand litter level, like trained, and he’s on me right now and I bet I’ve gotten 16 emails from him and phone calls and somehow he got a hold of my number and he’s good and you know what. Eventually, I’m going to talk to him. I don’t have any intention in this moment to buy what he’s doing, but I’m going to talk to him because I’m impressed.

Caleb Agee: 4:55
Yeah, yeah, exactly.

Brandon Welch: 4:57
The effort. I don’t think he pursuing me this hard right. Yeah, yep, yep. What’s number three, caleb? Number three the average salesperson only makes two attempts to reach a prospect. Wow, yeah, that would be in line with the that’s from.

Caleb Agee: 5:22
HubSpot yeah, that’s again just reinforcing the follow-up. Yeah, Only two attempts.

Brandon Welch: 5:27
Number four, addressing pain points. 49% of cold calls are successful when the sales rep mentions a specific challenge or pain point relevant to the prospect, versus hey, caleb, I just wonder if we could get together for coffee, right? Yeah, that’s what a lot of salespeople are just trying to get together with you, right, and we don’t got time for that as an American public. So if you just say, hey, are you man? Are you having a hard time recruiting video guys right now? Oh my gosh, what’s up? Carter the Camera Guy? Carter the Camera Guy is a guest today. Yeah, oh my gosh, what’s up Carter the camera guy? Carter the camera guy is a guest today. Yeah, but are you having a hard time entering data for your billing cycle or whatever? What is the pain point?

Caleb Agee: 6:11
you think you can solve.

Brandon Welch: 6:12
Just mentioning that and it’s like no duh. But that one hack, according to this, gets you about a 50% better chance.

Caleb Agee: 6:19
Wow, that’s pretty crazy Of setting the appointment. Yeah, clarity Cl, wow Of setting the appointment.

Brandon Welch: 6:22
Yeah, clarity, clarity.

Caleb Agee: 6:24
Yeah, that was from Bigly Sales. Bigly Sales Number five. 93% of the potential success of your cold call is attributed to the tone of your voice during the conversation. Did you know that you can hear a smile?

Brandon Welch: 6:38
You can hear a smile man. Let me tell you what.

Caleb Agee: 6:40
And you can also hear a frown. It’s pretty wild.

Brandon Welch: 6:44
Just the tone of the voice. It’s just that’s why a lot of sales trainers put the mirror up in front of you and you know what it changes your psychology too. It changes the muscles firing. It’s actually easier to smile. It takes less muscles, right, we all know that. So smile, just tone of voice.

Caleb Agee: 7:00
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 7:01
Smile while you type too.

Caleb Agee: 7:03
That’s not a vocal exercise, but if you smile while you type, it changes the tone of your email too.

Brandon Welch: 7:11
There’s an OG Frankly Friday about that somewhere. Number six it takes approximately one and a half hours of cold calling to secure one appointment. Now think about this Everybody puts cold calling off. It’s a failure point. It doesn’t feel good to get told no or to get to the dead end of 60 phone lines. But if you just had in your mind, okay, I have a 40-hour week or I have 20 hours, I’m going to make calls this week and if I consistently do that for 20 hours, I’m going to end up with about 15 calls in this case, yeah. But I think that’s sobering just to say, okay, that’s what it takes, so set your expectation. But it’s also encouraging because it’s like, hey, if you’ve been doing this for an hour, your call is coming, your appointment is coming right, it’s coming.

Brandon Welch: 8:04
Now there’s a lot of industries. I would argue that’s from Rotorio. They train like they have a customer service tool that goes over a lot of industries. So I would say, if you’re more of an expert-driven company, that would have to be lower. I would think. But still it’s not unreasonable. Don’t say nobody answers, it’s just you haven’t called enough people, you haven’t called enough, you haven’t spent enough time.

Caleb Agee: 8:23
All right, Number seven opening a cold call with how have you been has a 600% higher success rate than the average call.

Brandon Welch: 8:33
That’s from Gong.

Caleb Agee: 8:34
Yes.

Brandon Welch: 8:35
Also a sales training tool 600% is pretty wild. That’s instead of saying well, hey just wanted to check in with you, just want to follow up. Just want to follow up with you. Yeah, gag me right. It’s like hey, caleb, how you been. And just let me talk. What principle are we utilizing there?

Caleb Agee: 8:57
Well, I’m not sure which one you’re driving at this particular moment.

Brandon Welch: 9:01
Well, it’s about you, yeah it’s the most seductive word in advertising is you right, empathy?

Caleb Agee: 9:04
How have you been?

