etailinsights eCommerce Data and Sales Blog
Sales Hack: Pushing Pound After Dialing a Phone number
posted by Darren Pierce
Working in a Boiler Room
Pushing pound was one of the first lessons I learned in sales. Unfortunately, I can't remember who taught this to me. At the time, I was working for a Boiler-Room-Esque financial company. I hated it.
But, it was a great opportunity for me to learn the basics of sales. Especially prospecting and the benefit of using quality data to prospect. I learned in sales that every sales rep had the same amount of "currency" and in our business that currency is TIME. The game was to spend your currency wisely, and the reps who did this the best were the top reps and game-winners. In other words .... I was constantly looking for areas where I could save time. For example, using bad data was a complete time waster, but using good quality lead data was a time saver for me.
Ultimately it came down to how many phone calls I could make. If I could make 100 calls per day then I knew how much I could close. If I could raise that number, even slightly, then I could increase my production.
The Hack: Push Pound
An area where I could save about 10 seconds was the way I dialed the phone. If you push the pound symbol (hashtag) after each number, your call will connect faster. You see, phone lines technology is trained to wait and make sure you are done dialing, for about 5 to 10 seconds. In fact, when you hear ringing on your side the recipient's phone isn't actually ringing yet (usually). But, if you push pound the phone doesn't wait and connects immediately. Saving 10 seconds on 100 calls amounts to an extra 16 minutes of time per day, or 1 & 1/2 hours per week. That extra time makes a huge difference, especially if you work for a boiler room (which I'm sure you don't, or else you wouldn't have time to read this).
