How many sales calls should I make in a day?

How To Sell

How's that for a question? I'm good at asking good questions. I was reading a sales forum the other day and this was the question that was being asked.

The person asking the question said that he did 500 calls a day. 500 CALLS A DAY! My first thought was WOW, is that possible. My second thought was WHY.

Digging a little deeper, it turned out that he worked in a call centre so the why was that he was expected or told to make 500 calls a day. Any time you may be feeling sorry for yourself, just think of our friend in that call centre and I'm sure things won't seem so bad.

I'm also sure that our friend won't be working in that call centre for too long because he has recognised the importance of seeking out mentors and learning from their experiences. He's asking questions.

Back to How many sales calls should I make a day. Well that depends on a number of factors:
What's the nature of your business.
What are you selling.
What is the size of your potential market.
Who and where are your customers.
What is the best way of contacting your customers.
And that's all fine. But lets get to the important questions.

What are you goals and how many sales do you need to make to achieve these goals?
What is your vision for your future and what do you need to do to achieve this?
What is your current percentage conversion and how can you improve this?

Whether you are self employed and therefore setting your own sales targets or you have a Sales Manager who sets targets for you the basis of calculation is exactly the same.

Your goal or sales target times your percentage conversion = The number of calls you need to make.

So if you need to make 100 sales and you convert 3 sales in every 10 contacts then you need to make 333 calls. Now depending on the average time a sales call takes will determine how many calls you need to make in a day. If you make 10 calls a day then it will take 33 working days to reach your sales target.

Now this throws out all kinds of questions. If your monthly sales target in 100, then based on the example above, there are not 33 working days in a months and therefore you won't meet your target. Clearly here there are only tow options:

1. Increase the number of calls you make a day.
2. Increase your percentage conversion. If a colleague is converting 4 in 10, then spend time with them to find out what they are doing that you're not.

As with any goal setting, you need goals that are realistic but stretch you. One of the biggest mistake that new businesses  make is over estimating their sales projections and underestimating the time that other functions of running a business take.

So if you want to make a million - that's all good and I hope you do. But, understand your numbers.