Propensity to Buy (PTB) models are widely applied to increase sales, and involve crunching customer data (potential or existing) to determine their potential to buy a particular product. This helps you identify who will buy what, and when so that salespeople can approach prospects in the market for a particular product when they are ready to buy – increasing the likelihood of a sale.
However, just looking at a sales opportunity from the potential customer’s perspective, is only half the story, leaving cash on the table.
Bestpair™ (Betterpair™) looks at the type of prospect the salesperson has the most success with, increasing the possibility of a sale significantly (on average 30%).
Propensity to Buy could therefore be described as the likelihood a potential customer is to buy a particular product at this time; while Betterpair™ can be described as the likelihood a salesperson is to sell a particular product to a specific potential customer. Please see figure 1 below for more comparisons.
Betterpair™ and PTB can work independently of each other. (In fact Value-Ad works along side the Propensity to Buy team).
On their own, PTB and Betterpair™ will each still result in increased sales.
However, used in combination sales will increase even more.
So why use Betterpair™?
- To optimize sales using existing resources i.e. salespeople and systems
What do we base Betterpair™ on?
- Historical success and failures for each salesperson
How do we do Betterpair™?
- Model the type of prospect each salesperson is most likely to close
- Allocate prospects to the salesperson most likely to sell to them
What’s involved?
- Models built for each salesperson and then refreshed regularly e.g. monthly
- Models used to match list of prospects to the most suited salesperson
- Prospects distributed to the matched salespeople in your usual way
Figure 1: Comparison of Propensity to Buy and Bestpair™:
| Propensity to Buy | Bestpair™ | |
| Who is modeled | All prospects | Each salesperson |
| How many models are built | Per product | Per salesperson per product |
| Prospect Info required | The more the better | |
| Salesperson info required | – | Past success and failures |
| How often refreshed | ? (Less frequently) | Monthly* |
(* Please note that the logistics of building as many models as required a month, e.g. 30+++, are tricky. We have these logistics waxed! This is a huge undertaking as the models need to be refreshed regularly so that they continually learn and improve. PTB teams are generally not set up to do this frequency and volume of model building).
Some factors that optimise Bestpair™ are:
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- Salesperson diversity (the more diverse the better)
- Number of salespeople (the more the better, at least 8)
- Amount of Training Data (at least 6 months historical sales data (success and failures))
And besides increasing sales, other benefits of Betterpair™ have been seen to be:
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- Larger deal sizes (due to scoring and prioritising leads)
- Increased staff retention (due to more successful people)
- Measurable results (no guessing or interpretation; hard numbers that speak for themselves)
Lastly, here are a couple of other questions we often get asked:
Q: Do the sales team need to know Betterpair™ has been applied?
A: No, it is not obvious that it has been.
Q: How can you be sure results are due to Betterpair™ and not PTB or some other reason?
A: 30% of leads assignments are allocated randomly so that the Betterpair™ results can be compared against results that only differ according to the allocation method.
Interested in how we can help you apply Bestpair™ to increase your Outbound Telemarketing sales?
Please contact us for a quick chat.