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what is your "call to sale/face-to-face meeting" ratio.

by Sonny Am
9 replies
Hi offline warriors,

I was just curious to hear from newbies and more experienced offline marketers.

How many calls do you typically make before you close a sale (if you close on the phone) or secure a meeting. And if you secure meetings, how many meetings before you make a sale.

I have heard from some people making 100 calls in order to secure a sale, which seems like a lot to me, so I just wanted to hear others success rate.


Looking forward to your replies.


Thank you in advance.
#ratio
  • Profile picture of the author rankingconsult
    Ah, answers will be so diverse depending on the product/service, size of the niche, and relative competition.

    I do sales for a sofware company - B2B - I only target those people who I feel have a strong chance of wanting our software. I call them knowing that I have a good chance of securing at least a demonstration, which should be everybody's first step. This also has the benefit of sounding less like a hard sell sales call, which I find a real turn off myself.
    Selling on the phone takes terrific skill and patience and I admit myself I run out of these are an hour or two..
    The dark side of all of this is Telemarketing. I once tried it on behalf of my company. Sure, they came back with more leads then i could muster in 4 times the time spent BUT they were crap.
    I know, as I was the mug who then took off in my car to meet these people and it was a disaster really...
    Nobody knows your own business like yourself. Pick up that phone, take a deep breath, have the gist of what you wish to say on a form in front of you and go for it.

    Oh, in out niche, about 1 in 7 calls gets a demo. 1 in 4 demos gets a sale.
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    • Profile picture of the author kebertt
      Originally Posted by rankingconsult View Post

      Oh, in out niche, about 1 in 7 calls gets a demo. 1 in 4 demos gets a sale.
      These are great numbers, but when it comes to prospecting businesses with internet marketing services the reality is you generally get a 1-3% response rate when cold-calling. It all depends on so many factors - the type of services you're offering, your telemarketers experience, your script, price, company, location, etc.
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      • Profile picture of the author mike_lucas
        Originally Posted by kebertt View Post

        These are great numbers, but when it comes to prospecting businesses with internet marketing services the reality is you generally get a 1-3% response rate when cold-calling. It all depends on so many factors - the type of services you're offering, your telemarketers experience, your script, price, company, location, etc.

        intresting numbers I know a lot of folks push cold calling and a lot of anti colding foks respond back

        the Number you post I understand are very general basic on product services price point etc but

        email I get about a ..5% for a Sale
        VB I get about .75% for a sale

        Yes they are lower than the numbers you provide but I can send out 2000 email in less then an hour and 1000 Voice messages in bout 10 minutes
        if a cold caller can expect t to get 1%and take hours to get the one then again based on the number it seems that other methods others are pushing besides cold calling are more time effective are they not?

        Please understand I am NOT anti cold-calling just looking at it from a numbers prospective is all. I Think I am going to have to set up a excel spreadsheet for the next 60-90 days and really take a look at this. as your post as really got me wondering if cold calling is the most cost effective way (we are paying our telemarketing per hour to set appointments FYI) thanks you got me really thinking now ...

        I really have not set up a proper in depth tracking the man hours spent, cost per sale vs generating a sale, cost vs the other leads generating we also employ.

        I wonder if anyone else have done some hard testing and number crunching on this?
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        • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
          Originally Posted by mike_lucas View Post

          intresting numbers I know a lot of folks push cold calling and a lot of anti colding foks respond back

          the Number you post I understand are very general basic on product services price point etc but

          email I get about a ..5% for a Sale
          VB I get about .75% for a sale

          Yes they are lower than the numbers you provide but I can send out 2000 email in less then an hour and 1000 Voice messages in bout 10 minutes
          if a cold caller can expect t to get 1%and take hours to get the one then again based on the number it seems that other methods others are pushing besides cold calling are more time effective are they not?

          Yes, but check it out... email... .5% for a sale is being very generous. You know as well as I do mass, cold emailing does not convert at .5% when it comes to our services. MAYBE .05% but that is also unlikely. When its a decent list, you can expect 1 sale per 4,000 emails sent out, or per 400 opens depending on your copy!

          You're right though... email, VM drops, you're just waiting for the calls to come in, right? That's the problem, you're waiting for the calls to come in. When cold calling, you're taking proactive approach to generating sales.. You make a good point though, but only seeing it with one eye instead of two. You SHOULD be doing other things... Email marketing, PPC, social media... you should also be doing some cold calling. Why not?

          Just because Google has 60-65% of the search engine market share, that doesn't mean that the remaining 35-40% is irrelevant.

          Test it out like this.... Send out 1,000 emails... send 1,000 postcards to the same people... Call the SAME 1,000 people. You might not get anything from email, if you do, it might be one person... lets say you get 20 from the postcards, and an entirely different 10-15 from calling! That's 35 or so new sales that made the list convert at 3.5% instead of 1%. That's a big difference.

          Not every possible client you get is going to respond well to ONE form of marketing.

          Lets break down a common misconception about cold calling. People say because it converts low, that it isn't efficient. If it only converts at 1%, you make a sale in 1-2 hours of REAL calling. Now when it comes to direct mailing, you're sending 1,000 postcards, which you need to either get a permit from the post office, or use first class stamps at 32 cents a pop costing $320 + the 55ish bucks for the post cards, so you're at nearly $400 already. How do you address the cards? Assuming you aren't doing EDDM then you're pulling a list from somewhere or creating your own. Handwriting the addresses? It doesn't really give you an advantage like people say, but if you're printing using mail merge and the stickers you might be okay. Still there is a lot of time involved.

