How Many Sales Calls Do You Make In a Day?

A few weeks ago, I posted a survey on the landing page of both my weekly sales tips and “Short Attention Span Webinars.” There were 10 questions regarding sales activity and the reward for participating was a copy of a white paper, titled “Why Aren’t You Selling More?”

I finally got enough completed surveys and a spare moment to summarize the answers and tally some averages. When I did, there were a few surprises...

• On a scale of 1 to 10, I asked people to rate their sales efforts. That is, how hard are they working at growing their sales? I thought the average answer of 7.26 was lower than it should have been.

• On average, respondents reported ending up in voice mail an average of 67 percent of the time. That strikes me as low as well, to be honest, but then I was counting ALL calls, not just cold calls, so maybe that’s accurate. Hard to say.

• But the biggest surprise came in the answers to this question: “How many sales calls do you make, on average, on a given day? (Count phone calls and live visits to new and existing accounts. Voice mails count. E-mails do not.)” The average number worked out to be 11.9 calls.

11.9!!!!

Are you trying to tell me that you make nearly 12 sales calls a day as defined above? 12? You make 12 calls? You are prepared to look me in the eye and stand by that number? Seriously?

• Tooth fairy? I believe in you.
• Santa? Duh!
• Mitt Romney’s teeth have never been whitened? I’m in.
• Gisele was either going to marry me or Tom Brady? I tell myself that one daily.

But I’m going to have to see some solid evidence before I accept 11.9 calls or get a logical explanation of what is going on.