Everyone understands the importance of conversion rate in selling – knowing how many sales you make for every ten prospects you talk to …

 

When you know your conversion rate you can make decisions about how to improve it. So the number of companies that don’t measure their conversion rate always surprises me. 

 

However, as important as conversion rate is, it is not the only conversion measure to track. The speed of conversion is also important. On average, how long is the average pipeline from first contact to conversion?

 

In other words, how quickly is a sale typically made in your company? If you think about that for a second, an obvious observation bubbles up. if you can convert a sale 20%, 50% or even twice as fast as your competitors, what would that mean for your overall sales result?

 

There’s a saying “time kills deals” and for the most part it’s true. The longer the sales process, the less likely it is the sale will be made. 

 

The last key conversion measure is the quality of conversion. Was the sale made at the right price or did you have to give away price to make the sale? 

 

Sales conversion is so much more than just rate – make sure you’re tracking rate, speed and quality to improve your sales results.