For example, follow-up calls to closed enquiries produced a total gain of 36 000 ₽, but the second round ate into the first round’s earnings by 6 000 ₽ — even if every subsequent purchase is attributed to the calls. Looking at the total row in the report, the business owner will approve further calls that are already reducing their earnings. Yet the idea of revisiting closed enquiries can work.
At a club offering wellness classes, the business owner brought in a contact centre to work with closed enquiries from people who had stopped responding. Some booked trial classes after being contacted again. At a meeting with our head of sales and business development director, the owner explained: “They stopped responding, so their enquiries were simply marked as closed. But their need hadn’t gone away.”
In this case, bookings for classes are confirmed. There is no information about membership purchases. But the outcome we already know changes the decision: closed enquiries cannot all be written off as people who no longer need anything. The next question is how many attempts to bring them back are worth paying for.
By the next round, the list has changed
It is normal to stop making unsuccessful calls. A salesperson has a buyer today who needs to be sent a cost estimate. The head of sales limits attempts to make contact so that one old enquiry does not take up the working day indefinitely. The mistake begins when “could not make contact” becomes “not interested”. The department has invented the second reason on the buyer’s behalf.
Bringing people back calls for different decisions. An unanswered call leaves the person’s attitude to the offer unknown. A refusal because of the delivery date requires a new date. A request to get in touch on a particular day already obliges the company to keep its promise. These arrangements cannot be put off until a general campaign targeting old contacts.
The head of sales selects similar enquiries: one product, a similar age and a clear reason why progress stopped. They exclude duplicates, active deals and requests for no further contact. The business owner needs to know the size of the selected group and what it represents. There is no reason for the owner to go through the records themselves.
After the first round, the group’s composition will change. Those who responded will move further through the sale, while those who declined will leave the follow-up call list. The second round will include those who could not be reached again. And if the head of sales adds older enquiries, the age of the requests will change too. So the previous purchase rate offers no guarantee for the next round.
Success itself reduces the pool of people who made it possible.
An overall gain hides costly repeat calls
I suggest calculating each subsequent round separately. Take the purchases made by the people you called over a period long enough to complete a typical sale. From the amounts paid, subtract refunds, the costs of fulfilling orders and variable commissions. Then separately calculate the costs of preparing the list, making the calls and working with those who responded. Do not count the same cost twice.
For a start, this is enough to identify a clearly unprofitable continuation: even if all subsequent purchases are attributed to the calls, do they cover the costs? Some people would have returned on their own, so this calculation gives an upper estimate of the benefit of calling. If even that is negative, there is no point arguing about the precise contribution of the calls to justify continuing.
For example, let us use 6 000 ₽ as the amount left from a purchase after fulfilment costs and commission. Preparing the next round, making the calls and continuing the conversations cost 18 000 ₽. There were ten purchases after the first round and two after the second. All are complete and cancellations have been accounted for; promised payments are not included in the calculation.
| What we are calculating | Amount left from purchases before the costs of bringing people back | Costs of bringing people back | Upper estimate of the result |
|---|---|---|---|
| First round | 10 × 6 000 = 60 000 ₽ | 18 000 ₽ | +42 000 ₽ |
| Second round | 2 × 6 000 = 12 000 ₽ | 18 000 ₽ | −6 000 ₽ |
| Campaign as a whole | 72 000 ₽ | 36 000 ₽ | +36 000 ₽ |
The total row looks good. But the second round reduced the result by 6 000 ₽ even with the most generous attribution of purchases to the calls. Showing the business owner only the overall gain means hiding the cost of the decision to continue.
The threshold is also calculated in advance: 18 000 / 6 000 = 3 purchases cover the costs; the fourth leaves a positive amount. A decision to continue requires purchases generated specifically by that round. If orders differ, add up the amounts left from each one instead of multiplying by the average.
A positive upper limit requires further examination. To estimate the increase, similar enquiries are randomly divided into equal groups in advance: one receives an additional contact, while the other is served as usual. Enquiries from people who get in touch on their own are accepted from everyone, and promised calls are made outside this comparison. The amounts left from purchases in the groups are compared over the same period, and additional costs are subtracted. A small difference across a few purchases is grounds for a limited trial.
When another call is justified
The objection “we have already paid for these people through advertising” is understandable. Attracting them in the first place did cost money. But the previous advertising budget cannot be recovered, while the new budget for calls has yet to be spent. The decision to continue involves future costs and future returns. Past spending does not improve them.
There is another reason to continue: the sale takes a long time and payments have not yet arrived. Here, the head of sales separates waiting for talks already under way to conclude from making new attempts to reach the others. They bring those talks to a decision. They do not automatically order the new attempts. An unfinished sale needs time; it does not give permission for every further batch of calls.
A workable proposal from the head of sales contains three things: who we still intend to bring back, what will change in the next attempt and how much we are prepared to spend on it. There are grounds to try if there is a new offer, the person now needs what they enquired about, or another way of getting in touch has been agreed. The mere fact that the phone numbers are still there gives no such grounds.
At RENTROP, “turnkey sales management” includes these decisions too: the head of sales chooses the scale of the effort to bring people back, organises continued conversations and stops attempts that no longer justify the costs. The business owner receives the reasoning for the next expense along with the result of the previous one.
It is hard to stop a successful campaign. But the money earned in the first round already belongs to the company. It does not become a budget for endless attempts just because it appears in the same row of the report.