From Here to Autonomy

Why call volume is the Atari of sales metrics

I returned to the office last week, rather pleased that after 3.5 months out of the office there were only eight voicemail messages on my system. I didn't mention that I was on mat leave in my outgoing message--those who work closely with me know that I travel a lot and tend to reach out via email, where I left and outgoing message. Two of the calls came from someone who quickly determined I was on mat leave. One came from someone who had already reached me on my mobile phone. The remaining five came from "Phil", someone I'd never met but who spoke like we were buds.

Each voicemail was eerily similar to the one before it:

"Jory! Phil (last name) from (name of company, and said so quickly I couldn't hear it) here. Listen, hoping we can get a conversation with (name of CEO?) on calendar. Give me a call back at ..."

Each follow-up had the same friendly, slightly detached tone--no acknowledgement that I hadn't called back, nor additional information to help contextualize why I might be interested in calling back. I'm not even sure if he was in the ballpark calling me. Needless to say I never called Phil back.

At home I was receiving daily calls from a local gym, which I visited with the intention of getting my workouts started again. I was issued a week-long free-trial pass, which I used before leaving town for the holidays. I reasoned, why should I bother to call back this week? I'm still using my trial. I returned home after the holidays to multiple messages on my home and mobile phones that sounded increasingly desperate, requesting that I call back the gym sales rep. I figured, I'll go to the gym tomorrow and speak to her in person.

Unfortunately that plan was thwarted when, the night of my return, while trying to put our three-month-old down to bed, we received a call (at 9:30 p.m.) from the sales rep. H-band was less than excited to receive the call. I will only share the transcript as I could hear it on my end.

"Hello!"

(pause)

"We don't take calls at this time!" (pause)

"I don't care if she hasn't called you back. We have a screaming baby here that you just woke up!"

I started to block out the words after H-band started admonishing the person on the other line about her attitude. What a lovely way to start a relationship, I thought.

The next day I, along with three-month old and H-band, went to the gym to see the sales rep. H-band apologized for yelling at her, and we went about the business of signing us both up for memberships.

The moral of this story isn't, "See! Being persistent works!" but rather what I didn't share with the sales rep: "Your sales organization needs to think qualitatively rather than quantitatively."

During our meeting, the sales rep apologized for the frequent, post-business-hours calls.

"I have to knock out 50 a day. Once I'm done meeting with prospects in person, I often have to finish late into the night to get them all in," she said.

I suspect that her organization's sales philosophy mirrors Phil's: Sales is a numbers game. The more you call, the more you sell. On the face of it, that's true. But not if the message is untargeted, and if the follow-up lacks strategy. In Phil's case, he could call me 80 times and make his call quota, but since I have no idea what his company does I will never call back. Even if his company was in the ballpark and provided a service that could be of use, his Atari Breakout approach to telesales (in which one impersonally pings you over and over, hoping to break through to a responder) negates his chances of creating a real lead.

In my gym's case, the rep had a real lead--one who walked through the door and requested a trial, in fact. But by pummeling that lead at all times of the day, my interest (and certainly my husband's) waned. In this case, all of the follow-up calls did nothing to further the sale, they even almost thwarted it. The time that our sales rep spent knocking out her call quota would have been better spent on walking more warm sales leads through the gym and offering them free trials, or prospecting for more leads.

Note, I didn't say cold-calling, or calling other prospects who are in a cooler part of the sales cycle. I mean finding places where people who are more likely to want gym memberships are hanging out and networking with people in those places. For instance, local new moms groups (where I've been hanging, online and off, when I decided to join the gym), or aligning with physical therapists who recommend to their clients specific workout regimens.

Rather than requiring X number of calls regardless of stage in the sales cycle, the gym could reward the progress of leads from cool to warm, or entry into the sales cycle of new leads based on networking, or time spent offsite networking.

But then, what do I know? I'm just a customer.

 

Image: Retroist

Special Offer: Path to prosperity in some tough times

If you want to skip my intro and just get to the offer, scroll down.

Despite my role as a champion of blogger advocacy (not just in life but as my living!), I do very little in the way of product reviews. Most product mentions happen entirely within the context of other things I am writing about--mainly life and work. Though I love books I rarely have time to read them in a timely enough fashion to write book reviews.

All this is to say that I don't typically hype or tout products on my blog, but I felt compelled to help my friend Laura Berman Fortgang with the launch of her new book, The Prosperity Plan. I met Laura first through her work and respect the hell out of her; I really feel that her book will be useful to others. While I love how social media has enabled so many of us to pursue careers we love, it has also sometimes made it difficult to establish which people have longstanding, substantive backgrounds as consultants, experts, and gurus. Laura is the real deal. 

I wrote about Laura and her last book on BlogHer in 2009; it was a revelation. I loved it for its offroading approach to personal development. Laura provided guidance via her own very personal strories of struggle and discovery. Her new book is a return to what Laura is best known for--personal development with an enlightened, straightforward approach. Given the financial and motivational hole so many of us have found ourselves in since the economy tanked, we needed Coach Laura back.

