Here's something a little bit crazy:
Despite all of the new communication methods we have today, 92% of sales conversations still happen on the phone.
That's right, the technology that we've had since the late 1800s, which has since been replaced in many circles by text, social media messaging, and video calling, is still the primary method for communicating in the sales world.
And in spite of this, many sales reps still have no idea where their inbound phone calls are coming from, how many calls they make each day, what percentage of their dials turn into actual conversations, and how well they're performing on the call itself.
Marketers, similarly, have little insight into how their digital marketing efforts (like PPC advertising, conversion rate optimization, and social media campaigns) are paying off in terms of inbound calls.
That is, of course, until they decide to track phone calls.
Once you're tracking phone calls as part of your business practice, all of this data suddenly becomes available for use.
And we all know what information is.
So, what the hell is phone call tracking anyway? How does it work, and what does it mean for sales teams?
Let's find out.
Phone call tracking is a bit of a strange term because it means so many different things to so many different people.
For marketers, phone call ltracking is the process of tracking the origin of inbound phone calls, and in particular how they relate to specific marketing initiatives.
For example, a marketer wants to be able to determine how many calls are coming in off the back of a Google Ads campaign they've launched, and compare that to the performance of their social media ads.
For sales teams, phone call tracking is more about keeping a record of the communication in your CRM, so you can see at a glance what the conversation has been to date with a given prospect.
It also includes things like individual performance tracking and reporting and can go as far as actually recording phone calls and delivering AI-powered insights, a la Gong's sales coaching platform.
(Source)
For jealous husbands, it means installing some kind of phone call location tracking software so they can keep tabs on their wife's conversations and whereabouts.
We're gonna focus on the first two kinds of call tracking, for obvious reasons.
|
Call Tracking For Marketers |
Call Tracking For Salespeople |
|
Primarily used for marketing attribution, where inbound phone calls can be attributed to specific marketing campaigns |
Primarily used to keep a communication record, and to capture data that provides insights that can be used for training |
Okay, so we know what call tracking is about in theory, but how the heck does it actually work?
Let's break this down into two kinds of call tracking:
For marketing-related phone calls, you use a platform like Invoca to replace the phone numbers on your website of social media ads with a Javascript code.
What this code does is replace the standard number with what's known as a “trackable dynamic number”.
(Source)
From the caller's perspective, everything looks the same. It's just a regular old number. Most customers don't even think “can this company track my calls?”
But what it means for you is that you can now track where the call is coming from.
The Invoca tag will also capture and provide other data, such as:
The sales-related call tracking function is a little less techy (kind of).
When you make or receive a phone call, your call tracking application automatically creates a new activity under the prospect's account in your CRM and includes details such as time of call, call length, and whether it was an inbound or outbound call.
Reps and managers can then see this information at a glance in every customer account, or report on daily or weekly call activity.
Still not convinced that tracking phone calls is right for your company? Here are seven reasons that are sure to change your mind.
One of the biggest benefits of tracking calls is that it allows you to better understand your return on investment for marketing efforts.
Being able to attribute certain phone calls to PPC campaigns and others to social media advertising or organic search visitors tells you how well the time and money you're investing in given initiatives is paying off (or isn't ☹️).
Marketers can then use this information to redistribute investment or double down in certain areas.
For sales teams, phone call tracking gives leaders stronger insights into ROI too.
For example, you may be able to identify that it takes an average of seven phone calls to close a deal, and then use call intelligence features to determine how you can bring this down to six.
Tracking phone calls have an impact on conversion rates through its ability to provide important insights.
For example, marketers can perform A/B testing on ad copy, and track and attribute the number of phone calls (as well as the quality of the leads, based on salesperson feedback and the percentage of calls that turn into sales) to each version of the copy.
The data from your phone call tracking can then help to improve conversion rates by identifying the ad copy that is most effective.
For sales reps, phone call tracking can help you understand the best days or times to call. If you use this insight to inform your calling cadence, you'll have a better shot at converting that prospect into a customer.
Relevant, insightful, deep data is a key driver for performance in sales.
In fact, organizations that prioritize capturing accurate data are up to 6% more profitable than those that don't invest in data gathering initiatives.
Phone call tracking systems are continuously building your data set, which gives you more information to leverage at any point you wish to dig into some analytics.
For example, it's unlikely that you're tracking average call time as a typical sales metric.
But this might prove to be an important piece of information when setting quotas, understanding rep capacity, and planning for new hires for the year ahead.
Call tracking systems capture this data and ensure it's available for analysis if and when required.
The insights gained from tracking phone calls can be an important part of your training and development procedures.
For example, you might identify that one rep is underperforming compared to the rest of your team, and they are regularly falling short of their sales targets.
When you dig further into the data captured and presented by your phone tracking system, you come to understand that this rep is making far fewer phone calls than every other rep (no wonder they aren't delivering!).
Now, you can spend some time with that sales agent, aiming to understand why they can't hit the same activity volume (assuming they aren't simply slacking off).
Similarly, you may identify that this rep spends more time on each phone call than average, which impacts their ability to reach more prospects each day.
One of the major benefits of tracking and attributing incoming phone calls is that these systems can connect to your existing database and provide salespeople with a profile of the person calling.
Imagine you're an inbound sales rep, and a phone call comes in.
You don't recognize the number (who even recognizes numbers these days?), but your call tracking system does.
It connects directly to your CRM, pulls up the customer account, and suddenly you have a full record of previous communication, an understanding of where they're at in the sales process, and details such as company size and demographics (if you have this data loaded into your CRM).
Going one step further, many call tracking systems can even route inbound phone calls to specific sales reps based on the identification of their number, so a prospect calling back can be routed straight to the salesperson they've already been speaking with!
