“Ya gotta close the deal on the first visit, ‘cause they ain’t coming back!” says the old timey salesman to the rookie. “Be sure to give them your watch so they know what time to be back.” is further advice from the grinning, hoary old peddler to the kid. Be-backs, people who don’t buy on the first visit or on the salesman’s first call, are lost opportunities because they’ll go down the road and meet a real salesman. You get one chance to close the deal, one shot at get their signature on the contract before they bail out.

The first call close is more fiction that fact, with very few exceptions. Professional sales people know that you have “one chance to make a first impression,” but more than one chance to close a sale. According to the National Sales Executive Association:
• 2% of sales are closed on the first contact
• 3% of sales are closed on the second contact
• 5% of sales are closed on the third contact
• 10% of sales are closed on the fourth contact
• 80% of sales are made on the fifth through twelfth contacts

Eight out of ten sales are made after the fifth contact, despite what the old pros have always said. What is the best way in assure a successful relationship with a new customer? Three things (to paraphrase the real estate industry): Follow-up, follow-up and follow-up. A good follow-up campaign of appropriately timed phone calls, e-mails and personal calls will go a long way towards turning a prospect into a customer. It is also paramount to note that there should be a valid reason to make the follow-up call, reasons like supplying updated pricing or product information, providing market change data or sharing something about a mutual, non-business interest you learned about during the other contacts.

An effective means to improving a sales team’s closing percentage and overall volume is to outsource some of the more “menial” sales tasks; lead generation, lead qualification, sales appointments and some of the follow-up actions. People who specialize, as in the medical profession, get very good at their area of concentration, much more so than generalists. Being a generalist is like having a Liberal Arts degree. The specialists in a telesales outsourcing company are very good at the menial tasks that salesmen like to avoid; developing, then plodding though prospect lists qualifying the leads, locating the decision-makers, determining the needs. A salesperson supplied with well qualified leads is going to make more sales because he has more time in face-to-face contact with more prospects. It is simple mathematics.

TeleArk is the “go-to” company for outsourcing for sales lead development, cold-calling services and outbound/inbound call centers. TeleArk is also a source for database management. Watch this column for specific case studies on our clients’ successes with our services.