Sales call objectives helps sales reps stay crystal clear on the goals they wish to accomplish from a sales call.
Sales call objectives are vital as they help increase customer engagement, secure appointments, and help close more deals.
The SMART formula helps set realistic, action-oriented, and timebound sales call objectives.
All initial sales calls have one prime objective – build brand trust in the prospect’s mind!
However, it can’t be the same for every type of sales call during the sales process.
Usually, sales call objective depends on the type of calls you are conducting.
Be clear about your objectives to keep the ball in your court. This blog will help you understand what needs to be your objective for each type of sales call and how to discover your objectives.
Let’s start with some basics!
What is a sales call objective?
A sales call objective is a specific purpose or goal a sales rep hopes to achieve during the call. There can be multiple sales call objectives for a sales call.
For example, there can be different objectives for conducting a cold call;
To convince prospects to make a purchase.
To qualify leads, in case you’re working on old data of customers.
Schedule a follow-up meeting.
Up-sell or cross-sell additional products/services.
The above four were mere examples; there can be many more objectives for making a cold call.
Check out the Table below and learn about all the types of sales calls with more clarity.
Sales call objectives for types of sales calls
About 92% of customer interactions occur via call so prepare your reps to win each call. We have presented the ideal sales goals for each sales call made by a sales rep during a sales process.
Types of sales call
Sales call objectives
Discovery call: The first call with the prospect, after they showed interest in your product/services.
To discover the prospect’s intent to buying To learn about their pain points To build brand rapport
Cold call: It’s a call made to a prospect who hasn’t shown any interest in your product/service earlier. But, could be a potential lead for the business.
To pitch your products/services To qualify the contacted person as a lead To engage the prospect in talk to determine their next step
Warm call: A call made to a prospect who has recently shown interest in your product/services via digital or offline media.
To qualify these MQLs as a sales lead To know their intent of buying along with keeping interaction alive To engage with the prospect to enhance sales opportunity
Sales appointment call: This call is made to a prospect who has shown interest in buying your product/services and is open for a discussion regarding the purchase.
To clear last-minute doubts To discuss pricing and finalize the sale
Follow up sales call: This is a call made to a lead, to remind them of their prior interest in the product/service. This call helps us understand at which stage of the sales process is the lead.
To understand the needs and stress points of MQLs To encourage the SQLs, lead to make a purchase To thank customers, take feedback regarding the recent purchase, and request referrals
If you want to learn about the types of calls reps make during an entire sales process, their purpose, and winning tips, click here.
Moving on! The next thing on the agenda is the SMART model. It will help you to set action-driven call objectives.
Utilizing the SMART model for setting sales objectives
Most sales leaders rely on the SMART formula to create winning call objectives.
It helps to make SMART sales call objectives that are achievable. And it’s very fondly used to set winning sales goals.
Top-tier sales leaders leverage SMART sales call objectives to increase their call engagement time with prospects.
Let’s learn how to create high-quality objectives with the SMART formula.
1. Specific
For a sales call, the initial step is to be more precise in deciding the call objective by narrowing down your demands.
For instance, if you’re in a stage of the sales process where the prospects are convinced of your product efficiency, the only concern for them is the pricing.
So here, your objective must be to offer insights that convince them to settle with the pricing or provide options that suit them.
To win your sales goals, you need to be specific about what you want to accomplish from sales calls. The more specific you are with your sales goals, the better result you will draw.
2. Measurable
To measure if your rep succeeds in meeting their sales call objective, you must decide on some key elements. It’s quite similar to defining sales KPIs but instead used to measure success in meeting the sales goals.
So, what is the right way to measure the success of a sales call objective? Fixate on accomplishing at least one “ultimate goal” from the call. And that goal can be the measure of your success.
For instance, you made a cold call with multiple objectives like checking the quality of the lead, whether the lead is a qualified lead or not, and pitched your product to get a meeting booked.
Now, you’ve called the person, and they’ve shown interest but asked to call on the weekends. So, here your one objective is met as you’ve discovered that it is a quality lead for your product/services.
Out of multiple sales call objectives, if you met a few or at least one, count that as a measure of success.
3. Action-oriented
One primary objective of calls is to qualify more leads and move them through the buyer’s journey. This way, your sales reps will uncover their needs, stress points, and desires associated with your brand.
Does the call objective focus on advancing the customer in the buying process or expanding your knowledge of the customer?
When setting your call objective, ensure that it somehow; moves your prospects in the buying process. Plus, also expand your rep’s knowledge about the prospect’s intent.
