We all know by now, how you speak on a sales call is absolutely crucial to success.

But there are some intangible elements of successful sales calls.

Only the most successful sales reps know these secrets.

And they guard them closely.

But today, despite protests from our resident data scientists, we are revealing our deepest, darkest cold call secrets.

We analyzed 300,000 sales calls made by hundreds of SDRs hooked up to physiological monitoring equipment, and this is what we found.

These are real data correlations that we just have to share with the world.

The most successful calls gratuitously use the word “leverage”

Top performers use “leverage” on each call AT LEAST 19 times

Black line: use of the term leverage
Red line: success of the sales call

For some reason, if your name is “Steve”, you are more successful in sales

Lying about whether your name is Steve doesn’t seem to have an effect on the data

Black line: sales reps named Steve
Red line: sales rep success rate

Pump up music matters.

Listening to Motley Crue’s “Dr. Feelgood” directly before a cold call seems to have a direct link to SDR happiness after the call

Black line: minutes spent listening to Dr. Feelgood
Red line: post sales call happiness

There is a quantum link between power posing and call pickup rate – we don’t know how, but it’s true

Screaming at your prospect increases the energy of a cold call by 10x

Stating your entire name, including your middle initial, and adding “the third” to your introduction increases your credibility by 45%

“This is Steve J. Stevenson The Third calling, do you have a few minutes?”

Black line: use of full name + III
Red line: credibility

When your prospect makes a product objection, loudly swearing in response makes them 70% less likely to keep objecting.

70%

Wearing your headset backwards directly improves call quality

K-cups kill your calls: there is a direct correlation between k-cup brewed coffee and prospect talk time

Black line: K-cup consumption
Red line: minutes prospects talked on the phone

OK – by now you probably know what is going on here…

APRIL FOOLS!

You caught us, we lied.

Buuuuut, all of these are real data correlations.

Remember this one? The one that was supposed to illustrate how valuable the word leverage means?

That’s actually a correlation between the number of people who drowned by falling into a pool, and the number of films Nicholas Cage appeared in over a 10 year period.

Ridiculous, right? But still statistically significant. All of our correlation charts in this post are from real data, from the website spurious correlations: http://www.tylervigen.com/spurious-correlations

We thought we would write our April Fools post this year to illustrate a point:

Correlation does not equal causation, and not all sales statistics are what they seem.

We should have higher standards about data in sales. Often we accept data from vendors blindly without asking crucial questions.

For example, if you read claims based on “analysis of 300,000 cold calls”, demand more from the claims. Ask these questions:

• Whose phone calls are these data points based on?
• What industry are the phone calls made in?
• What defines a “cold call” for this dataset?
• Where geographically were these phone calls made?
• How is “success” defined? (for example, what does it mean to say a phone call is successful?)
• When did these phone calls happen?

Sales is a noble profession. Salespeople are incredibly important to society. We are made up of problem solvers, critical thinkers, and deeply empathetic humans. 1 of 9 people in the United States is in sales, and the other 8 are still always selling, even if their job title says otherwise.

Since we are discerning professionals, we should hold sales data to professional standards. We should demand more from sales vendors. We should think critically about sales data correlations before implementing them in our sales process.

Unless the data suggests we use the word “leverage” a lot. That we can just accept blindly. 🙂

Have a great April Fools day!