I once took a course that helped me to see how I was interacting with potential clients, and how I was attempting to convert those potential clients into actual clients.
It introduced me to my ‘magic number’ – my conversion rate of prospects.
What does that mean? Well, simply put, that means how many people I actually convert to clients while on a sales call.
I realized that I was converting at about 40 per cent, which would mean that for every 10 people I talked to, 4 would actually sign on to work with me. (Note: that’s not a very good conversion rate!)
Think about it … if you are working at a 40 per cent conversion rate, and you need 10 clients to build your business to the level that you want it to be at, that means that you will need to have sales conversations with 25 people to get those 10 clients. This is your magic number.
Do you know what your magic number is?
It’s important to know this number for a couple of reasons. First, you need to know in order to accurately match your networking efforts with your client goals.
Second, by knowing this number, you can assess your efforts and figure out how to increase your odds of closing a client.
There are two ways of doing this:
1. Increase your networking efforts. Speak to more people and you will get more sales calls. So, if you need to speak with 50 people to get 10 sales calls, then you will need to ramp up your networking efforts so that you are actively connecting with those 50 people regularly, in order to move them to the next level … a call.
2. Increase your conversion rate. In the example above, 40% is quite low. You can also assess your strategy on your sales calls to see why you are not converting clients at a higher rate. What are their objections? Why are they getting off the phone with you without signing the deal? What can you change about your conversations to increase your conversion rate?
Either way will be an effective way for you to increase your client conversions. It’s up to you which one is right for you, but with the limited time that everyone has for networking, it seems logical to try to increase your success so that you are closing at a higher rate. That way you can still talk to the same number of people as you are now, but you will get more clients from those calls.
Getting clients easily requires a carefully thought out strategy – make the connections, secure the sales calls, and convert the clients. Everything is better with a well-thought-out plan!