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Breakthrough Idea at Leading Training Company
By Ken Krogue, VP Sales and Marketing - InsideSales.com
In 1993 I was hired by Jim Ritchie, the Senior Vice President of
Sales and Training, at Franklin Quest (now called Franklin Covey)
to see if time management training could be sold over the phone.
I told him I would stay five years or until we did 1 million in
sales in a month.
I was hired as Inside Sales Manager and started with the two very
best customer service agents from the call center. We dialed like
crazy and made contact 1 out of 4 calls. Though a 25% contact ratio
is by industry standards successful, I asked myself, "Can we
progress a sale on those other 3 calls? Even if we only talk to
the receptionist?"
The answer was YES. And we did it with a fax machine.
We asked permission and faxed seminar invitations when decision
makers were unavailable. Then we called back within 2-3 days and
went for the close. We designed several compelling faxes and tested
every possible aspect of what affected response rates. We used the
Faxability network software from our PCs.
We called the system Call->Fax->Call and the results were
incredible:
| Medium |
Response Rate |
| Calling alone |
5-7% |
| Faxing alone |
1% |
| Call->Fax->Call |
10%+ |
We experienced a synergy between the two mediums that was larger
than the sum of the parts. Just for fun we tried Call->Mail->Call
but the results were much less, and took much longer to develop.
We then mailed the same piece as we were faxing and response was
.3%. We made great offers, used compelling or humorous headlines,
and sent a new fax each month. Response rates went up but leveled
off after the 5th fax. If people called and didn't want a fax, we
took their names off. If we were late faxing, others called and
wondered where their fax was. It was working.
I decided to challenge my salespeople and prove the Call->Fax->Call
concept once and for all.
I told my people that I would make more dials and sales in a day
than they would, and I would never speak with a decision maker.
And the loser would dance the hula in every lunchroom in the three
largest buildings on campus. By then I had over 15 great salespeople.
Our support staff brought lunch right to our desks and we strapped
in.
Dialing by hand I logged the following:
- 7 hours, 45 minutes of dialing
- 460 calls
- 298 permissions gathered and faxes sent
- 11 sales called in during the next week
My best salesperson made 7 sales. But I still had to dance; one
salesperson made 461 dials.
Just to see what would happen, I sent the exact same fax to the
same people 6 weeks later
8 more sales rolled in.
That gave us another idea. What if we kept permissions in a database?
After two years we had salespeople with thousands of fax numbers
in every territory. Reps could fill half their quota without making
a call.
The Inside Sales Department grew 150% for four straight years in
the company that was the second-fastest growing small business in
America in 1994. In March of 1997, we did our first million-dollar
month with 70 salespeople. I was getting intrigued with telephony
and the Internet. So as promised, I quit the next day.
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