In B2B sales development, every second counts. Get the timing wrong and you’re back to square one.
Let’s see what’s the optimal time your SDR should be on call with a prospect.
Timing – find the sweet spot
When you finally get a prospect on the phone, your window of opportunity is limited. You have only so much time before you lose a prospective client’s interest and as a result, miss out on potential revenue.
For this reason, let’s cut straight to the chase and talk about the optimal time to be on the call:
4-7 minutes.
That’s right. Nothing more, nothing less.
Less than 4 minutes and you run the risk of:
1. Not listening thoroughly enough to clients’ concerns or preoccupations
2. Not explaining your product or services in a way that piques enough interest.
On the other hand, go past those 7 minutes to the brink of 10 and you’ll have committed a crime that goes against any strong sales prospecting playbook to kill curiosity.
If you want to pour more potential revenue into your pipeline, the prospect call must pique curiosity and complete its purpose—booking the meeting.
An exception to the rule
If you find that the conversation is pushing on longer than expected because your ICP is elaborating about how one of the company’s problems is blah-blah-blah, that’s great.
Listen to their needs so that you can follow up with how your solution can ease their pain points.
Conversely, should the client begin asking for specifics concerning pricing, product, etc. earlier on in the call, then go ahead and cut the convo shorter than the time recommended. Save that conversation for the meeting with the AE.
Want to drive your SDRs to make more successful prospect calls? Download our SDR compensation guide to see how you can encourage your SDR to book more meetings.
Check out more Quick Answers here.
