Dials Don't Pay. Talk Time Pays. How to Coach the Metric That Actually Closes
Two agents, eighty dials each, one with 25 minutes of talk time and one with 90. Neither number is the one to coach. Here are the four that are.
A sales leader described a small experiment: two agents, eighty dials each, same day. One logged 25 minutes of talk time. The other logged 90. His conclusion was blunt: "Dials don't pay. Talk time pays." The agents who heard it split immediately, and the split is the interesting part. One veteran said he would never rank success on talk time because seniors will happily chat for an hour. Both are right, and the disagreement tells you exactly what to coach. This post is for anyone who runs agents, or runs themselves, and wants a coaching metric that is better than dials without being fooled by long friendly calls. Why dials are the wrong number Dials measure effort, and effort is necessary. But dials reward the behavior agents complain about most: an agent who calls a lead once at the wrong time of day, marks it dead, and moves on. One manager puts a floor under it: four legitimate touches before a lead is declared dead, at different times, with a voicemail that says who you are and why you called. Dials cannot tell you whether that happened. Why raw talk time is also the wrong number Total minutes on the phone rise with two very different things: real conversations that move toward a decision, and long calls that go nowhere because the agent will not steer. A ninety-minute day made of three thirty-minute calls with no application is not better than a twenty-five-minute day with two applications. The veteran was describing agents he had managed: high talk time, low production, because "efficient with their time and focused on the goal" was not being coached. The four numbers to coach instead Contact rate. Conversations divided by dials. Low contact rate with plenty of dials means the wrong times of day, no voicemail, or numbers that were never going to answer. This is a scheduling problem before it is a skill problem. Conversations that reach a decision point. A conversation counts when the prospect said yes, no, or gave a concrete next step with a date. A chat that ends in "call me back sometime" does not count. This is the number that separates the two agents in the experiment, and it has to be logged on the call, not reconstructed on Friday. Median conversation length by outcome. Look at how long a call runs when it ends in an application versus when it ends in nothing. Every agent has a shape. The one whose no-outcome calls run longer than their application calls is not steering. Callback rate on voicemails. The leader named the fix for low talk time: "not leaving voicemails that get callbacks." Measure it. Change the script, measure it again. What to listen for once you have the numbers Numbers tell you which agent to sit with. Recordings tell you what to say when you get there. Another manager made the case that nothing replaces live call training: get on the phone with them, listen to their calls, let them hear you work a lead. The gap between knowing a script and using it under pressure only closes with reps and feedback. When you review a recording, listen for three things, in this order: The first fifteen seconds. Did the agent say why they are calling in a way that references what the prospect asked for? Most hang-ups happen before the pitch. The question that found the need. If there is no question about the family, the mortgage, the existing coverage or the funeral cost, the rest of the call is a monologue. The close attempt. Was there one? "This is where a lot of agents wimp out" was how one manager described it: the work is done, the problem is uncovered, and the agent does not ask. A weekly coaching loop that takes an hour Pull the four numbers for each agent. Pick the one whose decision-point rate dropped. Listen to two of their no-outcome calls and one application call from the same week. Write down one thing, not five. Role-play it once. Check the number again next week. The team will not exceed the standard you visibly hold, as one owner put it, so do your own calls where they can hear them. Where AgencyView fits AgencyView records calls placed from the contact record and transcribes them, and each recorded call is scored against a coaching rubric so a manager can sort a week's calls by score instead of listening to all of them. Call duration is logged on the contact, and the transcript shows how the call ended, which is what makes numbers 2 and 3 above real. The Call Coaching dashboard shows those scores by agent over time, and the Call Wall shows who is on a call right now. The persistency view in the CFO Center is where coaching eventually shows up as business that stays on the books.
Where AgencyView fits
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