The Sales Effectiveness Metric Most Don’t Measure

If 100% of your 1st prospect meetings don’t result in 2nd meetings, there is likely a good reason and a few easy steps to correct it.

Our company is best known for the Door Opener® Service. We get our clients the important, executive-level prospect meetings that fill a company’s sales pipeline with new opportunities. Successful initial prospect meetings are as much about having the right sales message delivered by the right seller at the right time to land the meeting as they are about having the right conversation during the meeting to land the next meeting.

If you’re tracking key sales metrics like the number of calls and emails or the number of prospects in rotation, you’ve got a good start on monitoring activity. While these metrics are helpful, they don’t tell the whole story. For example, you may have sent emails and made calls, but what was the quality of those interactions, to which kinds of prospects, and what was the frequency? Measuring the EFFECTIVENESS of the activity is as important (if not more important) than measuring the activity. One example of an activity effectiveness metric is the number of first meetings which go to second meetings.

A few years ago, a prospect of ours shared that her inside sales team wasn’t producing prospect meetings her producers valued. Before we started working with them, their meetings weren’t with the right companies, or not with the right decision makers or the prospects who showed up didn’t know why they were there. Her producers complained the meetings wasted their time. When I asked what percentage of first meetings resulted in second meetings, she told me that even though they had this data, it wasn’t a metric they measured. When she did the calculation, she reported that 37% of their 1st meetings resulted in second meetings. We were both shocked the number was so low. When I told her that 100% of Kopp Consulting’s clients’ Door Opener® meetings result in 2nd meetings, she was intrigued as to what we were doing that her team wasn’t to make this possible.

Why 100% of our clients’ Door Opener® Meetings Result In 2nd Meetings:

1. The right prospects attend. Sales efficiency starts with being crystal clear on which prospects are exactly right for you (which is part of our Moment of Yes® sales messaging process) and then being so disciplined that only those prospects are pursued.
2. So much value is provided during the meeting that prospects WANT the next meeting. Using a proprietary pre-meeting planning tool, we provide our clients guidance for conversation structure during the meeting, which logically leads to a second meeting. Further, when the meetings we set for clients are on zoom, we do a warm hand-off, meaning our senior-level Door Opener® is in the meeting with our client to ensure it goes well.
3. ASK for the next meeting. Our mantra is date & time! There is always a date and time for every step in the sales process. If a meeting is 30 minutes long, start closing up for the next steps (including asking for a date and time) by minute 23. Waiting until the meeting is over to get a next meeting only delays your sales cycle and creates unnecessary chasing.

Business development and new opportunities are the lifeblood of most companies. There is only so much time in the day, so efficiency in the sales process is critical. Monitoring the percentage of 1st meetings that go to 2nd meetings and course correcting if the metric is under 100% will help you close more (of the right) sales in less time.