How To Figure Out the # of Dials You Need to Make

It was suggested that I break this post out into its own thread. So here goes. Read and apply this, or remain an inconsistent phone prospector.

You need to be able to back into your # of dials necessary to hit your revenue target.

Yeah, your list quality might be poor and that will affect your dials to conversations ratio. No question. However, if you don't track dials you'll never find that out, other than a sense that it's taking a lot of dials to get to talk to someone.

If your list is lousy, don't you want to know that ASAP so you can change your source?!

Also, you track these numbers on a daily, weekly, monthly and all time basis (easy to do by spreadsheet). You'll improve in your skill as well as your phone # sources, so over time these ratios will improve. But you have to start somewhere.

To manage we must measure.

That phrase was beat into my head over two intensive years of Operations Management training. That's how you continuously improve on your situation.

So how do we back into our # of dials needed to get to our revenue target?

Let's say we have a 6 month revenue target of $50,000. I know that would be excellent for newbies. You design websites, and decide $1,000 is the average price you're comfortable at.

So right away we know we have to sell 50 of these things in the 6 months to hit our target.

You just started making prospecting calls, so you know your ratios aren't going to be great yet. Since you don't have actual data at this point, you use a tough ratio of 20 dials to get one conversation, and another tough one of 20 conversations to get one sale. You might be better than this, and at that point you can adjust your numbers, but for now this is an OK place to start.

So to get one sale, we predict that 20 dials x 20 conversations = 400 dials to get one sale. Seems a little high, but our newbies aren't so great on the phone yet. And we'd rather overestimate than under, at this point.

400 dials for 1 sale = 400 x 50 = 20,000 dials over the 6 months! Whew!

6 months = 6 x 4 weeks x 5 days = 120 working days to make those dials.

20,000 / 120 = 167 dials per day to hit the target. Worst case.

Gulp.

But now you know. 20 dials a day ain't gonna do it. 50 dials a day won't get you there.


Say after 2 months you've developed some skill. The real figures you're experiencing are 15 dials to get a conversation, and 12 conversations to get an order. 15 x 12 = 180 dials to make a sale now, those are your real numbers, and so you need to make a total of 180 x 50 = 9,000 dials in the 6 months to make your money target. That's 9,000 / 120 working days = 75 dials a day.

Whew.


Now you start adding in other prospecting methods into your plan: referrals, talks, webinars, seminars, joint ventures, etc. Each of these will have its own conversion ratio (eg. the right kind of referral will close 50%+ of the time, meaning if you get 2 in a month you have a great chance of closing 1...and that removes the need for 400 dials for our brand spanking newbie, doesn't it?). These really add up. 6 months into your business, and you should have leads and sales coming from other sources, so that prospecting calls, while remaining as a source, isn't so heavily relied upon as your revenue generator.

Make sense? This is the kind of thing that separates amateurs from professionals who want consistent, measurable results.