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.

In the first section "Conversion Rates," enter the conversion rate percentages for each step in the lead conversion process. Enter the rates as whole numbers (50%, enter 50). We have defined four stages and you can see detailed definitions for each of these stages on the Sales Funnel / Demand Waterfall page of our website or view the Lead Stage Defintions TAB for an abridged version. If you don't define your process in this manner, you can enter 100% at any stage that you don't include to generate the number of total leads needed at the beginning of your sales cycle.

In the second section "Revenue Projections," enter the projected total revenue for the period, the number of sales executives (reps), the revenue quota per rep, the percentage of sales quota that will be self-generated by each of the reps, and the average transaction value. The percentage of quota self-generated is the percentage of total sales that the rep will generate from leads they are already working in the pipeline or leads that they develop and work on their own. Enter this rate as a whole number (10%, enter 10).

In the third section "Lead Forecaster," the calculator tells you how many leads you have to generate through other marketing efforts that the rep will need in addition to the ones they are already working to make their total sales quota. You can do "what-if-analysis" by changing the conversion rates or any of the other variables in the calculation.

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.