Alrighty, so yesterday I told you to keep your eyes peeled for quality conversation numbers versus phone activity.  While the conversation number is certainly going to be a telling number as to the success of any sales prospecting campaign, today it’s all about the lead rate.  Most definitely, one of the key performance indicators for a B2B lead generation team is their lead rate.  How do you calculate, or maybe how should you calculate, a lead rate?  I’m about to drop some science on yo’ ass with some whacked out math equation, so hold on to your hats!

This is how you calculate the lead rate:  Take the number of leads passed and divide it by the number of conversations had, then multiply by 100.  For example, if Joe the TeleRep had 60 good conversations during the week, and he passed you 3 leads, Joe the TeleRep had a 5% lead rate.  A good lead rate falls somewhere between 3% and 5% on a monthly basis. 

The lead rate is important because it is a good indicator of how successful the project is, and it may also be an indicator of how well the market is either:  a.) receiving your message, or b.) interested in your product.  The obvious sign here is that a low lead rate means you’re not getting the qualified sales opportunities that you thought you were going to get.  A low lead rate is an indicator that although there are a lot of conversations being had on your behalf, interest level in moving on to a next step may be low.  Alternatively, it may also mean that the firm that you’re working with may not be as optimized to give you the competitive advantage you were hoping for. 

If you’ve partnered with a sales prospecting organization to find you targeted leads, you’re going to want to see their lead rate.  Better yet, you’re going to want to know BEFORE you contract with them what their company average is overall.  Make sure that you actually see some data behind this, too!  Tommy Callahan once said, “I can get a good look at a T-bone by sticking my head up a bull’s ass, but I’d rather take a butcher’s word for it.”  In this instance, stick your head up the bull’s ass and see for yourself!

You know, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had to field the question, “How many calls per day does your team make?”  You know what I want to say?  “It doesn’t matter.”  You know why?  Because it doesn’t.  If you want me to deliver you “X” number of leads per day, and I can do that with making “Y” number of calls, then my team is making just the right number of calls we need to.  If you’ve opted to outsource your lead generation, the most important thing a vendor delivers to you, at the end of the day, is quality sales opportunities.  If they can do that on 5 calls or 500 calls, the leads are what you’re after, right?

I understand that you may say, “Well, if you can get me ‘X’ number of leads by making ‘Y’ number of calls, why can’t you increase ‘Y’ to bring me ‘Z’ number of leads?”  I can do that, but it’s going to cost more because chances are you only signed on for “X.”  That is something that clients of mine don’t like to hear but need to.  Remember, you’ve signed on for an expectation of “X” and that is what I’m going to deliver to you, to the best of my team’s ability.

Now, I’ll give you your right to gripe about calls per day if you’re not getting delivered what you were expecting.  A good organization is going to recognize that to meet your lead goal, they’re going to have put some horsepower behind a failing project, in which case the call number per day should go up.  I’m sorry, however, but no amount of lead generation/demand generation is going to help find leads for a product that your market just doesn’t have an interest in (remember New Coke?).