30 or 60 min? New data shows how long your first sales call should be
In the Gong Research Labs series, we publish data from analyzing sales calls with natural language processing and AI. Subscribe here for new data every week.
?A couple months ago I asked a question on LinkedIn that stirred a debate…
Should account executives combine discovery calls and demos in the same call, or separate them into two calls?
Which of those approaches leads to advancing and closing deals at a higher rate?
While we haven’t answered that question with data, it did make me wonder about a related question we could answer with data:
How long should an account executive's first call with a new opportunity be?
Do shorter, 20-ish minute calls have a higher rate of advancing (and eventually closing), or is it better to have longer calls, upward of 60 minutes? What "intro call" length increases the likelihood of getting a "second date" (and eventually a CL-Won deal)?
To answer this question, the data science team and I at Gong analyzed a targeted pool of 30,000 account executive "first calls" within our conversation intelligence platform.
Here’s a look at the distribution of calls in terms of their duration:
Notice there are peaks around the 30 and 60-minute marks, illustrating that calls tend to be scheduled for either 30 or 60-minute time slots on the calendar.
So among this pool of calls with various lengths, which duration is optimal for securing the next step and eventually closing the deal?
Answer: None of them and all of them.
There was no statistically significant correlation between the duration of the first call of an opportunity and the likelihood of getting a second meeting.
However, just because there’s no correlation between call length, and securing the next step doesn’t mean the length of our calls doesn’t affect our sales.
Getting the next step when a prospect shows up to the first meeting is one thing.
Getting them to actually show up to the first meeting is another challenge entirely:
You’re 12% more likely to get a prospect to show up to your first meeting if you send a 30-minute calendar slot rather than a 60-minute one.
It’s also harder for an SDR to “sell” a 60-minute meeting compared to a 30-minute one. We have no way of knowing how many first meetings are left on the table due to that.
Some may argue that 60 minutes is required for complex sales. But when I worked for InsideSales.com, the top enterprise account executive (selling to 10,000 employee companies) kept his first calls down to a lean 22 minutes. On purpose.
We have to choose between depth and volume. Would you prefer fewer 60-minute calls or a greater quantity of 30-minute calls?
Feel free to tell me what you think in the comments below. Tag a friend you've debated this question with.
P.S. If you're interested in receiving data-driven insights about sales calls like this in the future, subscribe to the Gong Sales Science blog.
Enterprise Account Executive for Lucid
7 年I'm curious to see what your long-term data shows. I'm off they mind-set that you keep initial conversations short. Identify needs and pain and relate their issues with other clients you've helped. Then prep your demo to resolve pain. Also, the more pain the longer the client is willing to spend with you. I keep cold calls to 5 minutes to sell a discovery, discovery calls around 20 minutes to sell a demo, and demos around 40 minutes.
Transforming customer relationships into success stories.
7 年Great read, thanks Chris.
Sales Development Representative at Tenfold
7 年Great article, Chris. In my experience, though, and in my opinion, the length of the call does not really matter that much. What I think should be given importance is the quality of conversation a salesperson gave to the prospect. That kind of connection that helps create and build trust. This is a case of quality versus quantity. Of course, this is not to say that it's alright to rush a call neither that it's okay to spend most of your time chatting with a single customer. I'd include 'timing', too since a good salesperson should know when to halt and when to go when in a call.
Founder and CEO delivering the latest Prop Tech solutions to the multifamily, mixed-use, and commercial marketplace.
7 年For my first calls, an agenda describing the purpose of the call and either some research and/or info on our company has made a for an efficient introduction. If we get to the demo phase, we will book an hour and let them know it normally last 30 - 40 minutes, yet let's leave room for some Q&A and digging deeper. Normally the clients would continue to engage past the 30 minutes yet were not pressured to jump into their next meeting with their tightly booked schedule.
I coach and train companies in growth strategies that foster team engagement, increase sales, and maximize profit l Speaker Sales with Soul? l Workshop Facilitator l Published Author
7 年Great info Chris. A long time ago, I was at a leadership conference and the mantra was "do what works". And that pertains very specifically to sales, especially because we're dealing with people and competing priorities. At the end of the day, we want to have a quality conversation, and sometimes those are short and sometimes those are long. Thanks for publishing.