Know Your Outreach Numbers to Win Ad Agency New Business

Key to daily objectives

Reaching out to prospects you don't know - whether through cold calling, referrals, or networking - is a numbers game. Once you know your numbers, you can plan your weekly outreach so you meet your new business objectives.

Here's what I mean: A sales trainer I'm familiar with does the following every day:

• Calls 15 companies he's never called before.
• Has a conversation with 7 of them (approximately 50%).
• Out of the 7, gets a meeting with 1  - 15% conversion from conversation to appointment (1/7); and, 3%  conversion from unknown company to meeting (1/30).

If he does this every day, he knows he'll set, on average, 1 meeting every day, for a total of 5 new meetings every week. He'll also have at least 3 second or third meetings per week - carryovers from meetings in prior weeks. Of the 8 meetings each week, he expects to close one sale per week. Over the course of the year, he'll close 50 new accounts.

While his business is more transactional than a typical ad agency's, there are two key takeaways:

1. He knows how many calls to make every day.
2. He plans his daily schedule to give himself time to meet his daily objectives.

What's your approach?

Many new business people shy away from cold calls. From my experience, they only work for those who aren't afraid of them. If you don't like making cold calls or don't believe in them, try another approach.

Let's say that you prefer to network with friends and colleagues, and people you meet at conferences; or, that you only pursue new business if it's from a client referral. It's still a numbers game. I recommend that you analyze the funnel that led to a few of your recent new client wins to determine:

    How many total people did you reach out to initially?
    How many good conversations resulted?
    How many meetings did you set?
    How many proposals did you issue that resulted in your wins?

Once you know your numbers, you'll be able to do the math to determine your daily targets: how many people you need to network with, or how many clients you need to approach for referrals in order to reach your new client targets.

by Todd Knutson
http://www.newbusinessintel.com/