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.

Lead (Marketing Qualified)- A "Lead (marketing qualified)" has a definite interest in your solution, which might be appropriate for their company. Appropriate may have several meanings, but one example would be that they need a financial software package and you offer one that is a good fit for their business model.

Opportunity (Sales Qualified) - 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 values in the open cells and the results will be automatically calculated. You can adjust the various input values to see their impact on the quantity of leads that need to be generated to hit your revenue target for the period.

Enter your conversion rates as whole numbers from 0 to 100. The values range from 0% to 100%. If you don't distinguish between inquiries and leads, you may enter 100% for "inquiries to leads." The calculator will generate the same number of inquiries and leads. The same convention can be applied if you don't distinguish between opportunities and qualified opportunities, you may enter 100% for "opportunities to qualified opportunities." The calculator will generate the same number of opportunities and qualified opportunities.

You may reset all factors to "0" to start over or when you are finished using the tool by clicking the RESET button at the bottom. You save a PDF copy of this analysis by clicking the PRINT button at the bottom. You can also save the evaluation to your browser if you're not able to complete it in one sitting. Just save the results, then open the file later.