          Nothing is easy... Nothing is guaranteed. Every method you use is going to take some time and effort behind it and TESTING.

          If you're using only one method to generate leads, then you're doing it wrong.
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          • Profile picture of the author mike_lucas
            Originally Posted by iAmNameLess View Post

            Yes, but check it out... email... .5% for a sale is being very generous. You know as well as I do mass, cold emailing does not convert at .5% when it comes to our services. MAYBE .05% but that is also unlikely. When its a decent list, you can expect 1 sale per 4,000 emails sent out, or per 400 opens depending on your copy!

            You're right though... email, VM drops, you're just waiting for the calls to come in, right? That's the problem, you're waiting for the calls to come in. When cold calling, you're taking proactive approach to generating sales.. You make a good point though, but only seeing it with one eye instead of two. You SHOULD be doing other things... Email marketing, PPC, social media... you should also be doing some cold calling. Why not?

            Just because Google has 60-65% of the search engine market share, that doesn't mean that the remaining 35-40% is irrelevant.

            Test it out like this.... Send out 1,000 emails... send 1,000 postcards to the same people... Call the SAME 1,000 people. You might not get anything from email, if you do, it might be one person... lets say you get 20 from the postcards, and an entirely different 10-15 from calling! That's 35 or so new sales that made the list convert at 3.5% instead of 1%. That's a big difference.

            Not every possible client you get is going to respond well to ONE form of marketing.

            Lets break down a common misconception about cold calling. People say because it converts low, that it isn't efficient. If it only converts at 1%, you make a sale in 1-2 hours of REAL calling. Now when it comes to direct mailing, you're sending 1,000 postcards, which you need to either get a permit from the post office, or use first class stamps at 32 cents a pop costing $320 + the 55ish bucks for the post cards, so you're at nearly $400 already. How do you address the cards? Assuming you aren't doing EDDM then you're pulling a list from somewhere or creating your own. Handwriting the addresses? It doesn't really give you an advantage like people say, but if you're printing using mail merge and the stickers you might be okay. Still there is a lot of time involved.

            Nothing is easy... Nothing is guaranteed. Every method you use is going to take some time and effort behind it and TESTING.

            If you're using only one method to generate leads, then you're doing it wrong.

            Well I dont want to get the DM folks yelling at me (lol) but you are correct itis the least cost "effective" per man hours ,time material etc

            When I say we send out 1000 email I am taking about per 1000 emails sent out we generate a sale every 1250 emails on average we send out about 30-50k per month

            its not a lot of sales granted but its very little time and like the caller above we do follow up it's is not a email closing sale by any means it's a teaser email to get them to call or respond is all.

            Same with the VB

            but that holds true also for Cold calling so again if you are paying someone or calling me self as I would consider my time at least as valuable as to what t I would pay a telemarketer at minimum then again one must factor in man hours, material cost, etc to see the true cost of generating a lead is all I am saying

            I know many here do not track cost ratio's they believe there way is best and well it works but we do all the above ...well expect DM but never really dug down into the hard numbers

            I am just wondering if anyone that does all three lead generating methods has ever did that to see what the true cost for each is ? Just food for thought is all.

            I know all of above works
            emailing
            VB
            cold calling
            DM

            But the fact remains that one is is really the most cost effective per sale no matter which one you are using for what ever product or services you are offering,. I guessing it would be different for almost everyone, just finding out which one it is making take the top two as everyone says you do not want to depend on just one system.
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  • Profile picture of the author superplatinum
    What we do is we send out emails and those who respond to those get phone calls. This increases our call to sale ratio significantly. About 2 out of 5 sign up. But this is because we are calling people who have already expressed interest. We got our foot in the door via email already.
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    • Profile picture of the author iAmNameLess
      Originally Posted by superplatinum View Post

      What we do is we send out emails and those who respond to those get phone calls. This increases our call to sale ratio significantly. About 2 out of 5 sign up. But this is because we are calling people who have already expressed interest. We got our foot in the door via email already.
      Yeah, makes sense except you're waiting for people to respond to the email.

      I generate incoming calls with emails I send out and it works very well. I get about 75%-85% closed. In fact, out of the last 20 incoming, there is only one I haven't closed yet.

      Same thing can be applied with opens... and clicks...If someone clicked a link in the email but didn't call, you call them. Lower conversions but some still convert! Same with opens, except then you have about 10% of the people telling you they want off your list. LOL.
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  • Profile picture of the author payoman
    You mentioned that you think 100 calls is 'alot'. That really depends on how much you make from those calls doesn't it?

    If you get 1 sale in 100, for a $1300 website (what I currently charge), suddenly you are making $13 per phone call. Not bad at all, right?

    Although my ratio is more like 1 in 150 or so, it is STILL miles and miles away from any dayjob I could get, and many other people could get IMO. Especially when you consider lifetime value of each client.
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  • Profile picture of the author Sonny Am
    Thanks for all the replies, I completely understand how this ratio is completely down to the person, his or her experience, the service and the market he/she is operating in. Is it unrealistic to assume that after a years of calling and sales experience you could close 1 in 20 calls? if you prospect correctly?
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