Action-oriented calls are the one that helps to determine the customer’s intent associated with your product/services.
For instance, the objective of a customer-service sales call should be to get an update about how the product is working for them, any difficulty faced, or any suggestions to improve.
4. Realistic
This element of the SMART formula states that your sales call objectives must be achievable.
Have you heard the phrase, “over-promising & under-delivering”?
Because if you set objectives that are too far-fetched, then it’ll lead to failure. An example of a far-fetched objective would be “Setting a target to make 100 calls in one day”.
On average, there are about 7 people as decision-makers in a firm of 100-500 employees. So, if you aspire to sell a product/service on the first sales call itself, then that might be a too far-fetched objective.
Because selling a product/service in just one meeting would be a tough task, even for an established brand.
So, ensure that the objectives of your sales calls are achievable!
5. Time-bound
When you start a race, you need to ensure there’s a finish line! So, being time-bound to achieve the sales call objectives plays a key role in the success of those objectives.
Because not only do you have to define realistic sales goals, but you also determine a certain time frame to achieve them. Setting highly-promising objectives that can’t be accomplished within a specific time frame will be quite challenging.
So, setting the right goals is essential to win at achieving the defined sales objectives.
Sales calls are a bag of opportunities only for those who set the right objectives.
Our methodology of sales call objectives at Salesmate
Sales call objectives to have a wide spectrum of questions. But we’ve narrowed down a few of the important, open-ended sales-to-call objective questions. The response to these questions can help us measure success.
Open-ended questions help reps to get more information from customers by offering options or encouraging them to think and answer.
This practice helps us to qualify our leads, uncover prospects’ intent, promote brand trust, and earn credibility. Here are the three questions for setting your next sales call objectives.
1. How good do you feel about this particular call?
Knowing your prospect’s concern associated with your sales call pitch is important. It helps you identify leads’ quality.
Under this question, your reps can provide opinions like;
Informative and useful
Informative but not useful
The prospects’ response will help you qualify the lead for further stages of your sales pipeline.
2. What do you see as the next action steps?
If your prospects have shown interest by answering the first question positively, this question will help you identify their needs and concerns.
Sales reps that are intelligent to influence potential customers, moving them through the buyer’s journey and providing a solution get conversion easily.
To navigate the deal, you can provide options like,
Book a demo
Schedule an in-person meeting
Schedule a video call
3. What other areas would you like to discuss moving forward?
For every sales call, there must be a pertinent CTA near the end of the discussion. This question works more like a CTA and helps reps to get new agenda to discuss in a follow-up sales call.
The answer will expand your sales reps’ knowledge of customers’ stress points. Now, on the next call, your sales reps can try to explain how their product/services are a solution to their problem.
The answer to this question will also reveal the areas of interest of your prospects that might give you a chance to create the need to fulfill it with your brand.
Measuring and evaluating sales call objectives
Tracking and evaluating your efforts can help you in many ways. Here’s how:
Track & measure your progress toward sales call objectives
Measuring the progress towards your objectives is important in order to determine whether or not you’re moving towards your goals. This can be done using customer relationship management (CRM) software, reports, and analytics.
Evaluating the effectiveness of sales call strategies and tactics
Once you’ve made progress on tracking your progress, ensure that you evaluate the effectiveness of your sales tactics. It’s important because it allows you to identify what is working well and what is not and make adjustments accordingly.
Adjusting your sales call objectives and strategies as needed
Post evaluation, you may come across a few things that you need to adjust for your sales call objectives. This could include revising your sales pitch, changing call scripts, or even identifying new target markets. It’s vital to regularly oversee and adjust your sales goals in order to succeed.
Conclusion
The takeaway is that reps should have defined objectives to accomplish before making a sales call to customers.
The sales call objective should be focused on understanding customers’ needs and advancing them further in the sales pipeline.
You can follow the SMART formula to create practical sales call objectives. Also, you go with three question formula by Salesmate that focuses on bringing something out of every sales call.
FAQs on sales call objectives
Can I have multiple sales objectives?
Yes, you can have multiple sales call objectives. For example; a discovery call’s objectives are to find the prospect’s goals, identify their pain points, and build rapport.
What are the benefits of setting multiple sales call objectives?
The benefit of setting multiple sales calls objectives is that if you don’t get a chance to meet one objective, you can still have mere options to go with for better.
If you don’t, the chances of getting a follow-up meeting will be slim. And the chances of ultimately doing business will be nearly impossible.
What is a primary sales call objective?
