All right so it’s a little corny but its a valid question in this economy.  As we start to come out of the worst selling time I’ve endured in my 25 year sales career, sales efficiency will be the thrust of a lot of organizations who are trying to maximize return on invested sales efforts.  The art of professional persistency is one I will always believe in, so when I get a call from a sales rep and he/she says “Bill, this is Tom call me back at xxx-xxxx” with no value proposition and as importantly no attempt to reach me again…  I get a laugh out of sales managers who have an expectation of 40 touches a day as “NORMAL” productivity.  I have to qualify, I am not speaking about a relationship sales organization where someone is calling to make sure a machine is running right, or an order got their appropriately, I am talking about balls out selling, new customer acquisition, kill the competition selling.  Come on 40 touches ( touch being defined as an email sent, vmail left, or a productive conversation ) thats 5 an hour on an 8 hour day or 4 an hour on a 10 hour day.   One touch every 12 to 15 minutes – come on Tiger Woods wasn’t even a sales rep and he achieved higher touches per hour than that – sorry couldn’t resist…

I’d be very curious to here what other’s have experienced in the pursuit of a new market or outright demand generation efforts – what’s a good number – at Team Jesubi we average about 20 to 22 touches an hour.  You might say impossible, but I’ll let you in on a little secret that has worked really well for us.  Using Jesubi’s campaign management solution for demand generation efforts we’re attempting 3 touches per day to sales executives and business owners, the first two times we hang up the last one we’ll leave a voicemail.  Why do we do that because in our business it’s all about figuring out when someone’s going to be at their desk.  We’ve found our response rates go up significantly with this cadence over leaving a voicemail today and then systematically calling back on a pre-determined cadence.  Let’s face it sales managers, marketing managers and owners of business are busy and they aren’t at their desk often, but we’ve been able to find ways to connect with them.  In implementing this new strategy our touches per hour have increased from 17 to the 20 to 22 discussed earlier.

The key is Jesubi enables efficiency.  So does excel, but excel doesn’t let you capture institutional knowledge or automate the calling cadence like Jesubi does.  Let me know what your team achieves and how they do it.