How many calls should I run in a day?

How Many Calls Should I Run in a Day?

More calls don’t always mean more results. At a certain point, performance starts to decline.

In today’s Question of the Day, I break down how to think about call volume through the lens of performance, sustainability, and long-term success.

In this episode, we cover:

• The concept of the Peter Principle and how it applies to sales performance
• Why pushing for more calls can eventually hurt close rate and average ticket
• How to test and identify the optimal call load for each salesperson
• The importance of protecting against burnout and losing good people
• What the industry shows when it comes to balancing call volume vs. results

If you’ve ever wondered whether your team should run more calls—or fewer—this episode will help you find the balance between production and performance.

Have a Question? - Submit your questions to chrish@nexstarnetwork.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is from Sam in Texas. And Sam asks, How many calls should you run in a day? That's a great question. And I get that question a lot. And I immediately, when I read this and I was thinking, all right, what am I going to talk about? I immediately thought of the Peter principle, you know, where you like Peter out. I remember hearing that growing up as a kid, as a young adult, like the Peter principle where you peter out. But then as I got to thinking about it, I was like, what does that mean? Where does that come from? Like, I have no idea. But I did a little research and I found out there is actually a Peter Principle. It's a real thing. And it is named after Lawrence J. Peter, who co-authored a book in 1969 called The Peter Principle. And basically, this book was it was a satirical look at company hierarchy. And even though it was satirical when it first came out, it's actually become an insightful look into company hierarchy and promotions and where performance stalls. So basically, without getting into the weeds here, he says that you're good at a job. You're really good at a job. And then you get that gets that's what gets you promoted. You get promoted into another job, a job that has a completely different skill set, a skill set that you're probably not as good at. And so that's where your performance just stops. You stop excelling. And so now you're stuck there. So you don't get promoted anymore because you don't have good performance, but it's not like bad enough that you go back to doing the thing that you were really good at. And so it just stalls. You stall, the company stalls, the team stalls. And so they he called it the Peter principle, right? And I that got me thinking right away of like sales, right? Because like in sales, we always take the best salesperson and then we promote them into a sales manager. And that's a totally different skill set. Now they're managing people and they're not really good at it. So they're unhappy, and the team performance lags because they're not good at coaching and developing people. They were better at selling, right? And so that happens all the time. Now, what does this have to do with the question of how many calls should you run in a day? Well, it's kind of the same thing, right? Like at a certain point, performance is going to stop increasing. At a certain point, we're going to be taking on more, and our performance is going to diminish because of it. And so Peter out, essentially. And so, so you that where do you find where you're taking on enough calls, but you're maximizing performance? Performance isn't dipping. Now you can you can test this out. You can test this out with an employee. And that's what I'm going to talk about first. I'm going to talk about how do you test this out with an employee or with your team? Um, but also uh what are the industry benchmarks? What does the industry say about this? So, first we'll talk about how do you test this out, and then we'll talk about the industry benchmarks. So, how do we test it out? So, example, you're a salesperson or you have a salesperson and you have great sales numbers. And when I'm talking about sales numbers, I'm talking about closing and average sales. So the most basic sales numbers. Now, let's say you have these great sales numbers and you're running one call a day. So I only have one call, I have to go in there, execute my process, and so I have great closing, great average sale. So now the question becomes can I start doing two calls a day and keep that closing and average sale right where it's at? So closing and average sale doesn't start to diminish. And so I might start testing that out. I might start doing two calls a day. And can I still execute the process? Can I still maintain that closing and average sale? And once I get to two calls a day, I might go to three calls a day. So test it out at three calls a day. Can I start doing three calls a day and I can fully execute that process and my closing stays where it's at and my average sale? And if I get to three calls a day, well, can I do it at four? Can I do it at five? Can I do it at somewhere? Results are going to start diminishing because we're all bound by time. And so at a certain point, you physically can't execute the process. You don't have time to execute that process because you have too many calls to run. And when you don't have time to physically execute the process, you start cutting corners. You start skipping steps in your process. The process starts to become transactional. You're showing up and just delivering quotes rather than building value. You become an order taker versus an order maker. I saw this in a salesperson that I coach a while ago. And when they started in sales, they were great. They would go out, they'd execute the process, we would do trainings, we would do coaching, and you'd see like an immediate result when they