Phone Conversation Analytics from LogMyCalls

Earlier this week, I interviewed McKay Allen from LogMyCalls.com about the unique call tracking and analytics service they offer small business owners.  The interview was for an episode of my Small Business Marketing Minute podcast which will be published next week.  During the interview, McKay discussed a proprietary software program developed by LogMyCalls that can actually analyze the content of a phone conversation.

By analyzing the words and phrases used in the calls, the software can determine if the call resulted in a conversion (sale, appointment, etc).  If the call did NOT result in a conversion, the software can help determine why.  For example, it can tell whether or not the caller was a valid lead, and if it was a valid lead it analyzes how the sales rep handled the call.

As you can imagine, this type of information is solid gold for a business that generates a large percentage of its revenue from sales made over the phone (or at least, from sales made in appointments booked over the phone).  It’s also information that, up until now, has never been analyzed on such a large scale.  LogMyCalls released the infographic below summarizing what they were able to determine by analyzing millions of call segments across dozens of industries in the second quarter of 2014.

Not surprisingly, the data shows that a call was more likely (over 10 times more likely, in fact) to result in a conversion when the salesperson actually asked for the business.  What’s surprising is that this only happened in 11% of the calls analyzed.  That means that rather than spending hundreds, thousands, or even tens of thousands of dollars on expensive advertising campaigns to generate more leads, companies can see a potentially huge increase in revenue simply by training their sales reps better.

So, what’s the lesson for your business?  First, if phone conversations are an important part of your sales process, you might consider looking into using the LogMyCalls service to help you analyze how you can improve your conversion rate.  However, even if you don’t use their service, it would probably be wise to do some sales training with your employees on a regular basis.  You might just find that a few tweaks in your lead conversion process–even something as simple as asking for the sale–could have a significant effect on your bottom line.