Inquiry: An "Inquiry" is someone who has made themselves known to your company, typically through a response to an advertisement or promotional effort or they have filled out a form requesting some information. They have requested a white paper, information about your company, solution, etc.

Opportunity: An "Opportunity (sales qualified)" is the decision maker, has the budget, need, authority, but maybe not the timeframe. They’re going to purchase yours or a similar solution, but just haven’t finalized on the actual purchase date. It may be months or more off in terms of actually executing the purchase. Based on your own criteria, you might include prospects in this category that aren’t going to execute a purchase in the next three to six months. Anyone who is going to execute a purchase in the next three months would move to the next category, a qualified opportunity.

Qualified Opportunity: A "Qualified opportunity (sales qualified)" is the decision maker, has the budget, has the need, has the authority to make the buying decision and has a time frame in purchase that falls into your budget/sales cycle for a specified period. The specified period might be the sale has to occur in the next 3 months of this calendar year. If it falls outside of that, then it would still be an opportunity, but not a “qualified opportunity” because it is outside of your time frame. You might define a “qualified opportunity” as one that has to close in the 2nd quarter.

Enter your average transaction value and the gross revenue you need to achieve for the period. The number of closes (sales transactions) will be calculated automatically. It will work for any media as long as you have an idea of what your typically get for initial response rates in that media.

Steps 1 through 4: Then enter the campaign response and conversion rates starting with the initial response rate to the campaign (the number of inquiries generated), and the conversion rates through each stage of the qualification and sales process. Enter the initial response rate as a whole number with decimal point (e.g., 1.25% as 1.25, etc.) Enter conversion rate percentages as whole numbers from 0 to 100 (e.g., 50% as 50). Enter all values on the "Calculator" panel.

If you're trying to compute the quantity you need to mail for a direct order campaign to your house file, enter 100 in both Steps 2 and 3. Then the number you enter in Step 4 will be the conversion rate of respondents to buyers.