How to Run an Effective Call Block: A Step-by-Step Guide for SDR Managers

If you're an SDR manager looking to maximize your team's productivity during call blocks, you've come to the right place. Call blocks aren’t just about dialing numbers—strategy, preparation, and teamwork. Spray-and-pray is a thing of the past, and regardless of whether you’re using Orum’s power, parallel, or click-to-call option, you need to come prepared with a plan.

As an SDR manager, you’re responsible for ensuring your reps understand expectations before, during, and after the dialing process. Let’s break down how to run an effective call block that keeps your team on target and drives results.

Step 1: Be Specific with Your Goals

Direction is everything. You can’t just say, “Call whoever you need to today,” and expect results. Instead, get specific:

Choose a Focus: Provide specific lists with specific outcomes so your reps can be consistent with their messaging. For example, if a call block targets webinar follow-ups from an event you ran, messaging should be specific and dependent on whether they were attendees or no-shows. Work with your marketing and events team to give your reps proper talk tracks in this example.

Step 2: Equip Your Reps with the Right Tools

Preparation is key. When reps know what they’re calling about, they perform better.

• Talk tracks: In keeping with the above example of a webinar follow-up, summarize the event, objectives, and key talking points.
  • The same can be stated for conference follow-ups, executive dinners, field events, or content downloads. The more context your reps have, the more engaged they can be about the prospects’ needs.
• Account Research: If your team assigns contacts for your SDRs, give reps their call lists in advance. If they are responsible for their own pipeline generation, establish an expectation that this will be done well before call blocks occur.

This way, they can dig into account notes, identify the best contacts, and focus on making meaningful connections. This empowers them to have a talk track and then personalize it with key facts about the account, industry, current challenges, or nuanced value propositions.

Step 3: Structure the Day with Call Blocks

Timing can make or break your team’s success. The Orum team builds their day around three separate call blocks.

• Morning: Focus on East Coast and international calls. This is where the team starts the day together, building momentum.
• Midday: Switch to Pacific and Mountain time zones. The focus remains the same as the morning. Dialing down your pre-built list of call tasks.
• End of Day: Use this time to follow up with callbacks, overdue tasks, and those “one-off” opportunities that didn’t fit earlier.

This maximizes rep calendars, as reps know they have specific times to make calls, perform omnichannel outreach tasks, and execute their research. Structure builds stability. When reps have defined times when they will be expected to call exclusively, they also know that the rest of their schedule is dedicated to research, building their pipeline, training, and other tasks.

Step 4: Real-Time Coaching During Call Blocks

Feedback is most effective when it’s immediate.

• Listen In: Listen to live calls on the Salesfloor and provide feedback on the spot. If a rep handles a tough objection or nails a pitch, highlight it immediately, celebrating their actions with the entire team.
• Review Recordings: If you can’t join live, review recordings from the day and leave detailed feedback to keep reps sharp by the end of the day. SDRS must be able to implement this feedback quickly so it sticks.

Step 5: Make It a Team Effort

Team collaboration is a game-changer.

• Daily Stand-Ups: Kick off with a morning meeting where you highlight wins and lessons from the previous day’s calls. This loosens up the team and prepares them for their first call block.
• Weekly Call Reviews: Use a specific day, like Thursday, to review calls as a team—the wins and the calls that need improvement. You can approach weekly call reviews in two ways.

Your manager can bring calls to review with the whole team, sparking discussion about what worked, what didn’t, and how to use these calls to grow.

Managers can task reps with coming prepared with calls they would like to spotlight, giving them a chance to discuss the process. This also acts as a training opportunity, empowering reps to act as team leads.

Step 6: Measure and Adapt

You can’t improve what you don’t measure.

Metrics like the number of dials, connects, and meetings booked provide surface-level insights into what’s working. Orum’s analytics empower you to dive deeper to understand how much talk time each rep experiences when booking meetings, how well the team converts connects into meetings, and how they progress over time.

You can also use these metrics to identify the most frequently used dispositions and objections to better understand each rep's approach and process. This will equip you to provide customized, human-centric coaching to your reps.