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A Brave New World: 4 Lead Gen KPIs to Be Aware of During the “Work From Home” Revolution

May 3, 2021 | Call Center, Cold Calling, Perspectives and Opinions, Telesales

Young adults working on laptops at home

Even though the worst of it is finally subsiding, the COVID-19 pandemic brought about many changes that are here to stay.

One that everyone’s talking about is the “Work from Home Revolution”: the idea that many companies, having already shifted to all-remote operations, will continue to conduct most activities virtually long after the virus has gone.

Naturally, this has tremendous implications for B2B lead generation. However, firms like VSA have managed to remain successful throughout the pandemic so far, largely due to our data-driven approach to measuring campaign success.

By paying careful attention to the right metrics, your lead gen team can also be successful in adjusting to the new “work from home” normal.

VSA’s typical clients sell products or services with a Life-Time-Value (LTV) of anywhere between $25K and several million. Working off of that LTV, we’ve identified the following Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) as essential to measuring our success:

KPI #1: Dials to conversation (10-50):
Over time, the average number of dials required just to have a conversation with a high-level decision maker has been increasing. Gatekeepers are more effective and decision makers screen their messages. Your odds are considered excellent at 40 dials to reach a DM if you are calling for a high-ticket offering and must speak to a high-level decision maker.   

In order to complete such a staggering number of dials efficiently, VSA offers a conversation accelerator advantage to our clients. This system utilizes human-based exponential dialing, which drastically increases our dial and conversation rates without sacrificing the quality of individual interactions.

This KPI can be expected to increase as time goes on; connecting with decision makers will continue to become more challenging. Because it so profoundly impacts our clients’ return on investment, VSA keeps careful track of this KPI—with the goal of driving it down.  

KPI #2: Conversations-per-hour rate (5-12 CpH):
It’s also important to pay attention to how many conversations your BDRs are able to have per hour. On campaigns where we’re making a big ask, VSA aims for 10-12. For campaigns on which we expect decision makers to be both more receptive and more difficult to reach, we consider 5-7 CpH to be a good range.  Again, we use our conversation accelerator to increase dials to conversation, which in turn drives conversations per hour.

Overall, this KPI has increased a little bit during COVID; while harder to reach, most prospects are actually more receptive to a conversation when working from home. Of course, we often have to compete for their attention against various domestic distractions, so we still try to keep our conversations short and concise.

KPI #3: Conversations-to-meeting ratio (20:1):
When evaluating the success of our messaging, VSA looks for a conversations-to-meeting ratio of about 20:1.There’s a range here too, of course. For in-demand services that address a common pain point, it might only take us 10 or 15 conversations to schedule a meeting. For certain services, such as D2C (direct-to-consumer) offerings, an acceptable ratio is more like 25:1.

Either way, the percentage of conversations that are expected to convert into appointments is pretty low. It’s important to be prepared for that—and to manage your team’s expectations and set reasonable goals. Also, don’t get discouraged if you aren’t hitting this KPI at first; this ratio tends to improve as a campaign progresses.

KPI #4: Meetings completed per week (1-2/FTE):
For a lead generation campaign to truly be successful, prospects have to both agree to meetings and actually follow through. If they aren’t showing up, there’s probably something amiss in your messaging or process. Either your scheduling system isn’t functioning smoothly, or your prospects don’t understand what they’re being scheduled for in the first place.

That’s why VSA pays close attention to how many meetings our clients are actually holding per week—not just how many are scheduled. For a 1FTE program (40 calling hours/week), the minimum weekly meeting threshold for producing a successful ROI is around 2. For a 1/2FTE program, it’s 1.

The meetings per week vary drastically depending on what our clients offer. On some programs we set 10 meetings per week; on others, we set more like 2 per month. While all of the above KPIs drive meeting success, the biggest determinant is the demand for our client’s offering.

Not all outsourced firms are able to track this—many take a “set it and forget it” approach that completely ignores a lead once it’s been sent along to the client. VSA’s process, however, focuses on collaboration and relationship management. We meet weekly with all of our clients to discuss their program’s progress and results. When meetings aren’t sticking, we know—and we work with the client to do whatever’s needed to fix the problem. 

Conclusion
With so many decision makers now working from home, a successful approach to lead generation looks fundamentally different than it did just a little over a year ago. The KPIs that measure that success have shifted a little, too.

By making the right adjustments, though, VSA’s team has been able to stay on top of these KPIs and continue to hit them—resulting in a great ROI for our clients. By tracking and achieving these metrics, you can, too!