- It takes a lot more than soft skills to be a successful sales rep.
- RingDNA, an AI platform that provides information on how to improve sales, shared a report exclusively with Business Insider, that analyzes more than 130 million sales conversations and emails to determine best times to make calls and send emails.
- The report identified the exact schedule sales reps should follow for peak productivity.
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People skills aren't the only thing you need to make sales.
A sales job requires a strategy and a daily plan that should be measured and monitored for maximum success.
Your primary goal as a rep is to secure deals while maintaining time efficiency. But you might be reaching out to contacts at the wrong time of day.
According to HubSpot's 2016 sales perception survey, 37% of participants said one of the biggest challenges in sales is actually getting in touch with prospects. But the the key is to catch people when they're the most likely to respond.
RingDNA, an AI platform that provides information on how to improve sales, shared a new report exclusively with Business Insider that analyzed more than 130 million sales conversations and identified time windows with the highest response rates. RingDNA drew its findings from recorded phone calls and emails from sales clients, but declined to share exactly how much sales responses improved.
Howard Brown, founder and CEO of RingDNA, told Business Insider that his company dissects emails, records phone calls, and uses customer relationship management tools to determine which process and timing achieves the best results.
"The idea is — businesses sit on all of this information that their sales team do on a daily basis, but they never had a way of analyzing each and every single step," he said. "It's been there. You can have a manager listen in to a call, but you never had the ability to search through massive amounts of data using artificial intelligence to find interesting moments and patterns that achieved the best results."
Here are four data-backed tricks you can use to plan your day win the most customers.
Make your sales calls between 10 and 11:30 a.m.
The report noted that a sales rep should make about 60 calls a day, but dialing a number and pressing the call button is just the first step.
Oftentimes, you catch people at a bad time and your call goes straight to voicemail. Your potential clients may even tell you they're not interested before hearing your pitch, Brown said.
RingDNA's report shows that calls made between 10 and 11:30 a.m. receive the highest answer rates, and the likelihood of your clients picking up in the afternoon is slim.
Your goal is to catch prospects after the morning chaos and right before lunch. The time window between 10 and 11:30 a.m. is usually when we're all more settled in.
Take full advantage of your mornings, align your days to when your clients are most responsive, and schedule meetings during low-responding time frames.
Keep your calls short and sweet
Staying on the phone for 30 minutes with a client doesn't mean you're going to end the call with a deal.
RingDNA's artificial intelligence data shows that successful sales usually take an average of 14.3 minutes in total. After that time, the chances of securing a product demo decreases. It only takes a few minutes to confirm a client's interest.
While keeping your sales pitches short, you should also be mindful of balancing the time you spend listening and talking. More than 70% of the sales managers who participated in RingDNA's study said that listening, engaging at the right time, and paying close attention to details are among the most important skills you need to succeed. In fact, the best sellers have an average speaking streak of only 12 seconds and spend most of their calls listening in on customer need, the report shared.
Send your emails between 12 and 3 p.m.
Conveniently, the report found that email open rates spike during low call connection times.
The prime time to send emails is anytime between 12 and 6 p.m., and the peak email connecting time is right at 3 p.m.
Put simply: You can save your call blocks for the morning, and send all your emails in the afternoon for high response rates.
Have a list of cold email templates
Dmitry Dragilev, founder of an outreach consulting service JustReachOut.io, previously told Business Insider that you can structure your emails to guarantee a response. Among the nine templates that he shared, two of them were related to making successful sales deals.
When you're contacting prospects, a simple three-line message is enough. Additionally, you only ask for 10 minutes of their time.
"Tell prospects exactly what kind of results they can expect. Then tell them how long you'll take to achieve it," Dragilev said previously.
Similar rules apply if you're trying to set up a sales meeting with a client — identify yourself and your current role, clearly mention how much time the meeting would take, and ask if you don't know who to send an email to.
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