MEMBERSHIP SELLING AND
SALES MANAGEMENT INSIGHTS

Prospecting Success Is A Numbers Game 

Over the next several weeks, possibly months, as your community emerges from COVID-19, prospecting may be tough. The phone’s going to ring less, and you probably won’t see many walk-ins. With lingering social distancing recommendations, popping into businesses in person may not be possible or welcomed.

Where does that leave you? Well, you're going to have to use what some salespeople refer to as the heaviest piece of office equipment - the telephone.

Frankly, even prior to COVID-19, telephone prospecting was the most efficient and ultimately effective way of making contact and initiating relationships with potential new members. But it takes quantity and consistency to be successful.

40 IS THE MAGIC NUMBER

We recommend to our clients 40 dials per day for a membership rep whose time is 100 percent dedicated to driving revenue. Yes, you read that correctly – 40 dials per day.

You may be thinking, that’s crazy, “there’s no time for that!” But hear us out. We’ve been tracking this sort of thing for a very long time, and it works. 40 is the magic number, and you do have the time.

The average time commitment for a quality membership call is six and a half minutes. That includes prep for the call, the actual time you are on the phone, and the time it takes you to track your activity in your database and update your pipeline. Sure, you are going to have calls that are way longer, but six and half minutes is the average. With 40 dials a day you’ll leave a lot of voicemails, and you’ll connect with some prospects that don’t have time to talk.

Six minutes and 30 seconds multiplied by 40 attempts, works out to be a little over four and a half hours each day – just slightly more than half of an average eight-hour work day. Call us crazy, but we think it's appropriate to recommend that anyone responsible for selling or otherwise driving revenue devote at least 50 percent of their day to that endeavor.

WHAT'S THE ROI?

We’ve established that you have the time, but, you may be wondering if it’s going to be worth your time. What kind of return you can get from your investment?

Unfortunately, we can’t predict results.  There are many influences that impact production - including training, repetition, needs discovery, and several other factors.  

That being said, the following three critical observations detail why a minimum of 40 dials a day will make a significant impact:

     1. 40 attempts per day is significantly more than most membership reps make. I’m sure we can all agree that more would be better.

     2. This commitment to be more proactive takes less than five-hours per day.  Thus, membership reps have plenty of time leftover to accomplish other responsibilities like ribbon cuttings, meetings, events, and so on. Prospecting is the lifeline that keeps refilling your pipeline and your chamber growing.

     3. Like most everything else we recommend to improve sales performance, discipline and consistency are critical. It’s not going to work if you try it for a week then give up. The gains come over time.

You absolutely must carve out time every day for prospecting and making new connections. Block it on your calendar and treat it like any other obligation with a deadline. Pick up the phone. Make the calls. Stick to it and you will see results.

We encourage you to try this technique and let us know how it goes. We’re easy to talk to, and we want to help. Feel free to reach out with questions you have about this technique or other membership sales issues.

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