20,000 Sales Calls Analysis: 5 Learnings
From more than 4,000 hours of sales conversations across 178 sales reps.
We have conducted a vast B2B Sales Calls Analysis to understand what makes some individuals top perform and what different sales populations can learn from each other.
First, let us clarify the scope of the study:
20,150 Calls
4,340 Hours
178 Sales across BDR, AE & AM populations
Currently employed in B2B hyper-growth companies in Europe
The data was collected over H1 2022 and just before we jump into our 5 learnings, let’s have a look at some initial results:
The average call duration was 13 minutes
6 minutes for BDR’s
13 minutes for AE’s
17 minutes for Account Managers (also referred as AM’s)
The overall Sales talk ratio was 43%
The Average sentence duration from the sales reps was 90 seconds
And the number of interactions per minute (back and forth between Sales & Contact) was 3.7.
Now that we’ve common points of reference, we need to increase our granularity, and, while some of the data fulfilled our educated guess we had some less apparent learnings.
So let’s go through 5 trends observed from top performers:
Learning #1: Top Performers spend -23% less time per call.
Wait…what? How can top performers spend less time per call?
While delivering greater performances for the company (and the clients)?
The fundamental difference lies in the fact that Top Performers speak less than the others. On average, they speak 34% of the time while the average stands at 43%. Some group members will speak up to 54% of the time.
While it might seem counter-intuitive, these top sales will actually lead the call with better questions: shorter, clear and leading-questions.
Whereas the others tend to ask open questions without having a clear expected goal behind. As a result, the others will collect longer responses but not necessary relevant.
Explaining why top performers tend to spend 10 minutes per call versus 13 minutes on average.
Learning #2: Top Performers tend to call more, with higher consistency.
Most of the time, these top Sales are also hard workers, not afraid to pick-up the phone. In fact, the bottom percentile will call 3 times less than the highest performers.
On top of that, Top Performers have a more consistent approach. They don’t have such things as low-activity months and high-activity ones.
This is truly beneficial for the company as well as it facilitates forecasting and predictiveness. While some other sales can increase their level of activity for a short period of time, their level of activity can vary up to 40% between two months.
Disclaimer: not all top performers are “hard workers”.
We found out that for some, their level of activity was aligned with the average but they fully mastered the learnings #1, #3 and #4. It can partially be explained by greater experience and higher tenure in the company.
Learning #3: Top Performers get more information out of their prospects and clients.
Despite having shorter calls, by owning the call with top leading-questions, they will collect faster and clearer answers:
On average, they will get 1.85 times more information per call.
At the same time, they are able to have 1.55 more interactions or back and forth if you will, with their contacts.
Which from a client standpoint is fundamental. These sales are able to create a both-ways conversation and create engagement.
To go further, we encourage you to watch this video about The Challenger Methodology:
Learning #4: Top Performers are 2X more prepared.
They are twice more likely to (1) take notes during the call and (2) use follow-up templates.
On top of that, we noticed that more than 78% of them have (a) clear goals, (b) ready-to-shoot set of questions and (c) clear agenda structure shared to their contacts, prior to jumping into their calls.
Few obvious benefits:
Saving time to begin with
Conducting goal-oriented conversations
Managing expectations
Sending follow-up emails right after the calls
Showing professionalism and trustworthiness
Learning #5: Top Performers talk $$$.
They are not only more comfortable discussing money.
But they openly engage the conversation and control the narrative.
Quite logically, Account Executives is the population most concerned by this matter.
But interestingly, Top Performing Account Managers are more pro-active than the others AM’s. They like debating and challenging clients perspectives. This is a substantial difference between non-achievers and top ones.
To go further, some Top Performers spend more time per call. They follow the learnings previously covered but they take more time to educate their prospects and clients. Particularly true on Account Management side. However these guys are able to deliver high volume of calls as well. In other words: they are also hard workers (i.e. The Challenger Sale).
To conclude, you might want to add new elements to your current approach.
Generally speaking, Top Performers display 5 distinct characteristics:
Short calls
Effective line of questioning
Consistent level of activity
Structured, goal-oriented approach
And comfortable addressing certain topics such as money.
That goes without saying that finding your unique rhythm and style is paramount, especially if you want to implement sustainable changes.