mrsexyspizza
Do you fake dials to satisfy call/activity metrics?
56
Should have been a poll, and if people were answering honestly it'd be 100% yes
99%
Great Idea, putting up a pole now!
I have before. Companies that have these dumb activity metrics are really the culprits in promoting it
Completely agree. It's time to implement efficiency metrics!! I was once well above quota and the rest of the pack, yet one day my manager signed me off work during the middle of the day because I had 0 activity metrics.
It's a big boomer mentality
I have. In my current position I don't BS though. I am the top sales person and lead by example. I do the amount of work required to be successful sometimes that means I leave at noon and sometimes that means I stay until midnight. What it doesn't mean is KPI bullshit.
yeap I see a lot practice this on purpose to prove a point
What's the point? They don't like money?
The point you make if your KPis is based on volume not converion is that you can make plenty of fake dials and non will be the wiser. So they want to prove to mangement that they should work smart not hard.
Faking dials to fake KPI's for any reason should be a fireable offense. It's lazy.
Shouldn't management consider that this KPI is not productive? Instead of straight up firing people? If the measurement can be faked it means that there is something wrong with process that doesn't make the employee respect it. Doesn't mean they shouldn't be fired. But firing you are just addressing the symptoms not the root imo
Sure. Look for the root cause, fix the core problem. Still, falsifying records should be a fireable offense.
Goodhart's law: When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
Sadly yes. Dials were a huge metric, even if they were empty. It's unfortunate that that is tracked instead of the connected calls or amount of talk time. 100 dials means nothing if no one picks up, but managers look at that more than 20 dials but 4 connects for example
In some jobs yes (especially if the number they ask you to reach is unreasonable), but thank god they don’t measure metrics at my current job.
oh man, i remember having to get dials on a summer friday. 100% called company directories to get quick dials without having to worry about people picking up
I am going to make a solid guess that most people that work in sales have done this at some point in there career or another.
I have at an old job. I don't now because they don't care too much about call volume as long as I keep booking demos.
Totally. Time and Time again I used to defend myself saying 'I could ring 30 random people and not get anywhere, but If I actually researched a good company etc I will get more meetings with less volume' I Proved it time and time again but unfortunately some sales managers just still think more calls equals more meetings...
Here's the thing, if you're hitting quota, I don't care if you're activity isn't "satisfying activity metrics". Your activity metrics are derived from some industry benchmark that says 'X amount of dials=X amount of booked calls'. But if you can hit quota doing 1/2 the activity - IDC.
I found out one of my SDRs was faking calls just so they would show up on activity reports, but they weren't hitting quota. Granted, I was pretty pissed - but they owned up to it and started producing results once they stopped falsifying their activity.
The moral of the story, if you're hitting quota and your sales manager is doing the "activity thing", tell them what you're spending your time on that is more important to ensure you're hitting goal. If you're not hitting goal... start dialing my friend.
I found out one of my SDRs was faking calls just so they would show up on activity reports, but they weren't hitting quota. Granted, I was pretty pissed - but they owned up to it and started producing results once they stopped falsifying their activity.
The moral of the story, if you're hitting quota and your sales manager is doing the "activity thing", tell them what you're spending your time on that is more important to ensure you're hitting goal. If you're not hitting goal... start dialing my friend.
I was with ya until the "start dialing my friend" part.
If you're not hitting quota, and you're not hitting activity goals... there might be a correlation.
Its been about 15 yrs since I had a call metrics but for sure padded the stats. We use to have a list of dead numbers that we could roll through and then to hit talk time we would always call airlines, or the IRS, they had the longest hold times.
I have before but not now. I think leadership is starting to realize that these metrics don't necessarily = performance.
No. Results are what matters. If you're hitting opp and meeting targets, a good manager wouldn't care if you're 20%, 50%, 120% of dials. If you aren't you need to hit your metrics because that's what the data is saying is required for the other KPIs.
If I can open 5 qualified opps off of 40 calls and the rep next to me needs 150 calls to hit 5 opps, who is more efficient?
If I can open 5 qualified opps off of 40 calls and the rep next to me needs 150 calls to hit 5 opps, who is more efficient?
I have before, but my company isn't strict on metrics so I don't often see a need.
depends on how good our prospect data is. If marketing gives us a bunch of wrong numbers, I'm still counting those as dials.
Not anymore. Starting to realize KPIs don't mean too much without results
KPIs should be set up so they lead to the result that every organization is looking for... more sales.
If your KPIs don't tie back to getting more deals then your KPIs are setup incorrectly and the number of dials that you are being asked to make is just there to waste time.
However, if your KPIs are setup as they should and lead to more deals then faking calls isn't helping you get to your KPIs it's actually hurting your sales process because you'll have less demos which lead to less closing conversations which leads to less sales.
I've never understood why someone would fake calls. But I guess if the KPIs are setup to fail from the beginning then maybe it makes sense.
If your KPIs don't tie back to getting more deals then your KPIs are setup incorrectly and the number of dials that you are being asked to make is just there to waste time.
However, if your KPIs are setup as they should and lead to more deals then faking calls isn't helping you get to your KPIs it's actually hurting your sales process because you'll have less demos which lead to less closing conversations which leads to less sales.
I've never understood why someone would fake calls. But I guess if the KPIs are setup to fail from the beginning then maybe it makes sense.
As a BDR, yes
In the past, very much so, but it has toned down a lot in the last year. Our SMB org was heavily focused on calls more than emails before they realized that natural customer growth provided at least 50% of our revenue. Land and expand babyyyy
Funnily enough, never done that.
I have numbers memorized from my first sales job out of college. Stayed there for 9 years and used a pack of 30 numbers daily. Had to make 100 calls a day no matter what.
Forgot my password to the CRM
How do you fake dials? Dial wrong numbers? Call movie phone?
You can call the same person that didn't pick up like 5 times in a row
I can't see anyone pulling a report and missing this. IT departments today can read email, slack and gain all sorts of data from phone systems. Unless you are dialing from a personal cell phone you aren't fooling anyone.
who's not dialing from a personal cell phone in this era?
Great point. But then why in the hell would you be faking dials?
who?
Not you, the general you. Anyone who says they fake dials.
i agree with ya goose...not worth the time. but i think orgs who set it up for people to game the system are gonna get people who came the system
So you have time to focus on actual engaged, meaningful touches.
But boss wants to see x amount of calls to show you’re working. Quality not quality, not going to add to your pipeline
But boss wants to see x amount of calls to show you’re working. Quality not quality, not going to add to your pipeline
This is how you know you don't work for a "real" company. You work for a place focused on pleasing management, owners, stakeholders and wall street. You certainly aren't focused on pleasing clients.
Never did it; never will.
I have before, then again making 100+ cold calls for my first job a day was sort of absurd
I did it when I was junior and the activity KPIs were unrealistic, but that was on the company.
yes, yes, yes!
Nah, I just tell my manager if my numbers are low in that metric that they are at least real lol
It depends on if the system can be measured because usually they can. I’ve seen lots of people get fired for this when if they would have been open about what was preventing the volume they would have been employed.
I've done it before. My old manager would set hour call blitzes in the afternoon (not a good time to start IMO). He would have everyone crank up their standing desks and start making calls. It couldn't be more obvious people made fake dials and calling 5 different lines at once to make sure you had the minutes. It was the a quiet place on the floor every afternoon. The best part is the manager did nothing about it.
Find a place that understands that quality beats out quantity to help execute on more deals
Find a place that understands that quality beats out quantity to help execute on more deals
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