The daily call target depends on the number of buyers due to be contacted, the proportion of successful calls and the time needed for a conversation and preparation. In wholesale sales, it needs to be calculated from upcoming repeat purchases and gaps in orders. Demanding more calls does harm when it takes up time with extra conversations about current orders, leaving existing buyers without attention.
The owner of a wholesale company, a client of ours, recalled a buyer with several retail outlets during a meeting with our head of sales and business development director:
“He had five shops. How many does he have now? When did you last speak to him?”
It was not immediately possible to establish how the buyer’s business had changed or when someone had spoken to him. Yet the CRM system was working: contacts and orders were recorded in it. Salespeople sent in sales figures every day. Buyers had started buying less, and the owner noticed a pattern: those they personally pointed out received follow-up attention. The others could be left without a conversation for a long time.
Today’s order went into the report. A buyer who had stopped ordering created no new event for that report. Bringing that buyer back to the sales team’s attention required a reminder from the owner.
The advice to “have them call more” overlooks the gap
The logic behind this advice is understandable: fewer sales — add more activity. Calls are easy to count, and the requirement is easy to explain. But the count starts with an action that has already happened. For a buyer who has not been called for a long time, it does not even show anything overdue: no one has defined when the conversation should have taken place.
If the day’s list is put together from incoming enquiries and current orders, the extra calls will go to people who are already in touch. You can check dispatch details more often and ask familiar contacts about new needs. For a forgotten buyer, nothing changes: they are still not on today’s work list.
This creates a strange situation: you can report the calls made, but you cannot name the buyers the sales team has not got round to contacting. There is no deadline for contacting the overlooked buyer. The owner notices this from memory, because they remember the person behind the sales figures. Adding a report every evening is pointless if it still leaves out an expected purchase that did not happen.
A target is useful when the buyers who need contact have already been identified, time has been set aside, and the salesperson is putting off getting in touch. The head of sales can then see the work left undone. Until then, a high number can hide a gap in the customer list.
The absence of an order should also trigger action
A regular buyer’s own purchasing pattern provides the reason to get in touch. You need to know when they usually replenish their stock, what was agreed in the last conversation and what changes they have already reported. A single rule to “call everyone once a month” is too crude here: for one shop it is too late, for another it is intrusive.
Purchase history provides a starting point. The agreement with the customer makes it more precise. If orders used to come in roughly once a week, but there is now an unusual gap, the salesperson needs a task to find out why. There is no need to wait for another incoming order to do this. If the buyer has given a different date in advance, contact is scheduled in line with that agreement.
Here are reasons the head of sales can use to put together the day’s work. They provide a ready-made filter for the call list, which is worth discussing before introducing a target.
| Reason to get in touch | What the salesperson needs to find out | What remains after the conversation |
|---|---|---|
| The agreed purchase date has arrived | Whether the need still exists | The next action and its date |
| The gap has become longer than usual | What has changed for the buyer | A confirmed reason or further work to establish it |
| Repeat order volumes have fallen | Whether consumption or the choice of supplier has changed | A fact the head of sales will use to decide what to do |
| Information about the business has not been updated for a long time | How the buyer operates now | Current information for a proposal |
One buyer appears on the list once, even if there are several reasons for contact. If there is no answer, the task stays open with the next attempt scheduled. A successful call does not automatically close it either: after the conversation, it must be clear what is happening with the purchase.
How many calls fit into a working day
First, the head of sales counts the buyers who need a conversation today. Then they divide this number by the actual proportion of successful calls among the same type of buyers. Cold calls and conversations with regular buyers are not mixed in one calculation.
For example, 15 buyers need to be contacted. According to the sales team’s data, half the attempts result in a conversation. We get 15 divided by 0.5 — around 30 calls. This is a workload estimate: it does not guarantee that each of the selected buyers will answer today.
Now consider the time. If a conversation, including preparation and recording what was agreed, takes 8 minutes, and an unanswered attempt takes 2 minutes, we get: 15 multiplied by 8 plus 15 multiplied by 2 — 150 minutes, or two and a half hours. Use the time your own work takes, including what you do after the call.
Does the salesperson have these hours available after handling orders and fulfilling promises to customers? If not, the owner is offered a choice: free up time from other work or reconsider how much service to provide. Demanding 50 calls on top of the same workload does not add any hours. It forces them to cut conversations and preparation short, reducing the very work the calls were made for.
What must change before raising the target
The first sign is that the head of sales shows which buyers are due for contact before any personal reminders from the owner. The second is that, by the end of the day, it is clear who has been spoken to, who has a repeat attempt scheduled and where a promised action is overdue. The length of the gap is measured from the order; the date of the last call does not reset it.
The quality of conversations that took place is reviewed separately. At RENTROP, the AI ROP product compares calls and correspondence with the deal record; analysis of salespeople’s calls helps reveal failings in the conversation. But recordings alone cannot be used to assess the work with a buyer who was not called at all: for that, the head of sales needs a list of buyers due for contact.
In that case, the owner remembered five shops, but the sales team could not immediately explain what was happening with the buyer. The total number of calls per day does not explain that gap. A missed conversation will only become visible if it has a deadline set in advance; until then, you can meet any target and still wait to see who else the owner remembers.