If you don’t measure this, may I gently suggest that you should at least take a look at your metrics to see how your team is doing. At most, you could start checking this metric weekly as a lead indicator of pipeline health…

According to research 58% of buyers are disappointed by their meetings with sales people and only 7% agree to a follow up.

That means that most of the time, effort and hard work to get those meetings is wasted.

It also means that your sales people don’t know how to successfully guide a first call with a new customer.

What’s that costing you and your business?

What difference would it make if you could raise the 2nd meeting rate to 10%, 25%, 50% or higher? Even a 1% increase would make a tremendous difference if you have a large sales team.

Have you, as a leader, made a conscious effort to ensure that your sales people know what to do and how to do it in that critical first meeting and call?

Do you know what are the elements and behaviours (lead indicators) that sales people MUST execute to ensure they don’t become part of the sad statistic above?

In my experience, most sales organizations don’t know what these lead indicators are and they haven’t made a conscious effort to enable reps with the planning and conversational skills to execute that first meeting well and successfully…so that it results in another.

If you’d like some ideas on what these lead indicators are for others and what they might be for your sales organization, then get in contact.

And, if you’ve found this article helpful and thought provoking, then please share it with a friend who will find it helpful, or share it on social media.