Why One-Call Closing Doesn't Work Anymore

You have likely had a team of reps who have been traditionally trying to do the one-call close method for 20+ years. It doesn’t work anymore…well, most of the time. As a sales manager, you are most likely at your desk looking at your CRM right now looking at your close percentage, which is hovering between 25% and 35%. I spend all day talking to our prospects (who often don’t buy on the first call) and ask them what they do with the other 75% of people who don’t buy?

Their answers might be similar to yours: 

• We give the rep the ability to do their own rehash. 
• Spoiler alert…most of them don’t
• We don’t do anything with them. 
• WHY THE HELL NOT
• We have our CSRs call to see how the appointment went.
• Getting closer there…but a couple of calls and calling it quits doesn’t work. Especially if your CSRs aren’t sales killers.
• I don’t know what we do with the demos we don’t sell.
• This one is wild to me, but I hear it so often that it needs to be an answer here.
• We send email campaigns. 
• Deals die in emails with a 16.97% open rate (Smart Insights)
• 98% of texts are opened and 95% responded to within 3 minutes (SMS Comparison)

The average homeowner gets 3 to 4 quotes before making an informed decision. If you keep in touch through THEIR buying process, you are more likely to gain that business. We see it through our customers every day who are increasing their closing rates by 7% to 12%. They aren’t doing anything novel but 48 hours post quote, they are running text, email, and voicemail drop campaigns to surface an objection. From there it becomes a numbers game.

No, you are not going to increase your close percentage by 50%. If you did, I’m sure every single home services company in the world would be studying you, but let's break down some numbers in an example through our Sales Follow Up Calculator:

• You run 50 appointments a week.
• 25% of them close
• Your average job size is $10,000

The amount of prospects you don’t sell per year is 1,950. If you grabbed 8% of those no-sales, you would sell 156 additional deals netting $1.6 Million over the course of 12 months.

I’m not saying you need to do away with your one-call close method. It works 25% of the time and it has made you a successful business. What I am saying is that if you do nothing with 75% of your appointments, you are wrong. If you can talk to 8 out of every 10 people who don’t close the power of numbers says some of those people are going to close. 

Still interested in learning more about effective sales follow-up strategies? I urge you to check out our Conversation Optimization eBook. It will give you some ideas on how you can start creating your own playbook on how to win more business after the appointment.