100th EPISODE!!! - How many calls should you run in a day?

How Many Calls Should You Run in a Day? — 100th Episode Special

More calls don’t automatically equal more revenue.

In this special 100th episode of Question of the Day, I break down real-world data from over 100,000 calls to answer one of the biggest questions in residential sales:
What is the optimal number of calls to run in a day?

First off—thank you. Whether you’ve listened to one episode or all one hundred, I appreciate the support, the questions, and the conversations that have helped make this podcast what it is.

In this episode, we cross-reference:

• Call volume
• Process adherence
• Close rate
• Average sale
• Time spent per call

…and uncover what actually happens when salespeople get overloaded.

We discuss:

•  The point where performance starts to decline 
•  Why rushing calls hurts both the customer experience and results 
•  How to balance productivity with quality execution 
•  What the data says is the sweet spot for maximizing performance without creating burnout 

If your team is chasing more calls at the expense of process and profitability, this episode will challenge that thinking with real numbers—not opinions.

And what better topic for Episode 100 than one backed by the data from over 100,000 real calls.

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:10

Welcome to the question of the day. Today's question is the one hundredth question of the day. One hundred questions, one hundred days. It's a very special episode today. And the hundredth question comes from Mac in North Carolina. And Mac asks, How many calls should you run in a day? That's a fantastic question. And I get asked this question a lot. And typically, typically, what I do is I say, Well, you want to focus on running the process. And when you run the process, you look at how much time does that take, and then factor in that time. Should equal how many calls you can run in a day. But today, I'm gonna go a step further. Today, I am going to prove using actual numbers, actual data from over a hundred thousand calls, what the answer to that question is. How many calls should you run in a day? So, first, let's look at that. The process. Your process, I would always say takes about one to two hours. So when you deliver a process to a customer, it should generally take about one to two hours. So figure that and then factor in your drive time. So your drive time between calls, and then factor in, you're probably working about an eight-hour workday because you're not gonna work yourself to death. We're not talking about 16-hour days here. We have some work-life balance. That's gonna equal about three calls. So if you're figuring two hours per call, 30 minutes between calls, you got bathroom breaks, you got lunch in there too. Like that's gonna be about three calls. Maybe four. If if you stretch it out, if you're really pushed, but that's a long day, man. And so like you can do that in short sprints, but that that's a really long day. So, like the example that comes to mind is like HVAC. When it's hot, when you get that first heat wave, it's a hundred plus degrees. Yeah, you're probably running four calls a day. You're trying to maximize the opportunity, but you can't do that all year long. And many of you are thinking, okay, sure, sales guy, prove it. Prove, prove that that is the right amount of calls. So, all right, let's dig into the data. So, here's the data I'm looking at. I'm looking at data, and this data is pulled from AI. There is a lot of AI tools that follow your process and listen to your process, and then can take that process that you're running and compare it against a defined process. And it can look for commonalities between the processes. So I'm pulling data from over a hundred thousand calls using AI. And here's the data I'm looking at. The data I'm looking at is time on call compared to closing percentage. So, how long are you spending at a call? And how does that equate to a closing percentage on a sales call? The other piece of data that I'm cross-referencing that with is process adherence. What percentage of the process is being executed, and how does that compare to closing an average sale? Now, I should also say the data that I'm looking at, it is not one trade specific. It is not salesperson or technician specific, it is a mix of all of them. And so it is uh some plumbers, some electricians, some HVAC techs, some replacement sales, so like HVAC replacement or electrical panel replacement, like so some bigger ticket items mixed in there. So they're all mixed in together, but that's the data that that we're looking at. So let's let's look at data set number one. So this is the time compared to closing percentage. Now, if you look at this graph, and I realize you're listening to this, you can't look at the graph. So I'm gonna describe the graph to you. So what what you have is an XY graph here, and along the bottom is minutes, how many minutes were spent on a call? And then there's a bar graph going up, and along the left-hand side, there's the closing percentage. And this peaks at about the two hour mark, right at about the two hours is where it peaks. So to the left of two hours. So if you're spending less than two hours, the closing percentage is less. So it's rising up. So the the very minimum here, like 20, 30 minutes on a call, is is getting a very low closing percentage, but it's slowly rising all the way up to about two hours. And then it actually starts to come back down again after two hours. So as you get into like three hours, it's coming down again. And think about think about that logically, right? Like if we say a process lasts about two hours, that's that sweet spot. That's where the closing is the highest. So if you're too short on that time, you're missing pieces of the process. That would equal lower closing. But if you're too long, you're probably long-winded, you're probably boring your customer, or you don't know what you're doing, which is confusing your customer and worrying your customer, and your closing comes down again. So that two hours, that's that seems to be the sweet spot. That's where we're fully executing our process. Now, data set number two. Data set number two, this is that process adherence compared to closing an average sale. So when we are fully executing the process, when we are 90 to 100% of the time executing the process, that will equal, according to this graph, 50% closing and about an $8,500 average sale. So let's let's take that data, those two data sets, and let's compare that to running four calls a day. Because we said you could probably, if you're executing the process, run about three calls a day, you could stretch it into four. And so what I'm figuring here is the first data set said about two hours. That's the sweet spot. And so I'm using that as my my gauge here. So two hours, some drive time between calls, maybe a short lunch. I'm stretching this out. Okay, four calls. We're using this as our first example. So if we run four calls per day and I use that data, if I'm running four calls per day and I'm closing at 50% closing and 8,500 average sale, that means in a month, I'm generating about $378,000 in a month. And if I do that every month for a year, I'm a $4.5 million salesperson. So that would equal about $4.5 million. So let's call this person salesperson one in our example. So salesperson one fully executes the process, runs four calls a day. That equals a 50% closing, 8,500 average sale, 378,000 revenue in a month, and they're a $4.5 million salesperson. So salesperson won, $4.5 million. That's what we got to remember. Salesperson won, $4.5 million. Let's look at salesperson number two. So I've had I've had coaching calls where companies run like eight calls a day. That's double what salesperson one does. Twice the calls. Like they gotta be making more money, right? Yeah, maybe performance comes down a little bit, but like they gotta be making more money. Well, let's find out. Let's find out. So here's my thinking: double the calls equals half the process. Okay, so if I'm running twice the calls, that's probably half the time I'm spending on each call. And and I'm even being lenient there because you probably got more drive time in there, et cetera. Um, so double the calls equals half the process. So half the process, if I look on my data set, if I'm executing about 50% of that profits, that means about 45% closing. That's a 5% drop from salesperson one. Well, that's not that big, that's only 5%. But the average sale, the average sale drops all the way down to $2,800 from $8,500 with salesperson one down to $2,800.

