The Highest Converting Talk-to-Listen Ratio in Sales, Based on 25,537 Sales Calls
The Highest Converting Talk-to-Listen Ratio in Sales, Based on 25,537 Sales Calls
In the Gong Research Labs series, we publish data from analyzing sales calls with natural language processing and AI. Subscribe here for new data every week.. . .
How embarrassed can one guy be? One of the key reasons I was invited to join Gong as Senior Director of Product Marketing was my sales experience at InsideSales.com. My executive team valued that background to a great extent, and arrogantly enough, so did I. So when I hopped on my first few sales calls at Gong (using the platform to measure my own talk-to-listen ratio), I thought I had it made. On full-length calls, I figured I was speaking somewhere between 45-55% of the total call. I couldn’t wait to see the actual averaged-out results from multiple calls to validate the high opinion I had of my own sales skills. That Friday, I received an automated Gong summary email. I could finally check some of my sales conversation stats, including my average talk-to-listen ratio. I slowly clicked to open the email, scrolled my eyes down to the center of the page, and almost choked on my coffee because of what I saw. My average talk-to-listen ratio was 72:28. And everyone knew it. I was floored. I’m sure my face immediately became flushed red.A Reality Check for B2B Sales Professionals:You May Be Listening Less Than You Think
It turns out, my experience is not uncommon. Unless you are actively monitoring your own talk-to-listen ratio with technology, it’s likely that you’re speaking much more often than you to believe. During the first cohort of Gong’s conversation analytics research series, we analyzed 25,537 B2B sales conversations using artificial intelligence. The first insights we discovered were several trends connected to what we call the “talk-to-listen ratio.” The analysis revealed that the average B2B sales rep consumes 65–75% of a call’s talk time speaking rather than listening.
The Ideal Talk-to-Listen Ratio
Now for the good stuff. How often do the highest performing B2B sales professionals speak vs. listen? The analysis revealed that the highest converting talk-to-listen ratio on B2B sales calls is approximately 43:57.
How to Significantly Boost Your Low Performers’ Win-Rates: Bite Your Tongue Just a Little
Finally, if your sales reps are talking too much, increasing your potential customers’ average talk-time from a mere 22% up to 33% (an easily attainable jump) significantly drives win-rates upwards.