How to Boost Call Conversion Rates

Calls are coming in and out non-stop, the team is glued to their phones, leads seem interested, but the sales plan still seems out of reach. What went wrong? In this article, we’ll advise you on how to boost conversion and get more deals from the same number of calls. Additionally, we’ll provide examples of real companies tackling this challenge.

The Right Sales Strategy and Metrics

The sales department’s efficiency depends not on the individual skills of the managers or your personal control, but rather on a well-thought-out, proven, and scalable strategy.

If you work in B2B, focus on frameworks that pay sufficient attention to the client’s business needs. For example, you might consider methodologies like:

1. Challenger — the salesperson “challenges” the buyer’s assumptions, offering new insights and information. This helps the buyer look at their business needs differently and prompts them to rethink the seller’s offering and its benefits.
2. MEDDIC — a methodology that combines data on
   • how the client measures success (Metrics); 
   • who is responsible for the budget (Economic Buyer); 
   • the criteria for vendor selection (Decision Criteria); 
   • how decisions are made (Decision Process); 
   • which of the client’s key pain points you can solve (Identify Pain); 
   • who in the organization can support and promote your service/product (Champion).

For B2C, the main focus is on speed and efficiency. Your approach should allow the team to quickly qualify the lead, establish contact, and clearly understand the next step: a demo, closing the deal, etc.

If you’ve already chosen the most appropriate sales strategy, determine how you will analyze its execution. Basic metrics, such as Lead Response Time, are not always enough to figure out why leads aren’t becoming customers. Dig deeper, for example, try calculating:

1. Call Response Rate — the percentage of inquiries that resulted in further interactions with the lead. This metric helps track that managers are not just “answering the call” but genuinely processing the lead, i.e., moving to the next stage of the sales funnel:
   • clarifying request details; 
   • providing information; 
   • discussing the next step; 
   • entering information into the CRM, etc.
2. Call-to-Deal Conversion Rate — the ratio of closed deals to proper calls. This metric helps to assess the overall performance of the team and individual managers.

Read our previous article on 5 metrics that should be on every Head of Sales’ Dashboard.

Technology for Monitoring, Automation, and Personalization

The right tools allow you to implement the strategy more controllably and effectively.

Call Statistics

It’s difficult to understand the quality of your department’s call handling and what needs improvement without the basic call stats. With Ringostat, this information is available in the personal account. 

In the call log, you can view one of the standard reports or create a new one to fit your needs, choosing from over 30 parameters. Besides the basics (call date, type, status, client, etc.), these include First proper call, Unique calls, Who ended the call, Call rating, and others.

If you need to assess the situation overall, summary statistics will come in handy. Select a period and find out:

• the total number of calls;
• the number of answered calls;
• the number of proper calls
• the number of first-time calls;
• total and average conversation duration;
• average waiting time.

Additionally, you can see how all these figures were changing over time.

Conversation Analysis

What happens during the conversation with a lead? Until recently, the answer to this question could only be obtained by listening to the call audio recordings. This is a time-consuming and resource-intensive task. That’s why only small samples are usually used for in-depth analysis.

However, the development of artificial intelligence has changed the situation. Specifically, Ringostat AI can:

• transcribe the dialogue;
• analyze the sentiment and summarize the dialogue;
• offer recommendations for further actions.

With such a tool at hand, you can easily check if managers are following your guidelines. Moreover, you can analyze the effectiveness of different sales tactics.

Automation

No less important for increasing conversion is automation. Don’t ignore tools that can make your team’s life easier. Let them focus less on “manual” work and devote more attention to effective communication with the lead.

For example, the user of Ringostat Smart Phone needs a single click to:

• make and receive calls from any page;
• navigate to the corresponding deal in the CRM;
• view client data during the call.

If you think these actions take seconds and aren’t worth attention, consider how many times a day your team performs them. We calculated that our application saves five hours monthly for each employee. Imagine, what your team could do with that extra time.

Personalization

What information about potential clients is at your managers’ fingertips during calls? Some insights about the lead may help to steer the conversation in the right direction, removing the need for guesswork and unnecessary questions. And that’s another step toward a sale.

With Ringostat Smart Phone, your employee will instantly know:

• the country and city the call is coming from;
• how many times the user visited the site;
• the source of the transition;
• the number of previous calls, etc.

Well-Trained and Motivated Team

Strategy and technology will suggest the right approach. However, your sales professionals must know how to use these suggestions and be willing to do so. To achieve that, you need:

1. Reports and dashboards with key metrics that reflect the overall picture. Teach the team how to use them, explain their importance. Give clear answers to the questions “Where are we now?” and “Where do we want to be?”.
2. Personal feedback based on data. Detailed information on each call and audio analysis allows you to evaluate the work of each specialist without relying solely on intuition. Discuss these details in one-on-one meetings and outline areas for growth.
3. Training based on the analysis of successful tactics. As we mentioned, analyzing phone conversations has become much easier with tools like Ringostat AI. Use these capabilities and “traditional” metrics to identify patterns and train the team to sell better: handle objections, maintain lead engagement, etc.
4. Focus not only on quantity but also on quality. Motivate employees not just to make more calls but to do their best during every interaction and try to make it more impactful. This will allow you to achieve more with the same resources.

How to Improve Call Conversion Rates: Case Studies

Here are some examples of our clients improving their call handling efficiency and effectiveness.

KENT&AVER

KENT&AVER is a Ukrainian headwear brand. Using Ringostat Intelligent Business Phone System, they can track the each manager’s workload and the quality of their work. It helped to improve the sales department efficiency:

• turnover increased by 70%;
• conversion improved by 15%:
  • from a targeted lead to a deal;
  • from a call to a meeting with wholesale buyers;
  • from a meeting to a deal.

The client uses Ringostat data to analyze:

• Leads and demand: how many leads come by phone; the number of targeted leads; the share of targeted leads interested in wholesale cooperation, etc.
• Conversion percentage from call to sale for each funnel and what affects it.
• Manager effectiveness:
  • the number of calls each manager made and accepted; 
  • the number of unique incoming calls; 
  • average waiting time; 
  • how many outbound calls lasted over 30 seconds; 
  • the total and average duration of conversations for each manager.
• Audio recordings of calls. Thus, senior managers can quickly step in if a difficult situation arises. Also, they track whether sales representatives follow the pre-defined call structure and how well they do their jobs.

Lazersvit

Lazersvit is a medical center operating in Kyiv, Kharkiv, and Odesa. With Ringostat Intelligent Business Phone System and call tracking onboard, they increased conversion from call to appointment by 10%.

This is partly the result of optimizing advertising, which now brings in higher-quality leads. However, Lazersvit also managed to improve the call handling. Senior management can listen to audio recordings and point out areas for improvement to administrators.

Conclusion

The sales results of your calls depend on whether you have a systematic approach to deal with them. That includes your sales strategy aligning with business goals and tracking real efficiency through relevant metrics. Moreover, you need the right tech to help the team automate processes, analyze data, and quickly scale successful tactics. Applying this approach, you get more customers from calls with the same effort, and boost your chances of achieving sales targets and increasing profits.