10 Aug 22
Booking meetings with new prospects is the leading indicator of sales pipeline growth. Learn how to use this strategy with your team for sales success.
Most sales leaders are hyper-focused on increasing the sales team performance and try anything to improve prospecting activities. They look to create more opportunities by adding new tools to the sales stack, retraining the team, automating processes, and even outsourcing meeting acquisition.
At the end of the quarter (or year), it's unclear what really moved the dial and what just added more noise and distraction. As a result, the sales team typically gets confused, overwhelmed, and even worse - performance doesn’t increase.
Booking Just One More Meeting Each Week
The most important leading indicator of growing your pipeline is whether your team is booking meetings with new sales prospects. Whether meeting with a brand-new target account or fostering relationships that help you expand your footprint within an existing account, it’s all about the first meeting.
Calculate the Value to Emphasize the Opportunity
One way to reinforce this point is to calculate the value of booking one more meeting each week and socialize this within your sales team. Then, think about how one more meeting every week impacts the number of new opportunities created, the size of the pipeline, and the value of closed deals by the end of the year.
If you know your key sales ratios, it’s easy to do the math. Regardless of your CRM or sales analytics support, you can make a few assumptions and do your own analysis:
- What percentage of meetings result in identifying a new opportunity? (Meeting to Opportunity Ratio)
- How many of these new opportunities result in closed business? (Opportunity to Close Ratio)
- What is your average deal size?
| THE VALUE OF BOOKING ONE MORE MEETING |
|
| Metric | Value |
| Additional Meetings per Week | 1 |
| Additional Meetings per Year | 48 |
| Sample Meeting to Opportunity Ratio | 2:1 |
| Sample Opportunity to Close Ratio | 4:1 |
| New Deals from Additional Meeting | 6 per Year |
| Average Deal Size | $25,000 |
| Value of One Additional Meeting per Week | $150,000 Additional Revenue |
| Projected Value of Each New Meeting | $3,150 per Meeting |
Let’s say every other meeting produces an opportunity, and one-in-four opportunities result in a win (closed/won). In this scenario, every 8 additional meetings will produce a new deal.
The goal to add one additional meeting every week throughout the year results in 6 new deals. In this example, the average deal size is $25,000 which is $150,000 of additional revenue per rep, per year. Multiply that by the size of your sales team and this creates real economic value for the business.
If you want to put a finer point on it, every meeting your team books in this example has an equivalent value of $3,125. That’s a high return on your team’s meeting investment.
So how do you get your team members to book one more meeting per week?
- Identify your Ideal Client Profile and target Personas
- Do your research and be ruthlessly relevant to that prospect and tailor your messaging
- Leverage referrals and introductions whenever possible
- Be creative in sending emails, hand-written notes, and personalized videos
- Increase your activity levels – but the right type of activity. Remember, we’re only trying to get one more meeting per week.
- Track your progress and celebrate success. Consider a contest or bonus for most new meetings booked.
There isn’t a magic formula so try different approaches and new techniques with the goal of booking one additional meeting each week. The benefit becomes exponential over time. Plus, think of all the time you will save by not adding new tools to the sales stack.