I don't recommend anything I haven't personally tried (or read), though the timing of the launch and this offer didn't line up perfectly with my reading schedule ("schedule" is code for the few minutes each night after I get the baby down and before I pass out.) Though I started it on Monday--perfect timing for getting in gear for the year. What can I say? It's classic Laura. No bloviating from on-high, but more education through personal and professional experience. Transformation is a real outcome.

I keep reading depressing stories of people beaten down by the economy. I wish I could just give them all a copy of Laura's book. The best I can do is pass along this offer of some of the best motivational content out there:

OFFER: Order Laura's book today and enter your receipt number at http://www.theprosperityplan.net/promo/ and you will gain access to FREE downloads by Laura and other well-known leadership and self-help authors.

I'll be reading the book over the next few days and am eager to hear your thoughts on it.

Concerns of a Mom returning to work

This is the last weekend of my maternity leave, which I've anticipated for a long time. I've been planning the timing of things in my head and practicing on the breast pump--which for all its necessary function also is a bit dehumanizing. Even as I rely on them, I'm a bit repulsed by the pump, the plastic milk storage bags, these poor facsimiles of maternal role replacement. I know, I know, many women have done this before me; broken the seal of the little bubble of constancy created around them and their child. It has to be done sometime, but I still find myself recoiling from the inevitable pop.

I remember asking a woman in my office who had recently returned from maternity leave how she felt to be back. She was glad to be working again but confessed that she cried dropping her son off at daycare. A friend of mine who returned to work three months ago said she cried every day for two weeks very morning, after dropping off her daughter with a shared nanny. I'm lucky: My husband will be staying at home with my daughter--no emotional drop-offs; no wondering if she's clean or scared. I don't imagine myself crying, but rather digging in to work like I've done for the past 17 years. Work has a way of helping me temporarily forget things. But I worry: what if I don't temporarily forget? What if I find it too easy to forget?

I must confess, I miss being focused on things for longer than three minutes, with no distractions.

My child has not been away from me for 3.5 months. There was one day when Daddy took her out thinking he would come home sooner, but, amazed that she took a bottle in her sleep, he stayed out a whopping six hours. Aside from that anomalous day we've been apart no longer than three hours. Never has a relatively short eight hour work day seemed like such a hurdle.

We've tried to get her to take a bottle (asleep or awake) for two months, and we have had no luck aside from the aforementioned "dream feed". Sometimes she screams during our attempts; most times she plays with the nipple of the bottle, thinking we're offering her a new toy, happy to chew on it for a few seconds but ultimately rejecting it. We've offered the bottle with Mommy out of sight, with Mommy in the room, with Mommy subbing it in for the breast during a nursing, with experienced Grandmas and Aunts helming the effort, with Daddy begging her to consider, with bottles that look like boobs, with bottles that look like pacifiers, and with bottles that look like bottles, but nada.

We're now resorting to what friends tell us is the final, most effective method: Mommy goes back to work and makes the baby take a bottle or starve. This option is more than unsettling.

The babe also doesn't like to sleep in her crib. The past three months has elapsed over a long series of hand-offs between me and my husband; and if you are the one she falls asleep on, you must transition her to the nearest bed-like surface. Sometimes this can be a crib, or co-sleeper, or reclined baby swing or couch. The transition is done with the grace and precision of an experienced tai chi practitioner, as the babe cannot feel any slackening, dropping, or fidgeting or she will wake up.

This on-demand service will be impossible to continue when I go back to work, including the days when I'm working from home. In other words, unless we get this kid trained to fall asleep on her own, in her own bed, my husband will be the sole set of arms for eight-hour stretches of time. I've been praying for him and reminding him that, in retrospect, these times pass by all too quickly.

There were short stretches during my leave when I took a work call, sat in on an important meeting, responded to email, jotted down some thoughts I had about something business-related. All of these moments were all-encompassing. I know myself, and while I often multitask, I cannot integrate mothering with working. Both must be done exclusively during the times I've designated for them.

This, in itself, is a mixed blessing because it forces me to keep these realms separate, but it also forces them to compete. The work side can no longer sneak in minutes, that turn into hours, pursuing unscheduled ideas and entering spontaneous discussions. All of my spontaneity will be paradoxically planned; hemmed into my work day. The Mom side has to acknowledge the future I'm building at its short-term expense. I'll miss some milestones of my daughter's development and catch her at the crankier end of the day.

And I'll abandon someone I once left before, years ago, with whom I'd become reacquainted over the past three months. She knows how to sit in a room without looking at the clock. She forgets appointments. She sometimes forgets to bring her cell phone with her when she's out. She calls her friends in the middle of the day and apologizes if she catches them working. She finds joy in crazy things like changing diapers. She's not hankering to go places. She gets weepy from looking at babies, particularly ones she has to leave.