The primary sales call objective is the chief reason behind calling a prospect. For instance, the primary objective of a cold call is to entice and engage your prospects to know more about their intent regarding making a purchase.
What are the minimum sales call objectives?
The minimum sales call objective is a basic motive that your sales representative has to achieve to consider the call to be successful.
What is the specific objective for your first sales call?
The specific objective of your first sales call is to convince the prospect to listen to you and build a sense of the initial level of trust.
Sonali Negi
Sonali is a writer born out of her utmost passion for writing. She is working with a passionate team of content creators at Salesmate. She enjoys learning about new ideas in marketing and sales. She is an optimistic girl and endeavors to bring the best out of every situation. In her free time, she loves to introspect and observe people.
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The end goal of every sales call is to get an appointment. That’s when you know that you’ve scored a prospect and there’s hope for closing the deal. Before you schedule a meeting with your prospect an
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Key Takeaways
All initial sales calls have one prime objective – build brand trust in the prospect’s mind!
However, it can’t be the same for every type of sales call during the sales process.
Usually, sales call objective depends on the type of calls you are conducting.
Be clear about your objectives to keep the ball in your court. This blog will help you understand what needs to be your objective for each type of sales call and how to discover your objectives.
Let’s start with some basics!
What is a sales call objective?
A sales call objective is a specific purpose or goal a sales rep hopes to achieve during the call. There can be multiple sales call objectives for a sales call.
For example, there can be different objectives for conducting a cold call;
The above four were mere examples; there can be many more objectives for making a cold call.
Check out the Table below and learn about all the types of sales calls with more clarity.
Sales call objectives for types of sales calls
About 92% of customer interactions occur via call so prepare your reps to win each call. We have presented the ideal sales goals for each sales call made by a sales rep during a sales process.
If you want to learn about the types of calls reps make during an entire sales process, their purpose, and winning tips, click here.
Moving on! The next thing on the agenda is the SMART model. It will help you to set action-driven call objectives.
Utilizing the SMART model for setting sales objectives
Most sales leaders rely on the SMART formula to create winning call objectives.
It helps to make SMART sales call objectives that are achievable. And it’s very fondly used to set winning sales goals.
Top-tier sales leaders leverage SMART sales call objectives to increase their call engagement time with prospects.
Let’s learn how to create high-quality objectives with the SMART formula.
1. Specific
For a sales call, the initial step is to be more precise in deciding the call objective by narrowing down your demands.
For instance, if you’re in a stage of the sales process where the prospects are convinced of your product efficiency, the only concern for them is the pricing.
So here, your objective must be to offer insights that convince them to settle with the pricing or provide options that suit them.
To win your sales goals, you need to be specific about what you want to accomplish from sales calls. The more specific you are with your sales goals, the better result you will draw.
2. Measurable
To measure if your rep succeeds in meeting their sales call objective, you must decide on some key elements. It’s quite similar to defining sales KPIs but instead used to measure success in meeting the sales goals.
So, what is the right way to measure the success of a sales call objective? Fixate on accomplishing at least one “ultimate goal” from the call. And that goal can be the measure of your success.
For instance, you made a cold call with multiple objectives like checking the quality of the lead, whether the lead is a qualified lead or not, and pitched your product to get a meeting booked.
Now, you’ve called the person, and they’ve shown interest but asked to call on the weekends. So, here your one objective is met as you’ve discovered that it is a quality lead for your product/services.
Out of multiple sales call objectives, if you met a few or at least one, count that as a measure of success.
3. Action-oriented
One primary objective of calls is to qualify more leads and move them through the buyer’s journey. This way, your sales reps will uncover their needs, stress points, and desires associated with your brand.
Does the call objective focus on advancing the customer in the buying process or expanding your knowledge of the customer?
When setting your call objective, ensure that it somehow; moves your prospects in the buying process. Plus, also expand your rep’s knowledge about the prospect’s intent.
Action-oriented calls are the one that helps to determine the customer’s intent associated with your product/services.
For instance, the objective of a customer-service sales call should be to get an update about how the product is working for them, any difficulty faced, or any suggestions to improve.
4. Realistic
This element of the SMART formula states that your sales call objectives must be achievable.
Have you heard the phrase, “over-promising & under-delivering”?
Because if you set objectives that are too far-fetched, then it’ll lead to failure. An example of a far-fetched objective would be “Setting a target to make 100 calls in one day”.
On average, there are about 7 people as decision-makers in a firm of 100-500 employees. So, if you aspire to sell a product/service on the first sales call itself, then that might be a too far-fetched objective.
