Ever questioned how many inbound leads you will need in order to hit your sales targets? It’s actually a really easy question to answer, once you know a few industry averages.
The Real Numbers May Surprise You
According to Salesforce, only 13% of inbound leads ever become a sales opportunity. And of those, a mere 6% of those opportunities ever turn into a closed deal. You should also expect it to take 84 days to convert a lead to an opportunity, and another 18 days on average for the opportunity to end in a closed won or closed lost result.
This data means that for every 150 leads you capture from a landing page, you can expect to gain approximately 1 new customer. And that deal will close in roughly 15 weeks time.
Lay It Out on a Calendar for Me
Let’s say you launched your campaign on April 1st, and captured 150 leads by month end.
- 84 days later, at some point in July, you will have 17 new opportunities in your pipeline.
- Within the next three weeks, early in August, you will have your first new customer from your lead gen program.
- By this point, you will have invested in 4 months of service from your lead gen provider, and should have another 3 future clients somewhere in the sales process.
Klipfolio sheds a bit more light on the topic, revealing that the average landing page will convert between 2% and 4% of all visitors into leads. So you’ll need to drive 3-5 thousand visitors for each new customer you aim to find.
Can I Get Better Results?
The short answer is yes. It will take completely rethinking how you design and measure your marketing efforts so that your marketing strategy drives your lead generation efforts, not the other way around.
Everything will improve once your marketing focus shifts to getting as many people in your target market as possible excited and intrigued by how you’re different.
- The leads you capture are more qualified and more sales ready.
- The leads you capture have already bought into your value.
- The leads you capture have already adopted the belief that you might be able to help them.
Do this well and you will fill your pipeline with opportunities that are much more likely to close.
What Would You Rather Do
Call a list of 150 web leads who don’t really know much about you, so that you can:
- Hear “NO” 133 times.
- Hear “Maybe” 17 times.
- Do 17 Discovery Calls.
- Write 17 Proposals.
- Hear “No” 16 more times.
- Close 1 deal.
Or, would you rather create engaging content that gets people talking about who you are and how you’re different, so that you can:
- Create inquiries from a dozen prospective clients who are keen to work with you.
- Hold 12 discovery calls, and determine that 4 to 6 of those aren’t a great match.
- Write 6 Proposals.
- Close 3 Deals.
Both outcomes are possible – it’s your call.