unknown 8:40

That's a big drop.

SPEAKER_00 8:42

That's a big drop in average sale. So let's do the math on that one. Eight calls per day. If you're running eight calls per day, based on that 45% closing and $2,800 average sale, you're gonna generate $221,000 in a month. And if you do that every month, over a year, you're a $2.6 million salesperson. So take take a second, compare that to salesperson one. Salesperson one was doing half the work, well, not really, because they're spending more time on call, but running half the calls, four calls a day, but getting double the revenue. Salesperson one was 4.5 million, salesperson two, 2.6 million, four calls a day, 4.5 million, eight calls a day, 2.6 million. Whew. Let's look at salesperson number three. I've even had coaching calls where companies are running up to 12 calls per day. 12 calls per day. Now let's be realistic here. If you're running 12 calls per day, you you may not get out of the truck. You might be driving by waving and like just sending a paper airplane with a quote on it towards the customer. Like you're just saying hi. There's no process here, right? You're saying hi and delivering a quote. At that point, I mean, I don't know, why didn't we just do this over the phone? Like, my goodness. So, so let's say, let's say though, that's 10% of a process. 10% of the process is being executed. We said hi and gave them a quote. That's the 10%. Everything else is missing, right? Now, according to data set number two, there, uh, 10% of the process equals 32% closing and $1,300 average sale. That is a big drop in both closing and in average sale. So if I'm running 12 calls a day times 32% closing times $1,300 average sale, 12 calls a day is equaling $153,000 in revenue over a month. If I do that every month, that's $1.8 million over the course of the year. So compare those three now. Salesperson one, four calls a day, $4.5 million. Salesperson two, eight calls per day, $2.6 million. Salesperson 3, 12 calls per day, 1.8 million. Are you seeing a trend here? The more calls you're running, the less revenue you're actually generating. You are burning through your leads. But now some of you are thinking, like, well, what do I do? What do I do with the other car? I got 12 calls today, I gotta run them. Well, by my math, you'd do better not running them. Like, just let them sit till the next day. But I wouldn't do that. I wouldn't let them sit till the next day. I would say this is actually a pretty simple solution. You need to hire more salespeople and more technicians. You need to be adequately staffed. This is the importance of being adequately staffed. The difference between 4.5 million and 1.8 million. And keep in mind, if I'm fully staffed, to run those same 12 calls, that would be three salespeople at 4.5 million. So what is that? Nine, 13.5, 13.5 million. This is the importance of being adequately staffed, not running two calls. And I'm not, I'm not even there's so many things I'm not even factoring into this. This is this is just the hundredth episode off the top of my head, the quick math on this, right? Like I'm not factoring burnout, I'm not factoring turnover because seriously, who's gonna run this many calls for that long? You're going to have turnover, and then you're gonna have onboarding and ramp up time for the next person. And this sounds like a complete show, so they're probably not gonna stick around. You're gonna have more turnover and more onboarding and more ramp up time. This is gonna lead to poor customer experiences, bad Google reviews. How much revenue is gonna be lost because of the Google reviews you have of a 3.2? That's gonna be rough. So I'm not even factoring that stuff in. Now, if you're a salesperson listening to this, I've left out one very important part. Commission. So here's your homework. Your homework for the hundredth episode here. Multiply this times whatever your commission is. Multiply the revenue generated by these salespeople here times your commission. So if I'm running four calls a day, 4.5 million times whatever your commission is. If I'm running eight calls a day, 2.6 million times your commission. Uh if I'm running 12 calls a day, 1.8 million times whatever your commission is. The commission's gonna follow the same trend here. Spoiler alert. Now, the other thing I would add in here too is like I've been using four as an example here. But realistically, I I don't see high-performing salespeople typically running four simply because of the time involved here. If you're running two calls, uh two uh two hours per call, which is that sweet spot, four calls is gonna be eight hours right there. And then when you factor in your drive time, that's gonna be at least another hour and a half. Plus, you do have bathroom breaks and a lunch. That's a long day. So realistically, four is probably too many. So that sweet spot is probably below four. So figure out what is your commission? Which salesperson are you? What revenue are you gonna generate? What commission do you want? Who are you? A $4.5 million salesperson, a $2.6 million salesperson, or a $1.8 million salesperson? That is today's question of the day. The hundredth question of the day. And if you're enjoying question of the day, follow, share, give a rating. Question of the day is on major streaming platforms. If you have a question, question number 101, maybe, shoot it to me via email. It'll be listed below in the show description. Let's get that question answered. And if you're a next star member, schedule a call with me. Let's address this one-on-one and get very specific to your situation. I'm Coach Chris. I will see you tomorrow for 1010.