would implement this stuff in the field. But at a certain point, they they had this hunger of, I need to make a certain amount of money. And so it was, I need more calls, more calls, more calls, more calls. And as they started doing more calls, they started shortchanging the process. They started skipping steps to the point where I remember on one coaching call, it just sounded dirty. Like we were talking about, like, yeah, I come in, I identify what their objection is, I overcome the objection, and then we move on, right? Are they real buyers or not? Like it just sounded real used car-ish, is what it sounded. And and it's because we had taken on too many calls, we couldn't execute the process. We lost sight of what we were trying to accomplish here, and we were trying to hammer people into buying. In fact, we joked about it on the call. I said, kind of sound like the velvet hammer here, right? Like just trying to hammer people into buying rather than serving your customers. And it was because we were taking on too many calls and we were cutting corners in our process. Now it also, you also risk burnout, right? Like as you're testing this out, one thing you want to be very careful of is I don't want to burn out a good employee. I don't want to take away their work-life balance. If I start just adding calls on, and this person starts missing their kids' soccer game and time with their family andor hobbies outside of work. Like at a certain point, they're gonna start to burn out, and then they're gonna start looking for a job elsewhere. And so that's something I really worry about is losing a great employee if I start just lumping on too many calls. So performance is gonna start diminish, as well as their own personal and mental capacity as well. So these are all things that if I'm testing this out, I want to monitor this closely. Because I remember at a certain point in my career, and this wasn't exactly sales, this was actually when I became uh a trainer, a sales trainer. I remember my boss kept lumping things on. Every quarter, my expectations would increase. And I just, I, you know, I'm I'm a performer. I like to execute, and so I was executing and I'm competitive, so I wanted to say I I won on all these things. But at a certain point, it got to the point where I I could I just couldn't do it. It just it was just impossible and it was it was too much. And so I pulled my boss in. And this is hard for me too, because I don't like admitting that I I fail. And so I probably hid this for far longer than I should have. But I sat down at my boss and I said, Look, I can't do this. And and my boss said, I've been waiting for this day. He said, I've been secretly piling on more and more and more because I wanted to see how far could you go. And I'm looking at him like, Are you kidding me? Like, I've been suffering and silent here for months upon months because you've been like secretly testing this out. Like a little communication would have helped there, would have saved me a lot of uh mental sanity, right? But then I've also had bosses that were um protective of my burnout and my my mental capacity, my work-life balance. I remember one time I started with a company and and I turned in my 100-day plan of what I thought we were gonna achieve. And my boss came over and sat down, and like you could just tell, like he had this solemn look on his face and the tone of his voice. Like, I thought I was getting fired. Like, and he goes, We got to talk about these goals here. I was like, Yeah, yeah, what? And he and he goes, This is a lot. What if we backed this off here? And I was like, ha ha, no problem, boss. Like, but in hindsight, I was very appreciative because I had just been coming out of that cutthroat, keep piling on kind of environment. And to have a boss that was thinking about my own mental capacity here as well and worried about me burning out, it felt refreshing. Felt kind of weird at first, but it felt refreshing. And so you can test this out. Start, you know, can I add on a call? Will closing stay the same? Does average sales stay the same? But but be very careful we don't want to burn anybody out because then we're gonna be getting short-term results but suffering long term because then I gotta hire for somebody. Uh when we hire for somebody, studies say that the cost of that hire is 21 times what their salary would be. That's a lot for a salesperson. So I don't want to be churning and burning salespeople because I'm burning them out here. So so that's that's how you test this out, right? Like very slowly, very methodically, you're staying real close to it, you're communicating with that employee. Can I add in another call here and maintain that closing and that average sale, but also maintain they're not burning out and they have they have that work-life balance. Um, so that's how I test it out. But let's talk about generally industry standards. So, first thing you need is you need a defined sales process, right? Look at your defined sales process and just look at the math on it. How long should your defined sales process last? Now, in the trades, generally a sales process is about 90 minutes, 90 minutes to two hours if it runs a little long. Um, sometimes maybe 60 minutes, but really 90 minutes is probably that that sweet spot, right? And so mathematically, just think about if they're running a 90-minute call plus drive time plus preparation plus anything they have to clean up or report after, like, like really that it's about three calls in a day. Math says it's about three calls in a day. Um, now if I start looking from another angle, I can look at data. There's so many AI companies now that have your sales process built in and listen to your sales process and compare that against uh the sales process, and and they can give us data too on how much time is spent with the customer that maximizes