Brandon Welch: 9:05
right? Empathy, curiosity, just do that. Hey Carter, how you been? It implies that we’ve met each other, even if we haven’t. But even if it doesn’t, it’s not like pretending like you’ve met each other, right? It’s just a friendly way to talk. It’s just a friendly way to talk. Yeah, how? About 69% of buyers accept cold calls when they feel the solution being pitched is relevant to their needs. So you take it from that really low average. The average is like 2% success on sales or on cold calls, but like 70% of people essentially will accept it when they feel it’s relevant to their needs. Right, that sounds like no duh, but like, cut all the crap and get straight to their needs, man, yeah, Right Interesting thing you can pay attention to is if you started with, how have you been?

Caleb Agee: 9:56
You know what their needs are. You can empathize with where they are mentally and who they are and all of that. So interesting thing. We’re not trying to manipulate anybody or anything like that.

Brandon Welch: 10:09
Just good, old fashioned empathy, empathy.

Caleb Agee: 10:11
Understand who they are.

Brandon Welch: 10:12
Yeah.

Caleb Agee: 10:13
And understand how you can help them. Yeah so number nine 76% of top sales performers. 76% of all of the top sales performers say they perform research before calling their leads, compared to 47% of average salespeople perform research.

Brandon Welch: 10:34
So the top guys are performing research, the average guys aren’t.

Caleb Agee: 10:38
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 10:39
And the takeaway is do research. Yeah, and the takeaway is do research Like you could be in B2B. I think that’s pretty obvious. Like, look at the website, look at the LinkedIn profile, find out what this person’s history has been. Look at the Twitter feed and see if they’ve been complaining about something. See what they’ve been sharing on LinkedIn. If you can get it on the personal realm of any kind, like, just use your context clues. Realm of any kind, like, just use your context clues. In the B2C world we talked about. Like, researching might just literally be looking at what zip code they live in, where their kids might go to school, what sports team they might have a bumper sticker for on their car, and research can be like, done on a website with an intake form.

Brandon Welch: 11:24
Like are you asking enough questions to qualify, not just qualify but, like you know, meet the first interaction with some value, mm-hmm, um and gives you like a 26, 27, 28 points on your increased likelihood of that success.

Caleb Agee: 11:42
Yeah, that’s right.

Brandon Welch: 11:43
Yeah, how about number 10?

Caleb Agee: 11:45
Number 10. It’s your turn, it’s my turn, you got it.

Brandon Welch: 11:49
It takes an average of eight cold calls to reach a prospect first. Did you know that?

Caleb Agee: 11:54
I do now. That’s from sellingsignalscom. Eight cold calls to reach a prospect.

Brandon Welch: 12:01
And we already learned earlier most people give up after one.

Caleb Agee: 12:03
Yep, and that you need to spend an hour and a half to get one to pick up.

Brandon Welch: 12:08
Yeah, so if you can just tune your mindset to go, that one call wasn’t a failure, that was like cool, crossed it off the list. I know on average I’ve got to do seven more and it’s like you can still get a little bit of excitement for it. Right, make a little game out of it. It’s like when I get to eight, okay, maybe my last one answered on two and this one might take me until 12, but I’m going to keep track of my average.

Brandon Welch: 12:33
When I was in essentially B2B sales, I kept a log and it wasn’t any more sophisticated than a legal pad and I just wrote down the notes of when I called, when they answered or if I happened to stop by, when they happened to be there, and then I would make my rounds and get back to that person at the same time, same place. I would just keep a log of all the times that I had done that so I knew where I was. I used the math to go okay, my average. I haven’t even hit my average, so I can’t complain or feel bad about it.

Caleb Agee: 13:04
Yeah, number 11, wednesday and Thursday, between 10 am and 12 pm and 4 pm to 5 pm are the best times to cold call for B2B. So if you’re in B2B, this is a very specific statistic. It’s from HubSpot, so that is a pretty credible source there. Wednesday and Thursday, 10 to noon and 4 to 5, end of the day or middle of the day essentially are the best times to cold call.

Brandon Welch: 13:34
With a little empathy, I think you would come to this conclusion with some common sense that most people are really busy on Mondays. Most people are really tired and ready to get to the weekend on Fridays and that would be a horrible experience to have to wait a weekend to get back to the follow-up call Tuesday. A lot of business being done still so. Wednesdays and Thursdays are kind of midweek. There’s a little slump. A lot of business being done still so. Wednesdays and Thursdays are kind of midweek. There’s a little slump. There’s a little bit of maybe lack of overstimulation there, and so in those times of day it’s like 8 am is always business time, four to five is. I’m kind of like maybe my tank’s empty of focus and I would be open to a distraction from a salesperson, right?

Caleb Agee: 14:15
Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 14:19
So use some common sense and empathy, even if you’re not in the B2B world. Number 12 is 92% of all customer interactions happen on the phone. This is important to me because I feel like the younger the workforce gets, the less they are attached to a time where phone calls were the thing you had to communicate with, and so and I’m not trying to be like an old man- yeah, Calm down grandpa Talking about these dang kids.