Because selling a product/service in just one meeting would be a tough task, even for an established brand.
So, ensure that the objectives of your sales calls are achievable!
5. Time-bound
When you start a race, you need to ensure there’s a finish line! So, being time-bound to achieve the sales call objectives plays a key role in the success of those objectives.
Because not only do you have to define realistic sales goals, but you also determine a certain time frame to achieve them. Setting highly-promising objectives that can’t be accomplished within a specific time frame will be quite challenging.
So, setting the right goals is essential to win at achieving the defined sales objectives.
Sales calls are a bag of opportunities only for those who set the right objectives.
Our methodology of sales call objectives at Salesmate
Sales call objectives to have a wide spectrum of questions. But we’ve narrowed down a few of the important, open-ended sales-to-call objective questions. The response to these questions can help us measure success.
Open-ended questions help reps to get more information from customers by offering options or encouraging them to think and answer.
This practice helps us to qualify our leads, uncover prospects’ intent, promote brand trust, and earn credibility. Here are the three questions for setting your next sales call objectives.
1. How good do you feel about this particular call?
Knowing your prospect’s concern associated with your sales call pitch is important. It helps you identify leads’ quality.
Under this question, your reps can provide opinions like;
The prospects’ response will help you qualify the lead for further stages of your sales pipeline.
2. What do you see as the next action steps?
If your prospects have shown interest by answering the first question positively, this question will help you identify their needs and concerns.
Sales reps that are intelligent to influence potential customers, moving them through the buyer’s journey and providing a solution get conversion easily.
To navigate the deal, you can provide options like,
3. What other areas would you like to discuss moving forward?
For every sales call, there must be a pertinent CTA near the end of the discussion. This question works more like a CTA and helps reps to get new agenda to discuss in a follow-up sales call.
The answer will expand your sales reps’ knowledge of customers’ stress points. Now, on the next call, your sales reps can try to explain how their product/services are a solution to their problem.
The answer to this question will also reveal the areas of interest of your prospects that might give you a chance to create the need to fulfill it with your brand.
Measuring and evaluating sales call objectives
Tracking and evaluating your efforts can help you in many ways. Here’s how:
Track & measure your progress toward sales call objectives
Measuring the progress towards your objectives is important in order to determine whether or not you’re moving towards your goals. This can be done using customer relationship management (CRM) software, reports, and analytics.
Evaluating the effectiveness of sales call strategies and tactics
Once you’ve made progress on tracking your progress, ensure that you evaluate the effectiveness of your sales tactics. It’s important because it allows you to identify what is working well and what is not and make adjustments accordingly.
Adjusting your sales call objectives and strategies as needed
Post evaluation, you may come across a few things that you need to adjust for your sales call objectives. This could include revising your sales pitch, changing call scripts, or even identifying new target markets. It’s vital to regularly oversee and adjust your sales goals in order to succeed.
Conclusion
The takeaway is that reps should have defined objectives to accomplish before making a sales call to customers.
The sales call objective should be focused on understanding customers’ needs and advancing them further in the sales pipeline.
You can follow the SMART formula to create practical sales call objectives. Also, you go with three question formula by Salesmate that focuses on bringing something out of every sales call.
FAQs on sales call objectives
Can I have multiple sales objectives?
Yes, you can have multiple sales call objectives. For example; a discovery call’s objectives are to find the prospect’s goals, identify their pain points, and build rapport.
What are the benefits of setting multiple sales call objectives?
The benefit of setting multiple sales calls objectives is that if you don’t get a chance to meet one objective, you can still have mere options to go with for better.
If you don’t, the chances of getting a follow-up meeting will be slim. And the chances of ultimately doing business will be nearly impossible.
What is a primary sales call objective?
The primary sales call objective is the chief reason behind calling a prospect. For instance, the primary objective of a cold call is to entice and engage your prospects to know more about their intent regarding making a purchase.
What are the minimum sales call objectives?
The minimum sales call objective is a basic motive that your sales representative has to achieve to consider the call to be successful.
What is the specific objective for your first sales call?
The specific objective of your first sales call is to convince the prospect to listen to you and build a sense of the initial level of trust.
Sonali Negi
Sonali is a writer born out of her utmost passion for writing. She is working with a passionate team of content creators at Salesmate. She enjoys learning about new ideas in marketing and sales. She is an optimistic girl and endeavors to bring the best out of every situation. In her free time, she loves to introspect and observe people.