When you track phone calls consistently, you'll have a much more elaborate picture of how individual reps are performing.
You'll have access to performance metrics like:
Sales management can then use this data to incentivize competition among team members, inform coaching and training initiatives, plan more effectively for future hiring and onboarding, and create accurate sales forecasts for their managers.
Before you start tracking calls, it's important to determine what it is exactly you're wanting to report on.
The three main reasons for call tracking (and subsequent types of call tracking platform) are:
If you're looking for a call tracking tool to help you understand which marketing campaigns are leading to inbound phone calls, then you want a platform like CallRail.
CallRail can help marketers attribute leads to specific marketing campaigns, calculate multi-touch cost per lead, report on individual and team performance, and provide insights into operational effectiveness and capacity planning.
(Source)
For the second kind of call tracking, a sales CRM is likely your best solution.
We know a whole lot about these tools (we are a sales CRM!), and so we've got far more to say on the subject than we have time for today.
What we will say is this: powerful sales CRMs (like Ringy) allow you to make and answer calls directly in the interface, schedule follow-ups, track communications, set up local caller ID numbers, and automate drip campaigns, all in a single platform.
(Source)
Wanna learn more about CRMs and call tracking for sales reps? Check out our comprehensive guide: CRM Meaning Explained [Customer Relationship Management].
For the third kind of call tracking (individual call performance insights for sales coaching), people intelligence tools like Gong are your best bet.
For example, Gong can help sales leaders report on conversation metrics like:
Gong then uses this data to provide actionable insights which sales coaches can leverage to improve their team's performance.
(Source)
|
Reason for tracking phone calls |
Attribution of marketing leads |
Keeping a record of customer communications |
Individual call performance insights for sales coaching |
|
Example software platform |
|||
|
Key features |
Call recording, marketing attribution, insights for capacity planning, multi-touch cost per lead calculations |
VoIP calling, local caller ID, sales reporting, communications tracking, sales automation, drip campaigns |
AI analysis of call recordings provides insights into individual performance |
Ask yourself: “What is it that I'm trying to achieve by starting to track my calls?”
Knowing in advance what your intentions are will help you to determine your return on investment for the call tracking platform, as well as inform when and how you use the tool.
Having a clear understanding of your goal in tracking phone calls also allows you to communicate clearly with your team around why you're implementing the new system, and how you expect the process to help them.
What exactly do you plan to report on each day, week, or month?
Your call tracking software will (read: should) provide a tonne of insights, but that doesn't mean that every piece of data is going to be important to you and your team.
And, let's be honest, we can very quickly overload ourselves by tracking too many metrics, and then lose sight of what they all mean, and what levers our team is pulling along the way to influence them.
So, start out by defining what it is you're going to report on, and why you're looking to improve in that area.
Note that it may be the case that you're unable to determine this until you've had a chance to track phone calls for a month or so and establish a baseline (it's hard to know where you could be performing better until you have some data to lookout).
A few great options for metrics to track include:
If you've not opted for a CRM that has call tracking capabilities built-in (you know, like Ringy), then you'll definitely want to connect whatever platform you're using with your customer relationship management system.
Hopefully, the two play nicely together (i.e. they have a native integration that is supported by the two companies).
If this isn't the case, you may be able to build a custom integration via API, or by using a tool like Zapier to connect both platforms.
(Source)
By connecting your CRM and your phone call location tracking solution, you'll minimize the time spent copying and pasting data, and will be able to access deeper, more helpful insights from each system.
One of the most powerful benefits of call tracking systems is that they can often be set up to automatically route inbound phone calls to the appropriate rep.
Here's how it works:
One problem that sales organizations have all too often is that they have a tonne of data at their fingertips, but they barely use it.
Most often, this is because they don't have a culture of reviewing, analyzing, and reporting on this data.
Once you've set up a call tracking system for your team, the next step is to agree upon a cadence for reviewing the insights your system provides.
Ideally, you're doing this with your team present, so you're able to open up a discussion about what the call data means, and how it can be used to inform changes in process or approach.
For most teams, scheduling a monthly meeting to review call tracking data, analyze results, and make plans for the month ahead, should be sufficient.
While setting aside time each month to review call tracking data is a worthwhile practice (obviously, we've just recommended it), you should also bear in mind that some insights are available around the clock.
As such, you should seek to provide guidance to your sales team as to how you expect them to use this data.
Yes, as the sales leader you're responsible for identifying opportunities for improvement, but your individual sales reps should take some responsibility for this as well. After all, if they can improve their performance, they'll improve their earnings via commission.
Put together some documentation around using the call tracking system and what the various reports and insights mean, and then hold a kickoff session with your sales team to discuss, answer any questions, and gain agreement and buy-in on using the platform.
If we're talking about location tracking, things get a bit tricky, and the most reliable way to do this would be to use some form of spy app.
Probably not the route you want to go down in the sales world, so you'd be better off investing in a call tracking app.
Aside from straight-up googling the phone number, there are a few reverse lookup websites (like 411.com) that might be able to tell you where a call is coming from.
This tends to be most helpful if it's a call coming from a business, however.
From a sales and marketing standpoint, the best way to understand where calls are coming from is to use call tracking software.
If Google has just dropped you off here, click here to learn more about why tracking phone calls is important.
Ready to start tracking phone calls?
If you've read through the seven tips we discussed just above, and you've decided that the type of phone call tracking solution you most need is one that keeps a record of all customer communications, and provides a method for making and answering calls from a single interface, then you're in the right place!
Why not book a demo with one of the Ringy team, and see how our powerful CRM can get you started tracking phone calls and analyzing performance insights.
P.S. If you're wondering “can other companies track my calls then?”, the answer is yes. Just a little nugget for you to think over ;)