What is the number of leads you will need to earn the income you want this year? While this may seem like an easy question, not a lot of people can come up with the number.

There are two factors to take into consideration.  The first is your costs.  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 next factor to take into consideration is how successful you are at converting sales from your leads (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 example, let’s say you want to make $100,000 in sales a month.

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. 

Suppose you convert 2 and a half out of 1000 visitors into paying customers. Your conversion rate is .25%.

Here is a formula to calculate the number of visitors your would need to meet your monthly sales goals.  To keep this example simple, we will assume every “conversion” described above will ultimately purchase from you.

(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!  Luckily, there are a few adjustments you can make.  You can increase the average sales price. Your can improve your conversion rate or you can multiply visitors.

Many begin by increasing the 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.

I could live with that change! 

By increasing your average sales price to $47, you can improve your results even more:

($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.