If you’re familiar with the sales world, you’ve probably heard that cold calling is dying. Sure, for some it’s getting an increasingly negative connotation. But that doesn’t mean you should stop calling prospects. Actually, it’s quite the opposite. A recent study shows that 92% of all customer interactions happen over the phone, and it takes about five calls to close 80% of a company’s sales.
These figures simply mean your business development representatives (BDRs) need to call as many prospects as possible. If they do, they’ll help your sales reps by scheduling qualified appointments and they’ll produce a healthy sales pipeline full of closing opportunities.
As you know, new sales opportunities are the lifeblood of your business. According to recent research by HubSpot, 72% of businesses with less than 50 sales opportunities a month failed to reach their revenue goals. In contrast, only 4% of those businesses with between 101 and 200 sales opportunities fail to reach their revenue targets.
However, reaching a sales target is easier said than done. Apart from prospecting, BDRs and SDRs have to follow up with and nurture leads, answer emails, do research on prospects or their industry, prepare weekly and monthly reports, and much more. Many times with this mountain of tasks, they simply cannot strategically prospect leads. Here’s where sales power hours come into play.
In this guide, we’ll explore what a sales power hour is and how it works. More importantly, we’ll show you how you can implement sales power hours in your business.
WHAT IS A SALES POWER HOUR?
Simply put, it’s one hour a day during which your SDR teams will focus solely on prospecting. During this hour, all your sales and business development representatives should only concentrate on calling your business’s top prospects.
In other words, your SDRs shouldn’t focus on any other tasks like prospect nurturing, list building, or extensive research on any prospects. It’s also vital that you don’t schedule any meetings or other activities during the sales power hour. If you do, your sales power hours will lose their effectiveness.
Now, keep in mind that different businesses might implement power hours differently. One thing is certain, though—these power hours produce results. They allow your SDRs to make high volumes of calls, and when they do, they’re able to create more leads which, in turn, gives your sales reps more opportunities to take advantage of.
In simple terms, power hours make your SDRs more productive. Considering the research we mentioned earlier, this puts your business in the ideal position to generate more sales opportunities and reach its goals.
It’s important to remember, though, that the success of a power hour shouldn’t be measured based on the number of calls a representative makes. For this reason, you might want to use some other metric to gauge the results your team is able to achieve. This could include the number of appointments they’re able to set, the number of demos they’re able to schedule, or other business opportunities they’re able to create.
Now, considering how effective sales power hours are as a lead generation and productivity tool, you might be wondering what you need for a power hour. Fortunately, it’s nothing you don’t already have. You only need an hour a day, telephones, and your SDRs’ and BDRs’ undivided attention.