closing. And most AI companies I look at, there's a peak at about that 90-minute mark, right? When you're spending about 90 minutes with a customer, that's where peak closing is. So you're execute, you're fully executing the process, but you're not spending too much time with the customer. Because on the left side of the peak, when you're not spending enough time with the customer, that means you're skipping parts of the process and your close rate goes down. And if you're going too long, that means you're getting too wordy. You're talking too much, you're boring your customer, and closing also goes down. And so the peak is at 90 minutes there. So this ties in perfectly with our process. So we have a process, it says call should last about 90 minutes. Data supports this now. And like I said, if you add this all together, one, two, three 90-minute calls, plus your drive time there, plus your drive time to the next call, plus any preparation you need to do, plus anything you need to do to finish or close it out or communicate the sale, like all that stuff. It's about three calls in a day. That's that's what you can run. Now, there can be times like a busy season where we we all know that's coming, like an HVAC, when it gets hot out, that first heat wave that comes through. We know everybody's gonna flip on their air conditioner, everybody's gonna realize it's broken, and and that we're gonna have this mass influx of calls, that this is our busy season. We need this, we're counting on this for our budget, and we all gear up for that. We all know it's coming, right? And so there you may want to stretch a little bit, add in an extra call. You're working a little longer of a day to get that call in, but you're still executing that process, and and you're doing this in short bursts. And the reason I do this in short bursts is because I don't, I want to be protective of that burnout and that work-life balance. So we can do this when we're planning for it and we know it's coming, but I don't want this to be the norm because that's how I'm gonna burn employees out, right? So, my job as a sales leader is to maximize results, but also make it long-lasting. Okay. And so that's why I want to keep at about three calls per day. That's the maximum short burst of four. Now, there might be some unique, very unique rare exceptions. And I would say you could start testing that out, but I want you to monitor it very closely. So I I had a salesperson um that I coached their company one time, and they kept saying, like, dude, I want four calls a day. Like, I want money, I I want that fourth call a day. My numbers are the best. Like, I want that fourth call a day. And so we we discussed sales leader, myself, this the salesperson, that we would try it out, but we were gonna watch that closing and average sale very closely. As soon as that closing and average sale started coming down, we were we were gonna pull back to three, right? And and also we were checking in with the employee. We were very intentional in the weekly one-on-ones of checking in on their burnout and their personal life and how are they doing their work-life balance. Like, I I definitely did not want to burn this employee out, but they kept telling us they wanted it, and so we watched it very closely. And if the data supported it, closing an average sale, sure thing. We we started stretching to to four calls, but that's very, very unique. That's not common because often we overestimate what we can do in a day. We'll look at this and be like, three calls, like no, you can fit more in than that, or even even individually as a salesperson, thinking like, well, I could run more than three calls, I could run a fourth, I could do this, right? But we we forget, right? We overestimate what we can do in a day, but we underestimate what we can do in the long term as well. This long term running three calls a day and maximizing this performance, it compounds into long-lasting, consistent results. And so I know there's as I'm saying this, there's a subset of you that are thinking to yourselves, ah, Chris, I remember my first part-time job too. Like, I'm out here running eight calls a day. I would say if we were to dig into it, we probably don't have enough salespeople, right? If you're running five, six, seven, eight calls a day, we don't have enough salespeople. And and I guarantee your results are diminishing because you're running too many calls. You're skipping steps of the process, you're not building value in the company or you or the solution. We're missing opportunities. And had we run those same calls with a properly staffed sales team, I guarantee the closing and the average sale would be higher on the same amount of calls. And you'd probably make more money individually as well without having to put in so much work and stretch yourself out. So, as a sales leader, again, my job is to maximize results, but also have long-lasting results here. So that means having the right headcount, maximizing performance. And when you do that, everyone on your team is gonna be fed, everyone's gonna be happy, you're not gonna have that burnout, you're not gonna have that loss. This is going to be consistent planned growth. And that's what you want. And so the answer to your question three calls per day. That's that's where I would cap my team. Three calls per day. So that's today's question of the day. If you're enjoying question of the day, follow, share, and give a rating. Question of the day is on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, reach out to me either on social media or email. Both are going to be listed below in the show description. Let's get your questions answered. And if you're a next star member, schedule a call with me. Let's get this addressed one-on-one and get very specific to your situation. I'm Coach Chris. We'll see you tomorrow.