Work out how much activity you need each week to reach a sales target, using your own conversion rates.
Mei's target is two new clients a month, set the way most targets are, by a manager or by the bank balance. At the start, that is the only number she has.
Most sellers then decide their call or activity volume by feeling: "a lot", "more than last week", "as many as I can". When the target is missed, nobody can tell whether the problem was too little activity or the wrong kind of activity. A better method takes about ten minutes with a calculator. You start from the target and work backwards through each stage of your pipeline until you reach the number of touches you need each week.
A pipeline is a series of stages, each smaller than the one before. It works the same way as the pipeline-stage scorecard you built in Lesson 2.4, "Build a lead source scorecard". Many people are contacted, fewer reply, fewer still agree to meet, and only some of those receive a proposal and buy.
Between each pair of stages there is a rate, which is the share of people who move from one stage to the next. You need four of them:
sales per proposal proposals per meeting meetings per conversation conversations per touch
A touch is any single contact from the outreach sequence you set up in module 6. A conversation is a real reply or call where the prospect engages with you.
Before you use the rates, set your target as a count of sales for the period. Use a month or a quarter, whichever matches how your targets are set. The maths works on a count of sales, so if your target is in dollars, first divide it by your typical sale value to get the number of sales.
Mei's rates are 1 sale for every 3 proposals, 1 proposal for every 2 meetings, 1 meeting for every 3 conversations and 1 conversation for every 5 touches (example figures, not benchmarks). Working backwards means dividing the target by each rate in turn. Dividing by a rate of 1 in 3 is the same as multiplying by 3.
Two sales at 1 in 3 proposals means Mei needs 6 proposals. Six proposals at 1 in 2 meetings means 12 meetings. Twelve meetings at 1 in 3 conversations means 36 conversations. Thirty-six conversations at 1 in 5 touches means 180 touches. In a month, she needs 6 proposals, 12 meetings, 36 conversations and 180 touches.
Monthly numbers are too big to act on, but you can plan a prospecting block around a weekly number. To keep the numbers round, treat a month as four working weeks. Mei divides by 4 and gets 9 conversations and 45 touches a week. Across a 5-day week, 45 touches is about 9 a day. Many touches are quick: a templated email with a personalised first line, a LinkedIn note, or a short call.
When a division does not come out even, always round up, never down. If your sums give 8.3 conversations a week, plan for 9. Rounding down means planning to fall just short of your target.
Of all these figures, the weekly count of new conversations is usually the one to watch most closely. Touches are the activity you control. Conversations are the first sign that the activity is working.
If you hit your touch number but conversations come in well below plan, treat that gap as an important signal. Suppose Mei makes her 45 touches in a week and gets 2 conversations instead of 9. Lesson 7.2 covers what to do in that situation.
You will find industry averages for reply, meeting and close rates on blogs and in sales books. Treat them with suspicion. They come from different markets, products and price points, and they often use a different definition of a "meeting". A rate measured on software sold to large American companies tells you little about selling bookkeeping to Singapore cafe groups, or insurance reviews to young parents.
Your own numbers, even rough ones, describe your market, your offer and your skill. If you set up honest stages in Lesson 6.3, "The minimum CRM fields worth tracking", you already have them, and your scorecard from Lesson 2.4 holds them too. If you only have a month of history, use it and label the result a first estimate. If you have no history at all, start with a cautious guess, run the plan for a month, then replace the guess with what actually happened.
Knowing your real rates matters because a small change in one rate moves every number above it in the pipeline. Darren goes through the same steps as Mei with his own rates. His meetings turn into proposals much less often than hers, 1 in 4 instead of 1 in 2. With every other rate the same as Mei's, he needs 24 meetings a month instead of 12, and 72 conversations instead of 36, double hers at both stages.
You can keep this calculation in a pipeline calculator, a five-row spreadsheet that does the working-backwards maths for you. Put your target in row 1, then add one row each for proposals, meetings, conversations and touches.
Put each stage's rate in one column. In the next column, write a formula that divides the row above by that rate, so proposals are calculated from the target, meetings from proposals, and so on down to touches. Add a final column that divides each monthly figure by 4 to give the weekly number. If you want a daily figure, divide weekly touches by 5.
Once the sheet is set up, changing any rate updates every number above it in the pipeline, which in the sheet means every row below it. You can see straight away what happens if you get better at turning meetings into proposals, or worse at getting replies. The spreadsheet does the sums, but it cannot tell you whether your rates are honest, so update them from real results at the end of each month.
In the activity below, enter your own target and your own rates from your scorecard, and write down the weekly number of new conversations you need.
Put your own target and rates into the pipeline calculator, then write down how many new conversations you need each week.
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