Meet Your Sales Goals By Understanding Your Conversion Rates
Posted by International Business | Posted in Accounting | Posted on 09-03-2010-05-2008
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What is the number of leads you will need to earn the income you want this year? As simple as this question might be, I’ve found very few people actually have this number in the top of their minds.
When answering this question, there are two considerations. First, there are your expenses. You should make sure to have an online accounting program advanced enough to help you analyze your costs and how they relate to your profitability.
The second factor is your ability to convert leads to sales (conversion rate). If you are successful at lead conversion, you will see a significant improvement to your bottom line.
Let’s take a look at the process more closely:
The first step is to determine your monthly sales goal. For our purposes, let’s use $100,000 as your monthly sales goal.
Now you need to figure out your conversion rate. In order to keep this example easy, suppose that all of your leads come from your website.
Now, let’s say that for every 1000 visitors, you “convert” 2.5 into sales leads. Your conversion rate is .25%.
Use this formula to figure out how many visitors you would need to your website to acquire enough leads to get the sales you want. To keep it easy, suppose that each conversion will ultimately result in a sale.
(Desired Sales / Sale Price / Conversion Rate) X 100
So, if you want $100,000 in sales and your average sale price is $20, with a conversion rate of .25%, the formula would look like this:
($100,000 / $20 / .25) X 100 = 2,000,000 visitors needed per month to achieve your sales goal.
Ouch! That is a lot of visitation! Not to worry, there are things that can be adjusted. You can increase the average sales price. Your can improve your conversion rate or you can multiply visitors.
For most people, the best place to start is conversion rate. It is very possible to increase to ablut 2% from an original .25% rate.
Take a look at the difference that makes to the number of visitors you need to achieve your goals:
($100,000 / $20 / 2) X 100 = 250,000 visitors per month to achieve your sales goal.
What a difference!
If you want to decrease the number of visitors you need even more, try increasing average sales to $47:
($100,000 / $47 / 2) X 100 = 106,383 visitors per month to achieve your sales goal.
If you are like most, you would rather make smart changes to improve your sales success rather than work harder. Hopefully these examples drive home the importance of planning the leads you will need to reach your sales goals, and testing the factors you can change to become more efficient.
Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year” to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to track your conversion rates.
