What are your numbers?

Have you kept stats?

Do you know how many cold calls equals an appointment? How many appointments equals a demo or webinar or 'next step'? How many next steps equals a sale? Or whatever your sales process is (there may be no demo or next step).

I recently found this BLOG info and wanted to share opinions;

I can show you my diary. I have weeks with 22 face to face meetings booked, 19 were kept by both myself and the prospect. And it took me one week to book them.

In addition, the week before I also kept some face to face meetings. Meaning I was out of the office part of the time. Therefore I could not use the phone to make appointments.

Now, I did not keep stats, but if I did I can tell you that to get 22 meetings, if I dialed like a maniac and applied this quote above, it would have taken 2,200 phone calls to line up the business I did. That is 440 calls a day.

I have never made more than 100 calls in a day and probably never had a day where I made over 40 maximum (to get the kind of business described lined up - meaning 22 set meetings).

I want to be very clear here. If my numbers are say less 120 calls in a week to generate this business (22 appointments) and the author is touting more than 2,200 or roughly 15 times as many ... what is the real issue? Is it the sales practice or ... ?

I am NOT saying the author is a liar. There is no indication of that at all. But I am saying that two-and-two do not equate to 4 in this case. The "numbers don't lie" quote is very misleading indeed as these numbers, if true, have to be taken from unskilled sales people.

There are boiler rooms all over the world. There is a reason why they charge by the hour and not by successful appointments booked or, put another way, new business generated. Because they hire college students and 2nd rate sales people, what J. Douglas Edwards called PIONS, to do a pro's job.

I have quite a bit more to say on this exact topic and the other numbers in this BLOG. But I want to kick it out there, into salespractice.com-land, to see what your opinion is.

POINT ONE TENTH OF A PERCENT is the same as saying one in one hundred calls equals an appointment. My father's average (this is a man in his 70th year!) is one tenth of that!

Do you have a problem with this information seeming misleading?

I have read the blog post you're quoting GC and I agree that the information seems misleading and yes I have a problem with it. I think what makes the information misleading to me is the ommission of key data. For example, WHO was making the calls a skilled veteran or a 15 year old part time worker calling everyone in the phone book?

Houston, I actually believe the data quoted in that BLOG has to do with marketing, not sales. I have seen marketing data that stated you needed an average of 7 impressions, this one says 9. Maybe that is accurate but not for sales.

Let me demonstrate my point;

If you called the executive and reached his/her assistant 9 times they would claim it was harassment, in fact, this would be an issue well before that many direct telephone contacts were made. And I trust the full impact of this is well understood by all.

The reality if what is claimed in the rest of that BLOG is either ridiculous or misleading, again due to the numbers not being about sales contacts but advertising and/or direct marketing email or mail "impressions" (contacts).

Here is another bit based on the '9 contacts' portion of the post;

What is meant by a message in the first paragraph? A voice mail? One in three voice mails reaches the executive, is this what we are to consider? Is this like saying "one in nine marketing contacts to get the executive's attention but let's transpose this onto cold calling, assume only one in three messages get;'s through - one in 27 calls equals an appointment as a result.

Well, since the earlier post, I reached 5 executives I had never spoken with before. Got one sale over the and one appointment plus three requests for information, only one that I would consider very serious. One serious prospects for phone follow up, one sale and one appointment in about an hour.

Now, I am determined and very well trained but, I am not the sharpest pencil in the box, if you know what I mean. So, how is it in less than a quarter of a day I generated all of this when this so-called-expert states in a whole day I would reach 40% of what I did in one hour?

By the way, if I was not running the company with many other duties, I would have done much more since the last post!

In conclusion, I must assert that the numbers are misleading, probably not intentionally so but this concept of calling an executive 9 times and needing 27 calls to get one appointment does not ring true with any of the phone prospectors I have ever had contact with. If it did, none of them would do what they do for a living because they could not earn the huge money they do.

Let me state the obvious; sales is not for average people. And, while that has little bearing on statistics that are misleading, it does on any set of numbers taken from an "average".

Finally - the quote above is "an executive will only be receptive to talking with you after seeing your message at least nine times ..."

The keyword in that quote is "seeing". As in seeing your letter or email. They only "see" anything from me after I contact them!

Only with your math.

POINT ONE TENTH OF A PERCENT is the same as saying one in one thousand--not one in one hundred.

The post you "quoted" said: 0.01%

That equals one in ten thousand.

That said, I do agree with you that the infomation was inaccurate.

Your math is incorrect Joe Closer. 1% = 0.01 = 1/100

Wanna bet?

Check the above. You left out the the percentage sign. What you posted here you changed to make a point.

If we need to use numbers and statistics to debate these issues, it is important to understand math and the use of both decimals and percentages.

POINT ONE TENTH OF A PERCENT does not equal one hundredth.

ONE PERCENTAGE POINT equals one hundredth. Therefore, one tenth of that is one thousandth.

I point this out because I think that using unsubstantiated numbers is silly in these discussions. Apparently, little thought was given to the numbers the original poster posted by the poster himself.

BTW, Marcus. None of this is off topic in case you're wondering. The topic of this thread is WHAT ARE YOUR NUMBERS followed by DO YOU KEEP STATS?

I DO keep stats and I monitor my numbers.

A Primer On Math in the spirit of DO YOU KEEP STATS

1% = 1/100
.1% = 1/1000
.01% = 1/10,000

I don't have a lot of numbers to give you ... but ...

This spring I did an extremely diligent emailing effort. I hand selected companies exactly like others I'd done work for but in different locations around the country. I emailed each one individually. This was not a mass mail - but a one at a time emailing effort. The central text of each email was the same, but I detailed the opening line and address line to fit each prospect.

Out of every 100 to 120 emails sent, I received on average about 10 responses. 6 or 7 would be "thanks but no." 3 or 4 of the 10 asked for more info.

I think I did this effort twice. So must have been about 200 or maybe 300 emails total?

Net result:
One is still requesting that I remind him every 4 months of my existence.
1 turned into a (bad) client. (But he did pay before he went totally nutty).


Does this help?

Those are my stats.

That is good feedback, but you would probably have to increase the numbers for your campaign before you can gauge it with greater accuracy.