It’s not an overstatement to say that the recent need to work from home has utterly transformed the entire business world. And while much has been said and written about how the need to work from home has affected business processes and productivity, there has been little said on one particulate activity – sales connections. As we discussed earlier, at a time when almost everyone is working from home, sales reps calling into office numbers is largely futile, so dialing prospect’s mobile numbers should yield much better results. At the time, we didn’t have concrete numbers to prove that theory but thanks to SalesX’s recent study, we now do.
ScaleX recently conducted a controlled experiment where they tried to reach out to 100+ C-level executives via switchboards, direct dials, and mobile numbers to measure their respective effectiveness and the results are quite telling. But before we get there, it is important to detail their procedure for evaluating effectiveness.
The Procedure
The following method and metrics were used for the experiment:
- Data source – SalesIntel.io
- Titles: VP Sales, CRO, CEO
- Filters: 100 Fastest Growing Companies, Fast 500 Deloitte
- Industries: Software Publishers, Software Companies, Cloud Computing
They randomly picked a list of 100 VP and C-level targets and dialed them each using a switchboard, direct dial, and mobile number respectively. They recorded the number of calls made and the number of connections. This gave the Dial to Connect Ratio – one of the fundamental benchmarks of sales activity to measure the quality and effectiveness of contact data.
The Result
Results obtained for each of the dialing methods are as follows:
1. Dialing to switchboard numbers
- It took 53 calls to make 1 connection. That is, the Dial to Connect Ratio was 59:1
- Switchboard DCR – 59:1
2. Dialing to direct dial numbers (Direct Desk Phones)
- It took 73 dials to make 1 conversation. That is, the Dial to Connect Ratio was 73:1
- Direct-dial DCR – 73:1
3. Dialing to mobile numbers (office)
- They dialed 49 numbers and had 5 conversations. That is, the Dial to Connect Ratio was 10:1
- Mobile number DCR – 10:1
Conclusion
As is clearly evident from the above results, mobile numbers are 5X to 7X more effective for connecting with prospects, particularly at a time when a significant portion of employees are working from home.
Lessons Learned
With these results to back our claim, we can now confidently say that if your sales team is using a data source that provides switchboard numbers or even direct dials, you are at a significant disadvantage. Your team is losing productivity, and by extension revenue, by making calls that don’t result in connections and conversations! You need a better solution. With 48M+ mobile numbers and counting, SalesIntel has the data you need to succeed and have more conversations.