Caleb Agee: 14:45
But hey, it’s true.

Brandon Welch: 14:47
And like real business, and a lot of your decision makers are still from a generational gap where the phone and the tone of voice and that connection was the way. I would also argue that you get like a million more signals when you’re talking to somebody on the phone from pace, from do they pause? From their excitement level. You can hear what’s going on in the background. You get a lot more data than sending an email or a text where it’s just like it’s open to their interpretation, and so our rule over here is like when it’s anything of consequence, call, pick up the dang phone, yeah, and follow up with an email for a you know.

Caleb Agee: 15:26
Paper trail.

Brandon Welch: 15:27
Paper trail, and then also clarity, and then also, you know, promote some professionalism.

Caleb Agee: 15:32
Maybe loops everybody else into if there are more parties.

Brandon Welch: 15:35
Lots of great things that can happen with email, but dude.

Caleb Agee: 15:40
Pick up the phone.

Brandon Welch: 15:41
Go where the energy and the activity is On the phone.

Caleb Agee: 15:45
Number. That was from Salesforce. I don’t know if I said that, but number 13, continuous training gives a 50% higher net sales per employee. That’s from duallyai.

Brandon Welch: 15:57
If you’re a business owner and you clicked on this going oh yeah, I’m going to get some, I’m going to send this to my salespeople and I’m going to fire them up Forward.

Caleb Agee: 16:06
It Say watch this.

Brandon Welch: 16:07
Here’s the mirror. Buddy, are you doing sales training? Because there’s your gains 50% higher. Just focus. These weren’t hard statistics to find. There are a gazillion videos on YouTube. All the better if you have a consistent training program and you have some agendas and some specific objectives, but they don’t have to be rocket science. Just get together for 30 minutes a week and do some training either. Talk about prospects, talk about products, talk about next steps, talk about overcoming objections, talk about pricing. Um, even just that focus will help. What’s number 14?

Caleb Agee: 16:49
number 14 the most successful cold callers convey their value within five minutes yeah, I would say that’s even too long I was. I was to say that feels long, five minutes. Yeah, uplead is the source for that.

Brandon Welch: 17:01
Yeah, I think it’s like get to the well. The reason I’m calling today is because I think I can help you improve this profit center. The reason I’m calling today is that I have a track record of helping families get 10 to 15% more out of whatever I a track record of whatever it is. Then you have my attention, right, yeah, so you get them out of relational hot air mode and into contemplating and imagining what your partnership could look like.

Caleb Agee: 17:32
That’s right.

Brandon Welch: 17:32
Number 15,. Last statistic that you need to take into your new year to make you a better sales pro. Wouldn’t you know it? Sales reps who listen more than they talk have a much higher success rate, with the ideal balance being 57 listening to 43% talking. That seems low to me, but this financesonlinecom diced it out and that’s like the best balance they found listening to some calls that’s so specific.

Caleb Agee: 17:59
Yeah, finances online 57 and 43. Yeah.

Brandon Welch: 18:02
Yeah, I think I’m going to take that home and be like hey, listen, I know I’ve been talking more like 55 or listening 55% of the time. I’m going to try to kick that to 57%.

Brandon Welch: 18:13
Yeah, Two ears one mouth right, that’s how we were designed. That kick that up to 57%. Two ears, one mouth right. That’s how we were designed. That’s how we were made. Just do it, and sometimes it’s not waiting your turn to talk. I was watching a really, really good interviewer. That’s something I’m trying to do is study good interviewers and podcast hosts. Last night, rick Beato, and he has like some of the most famous coolest musician guys on this podcast, but he comes with that research, but he’s asking very pointed questions, but then he’s taking repeating what they said back to them. So, anyway, listen more than you talk, guys. We wanted to just give you a quick boost in that department. It’s tougher than it has been. That’s the takeaway.

Brandon Welch: 18:57
It has been the headwinds aren’t gone, but usually getting better results is just a matter of deciding to do so and putting a little bit extra intensity and focus on your follow-ups and that empathy and curiosity that comes inside the call yeah.

Caleb Agee: 19:16
And that empathy and curiosity that comes inside the call yeah. The danger when we have a season of abundance is that we get used to it and when things get hard, we’re not ready for the work that it takes to put in. And I don’t think things are getting harder, but I think, relatively, they’re just going back to a place where they’ve been before, which is where the customer likes to see effort. They like to see you work, yeah. They like to see you care about them, and the one who does the most will win win the sale.

Brandon Welch: 19:49
Awesome. Yes, so it’s a short episode. Hopefully it’s a good episode for you and we’ll be back here every Monday answering your real life marketing questions. Because marketers who can’t teach you why?

Caleb Agee: 20:03
are just a fancy lie.

Brandon Welch: 20:04
Have a great week.