|
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.
|
