Reading the reports without fooling yourself
Activity numbers measure effort, outcome numbers measure results, and the gap between them is where the coaching is. The most common mistake is comparing two reps whose numbers were produced under different conditions.
Who this is for
Owners and managers. Producers see their own version on the Command Center.
Activity vs outcome
Dials, talk time and texts sent are activity — they measure effort and they're almost entirely within a rep's control. Connect rate, booked appointments and closes are outcomes, and they aren't.
Read them together. High activity with low outcomes is usually a skill or a script problem. Low activity with good outcomes is usually someone cherry-picking. Low on both is the only combination that's simply not working.
Connect rate is mostly not about the rep
Before you coach anyone on connect rate, check the things that move it regardless of who's dialling: whether their caller ID matches the lead's area code, whether a number in the pool has picked up a spam label, and lead age. A rep dialling week-old leads from an out-of-state number will lose to a rep on fresh local ones every time, and no amount of coaching closes that gap.
Compare like with like
Two reps' numbers are only comparable if their lead source, lead age, product and territory are comparable. They usually aren't. The most common misreading in any CRM is treating a leaderboard as a ranking of ability when it's substantially a ranking of lead quality.
If you want a fair comparison, compare a rep against themselves over time.
Missing numbers are usually missing dispositions
If someone's outcomes look impossibly low, check whether they're dispositioning calls at all before concluding anything. Reporting is built from logged outcomes — a rep who dials all day and logs nothing produces a report that says they did nothing, and the fix is a habit, not a target.
How to check it worked
- Pick one rep and reconcile a single day's report against their actual call log. If they disagree, the reporting isn't the problem — the logging is.
Common mistakes
- Coaching connect rate before checking caller ID match and number reputation.
- Ranking reps who are working different lead sources.
- Reading a low outcome number as performance when it's a dispositioning gap.
- Setting activity targets alone, which reliably produces activity and nothing else.
Related
Where this lives in the app
This is documentation for Virtual Closer. Book a walkthrough or sign in.