How to Have More Quality Conversations in B2B Sales

I’m curious. How many quality conversations does your B2B sales team have on any given day from their sales engagement?

Do you think they should be having more quality conversations, or even just more conversations in general?

Let’s look at some statistics and learn how your sales team could have more conversations. 

What’s a Quality Conversation? 

Great question! According to The Bridge Group’s “2021 Sales Development (SDR) Metrics & Comp Report”, a “quality conversation” is defined as a sales conversation in which at least one piece of qualifying or disqualifying information is learned. 

Sounds good, right? That’s the goal of any conversation you have with a potential customer.  

What is sales engagement? Read this blog.

But just how many quality conversations do sales teams have on average? That answer is not so good.

That same report from The Bridge Group states that on average, a rep has just 4.4 quality conversations per day, which is a 45% decrease from 2014 when the average number of quality conversations per day was 8.

How to Have More Quality Conversations?

So, what can you do? You need to engage your potential customers when they answer your cold call (and getting them to answer the cold call is a whole other blog!). I’ve written before about what to say in those first 10 seconds of a cold call, and they still hold true, but this broadens that information to talk about the whole conversations. And it comes down to engaging your B2B sales prospects and having conversations that resonate.

Do Your Conversations Resonate?

We hosted a webinar on “The Power of Relevance” with best-selling author, Jeb Blount of Sales Gravy, and our Director of Inside Sales, Joe Cronin.

During that webinar, which you should listen to as well as reading this, Jeb provided actionable insights on an eight-step B2B sales cadence that works; why a multi-channel sales engagement approach furthers engagement; and the types of sales outreach that HE replies to.

Along with all that information, he also provided the following five steps to a simple telephone framework.

5 Step Simple Telephone Framework

1. Say the name of the person you’re calling. It instantly grabs the attention sub-consciously and pulls your sales prospect into the conversation.
2. Say who you are.
3. Say why you’re calling. Do not start out asking “Is this a good time?” You’re making a sales call. It’s never a good time for the recipient of that call. They’re busy doing other things.
4. Issue a cause statement. Give the person a reason to comply with your request for time on their calendar.
• Note: This should be a “targeted” statement versus a “highly personalized” statement for your call. What’s the difference? The targeted statement is something that’s relevant to most of the people on your calling list, while the personalized statement would include a mention of someone specific that referred you along with insight you have gathered from inside that specific organization. The advice is different for emails. For those, you want to write and send highly personalized emails as they have a higher rate of response than targeted.
5. Ask for what you want assertively. Don’t ask for general time on the calendar and have them get back to you. They won’t. Instead, ask for a specific day and time.

Why Does this Framework Work?

This framework (not a script) lets you run your sales prospect conversations almost without thinking. I say “almost” because you should be thinking all the time and be reactive on the call to what the sales prospect is saying rather than just going with what you usually say next.

It’s easy because you know the person’s name (P.S. if you’re using one of our Koncert Dialers like Click Dialer, Flow Dialer, or our human power dialer, Agent-Assisted Dialer, it’s right there in front of you on the screen); you know who you are (hopefully), and you should already know why your company and product is fabulous and how it can help at least the majority of the people you’re calling.

In fact, you should have more than just one reason or benefit as to how it can help. If you stick with just one go to statement, you’re going to sound like you’re using a script and you’ll just be reciting the usual. Don’t do that. In order to be engaging and have a quality conversation, you can’t just say the same old thing.

Ready to knock your next sales prospect conversation out of the park and turn it into a quality conversation? Reach out to us here at Koncert today to learn more about our entire multi-channel suite of B2B sales engagement software, including Agent-Assisted Dialer. Simply click here or give us a call at 800-955-5040.