Sales 2.0

Cold calling math

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Today’s post is going to include a few numbers.

I’ve actually gone a step further than I’ve gone before in this post and boiled everything down to time, which is the “ultimate currency” for us humans.

I collect data on cold calling whenever I see it, as I am fascinated by trying to figure out if there are better ways to prospect. I’ve got three sets of data for you here. One from a university, one from a smart sales expert and one from my team.

Baylor University

In 2011, Baylor University conducted a research study on cold calling with realtors from Keller Williams. They ended up having 50 agents make 6,264 cold calls. Each of the 50 agents spent one hour per day for seven days making calls. 28% of their calls resulted in a conversation with a human. They set 19 appointments.

Here’s some math:

  • 50 agents spending 7 hours making calls = 350 man-hours of work
  • 6,264 calls to get 19 appointments = 330 calls to get one appointment
  • 350 man-hours of work for 19 appointments = 18 hours of work per appointment

Insight from Vorsight

Here’s some data Steve Richard (a smart sales expert) published based on his experience running the outsourced B2B calling firm Vorsight. In this case Steve’s team are calling businesses selling offerings like technology solutions and business services.

Each SDR (Sales Development Rep) makes 609 calls per week to get 21.4 conversations per week and 6.7 appointments.

  • 7 appointments per week for a 40-hour week (I’m assuming Steve’s SDRs work 8-hour days and spend their whole day calling), implies 6 hours of work per appointment

Some experience of mine

Back in 2004 I ran an outsourced calling firm like Vorsight. We tracked our numbers back then and found that roughly 1 in 10 dials went through to a human and 1 in 10 of those conversations resulted in an appointment. My blokes back then made about 10 calls per hour. (Yes, I’m rounding with all these 10’s but it’s close to actual numbers so let’s keep the math simpler!)

So in a 40-hour week we would average 4 appointments, which is one appointment per 10 hours of work

So here’s some cold calling data boiled down into time units.

  • Baylor: 18 hours for one appointment
  • Vorsight: 6 hours for one appointment
  • Sales 2.0: 10 hours for one appointment

Let’s do some averaging that means across that data it takes an average of 11.3 hours of cold calling to get one appointment.

I’m going to leave it there for today. You may guess there is more to come on this topic and that will be in my next post.