Will they HEAR the next big sales opportunity?

If you are push – push – pushing your team to make more dials, will they HEAR the next big sales opportunity?

INSTANT DISCLAIMER: I am not telling you that outbound dialing isn’t important.

Now that we have that disclaimer out of the way, let’s get back to the important question:

Will they HEAR the next big sales opportunity?

While observing a few salespeople recently I was surprised that they were getting off the phone before (in my opinion) the prospect was done talking with them. Even hearing one prospect in a surprised tone ask “don’t you want to know more about that?”

When doing the debrief after observing for 2 hours, I asked each salesperson about the calls I though they’d disengaged too quickly. All of them said the same thing:

My sales manager wants us to make more dials.

Of course there were variations on that theme, but you get the picture! The salespeople were more concerned about the number of dials they made each day than:
> the quality of the conversations
> how well they qualified the prospect
> listening for business opportunities
> ferreting out needs the prospect hadn’t considered

I am begging you – when talking about activity please tie it back to the results you want to achieve. Many salespeople (dare I say most?) don’t necessarily build the behavior pyramid for themselves you have to help them understand how to create it.