The Common Assumption: More Leads Equals More Sales

The answer is – as many as possible. Right?

That is what everyone thinks. Most salespeople I have met want more leads. They think that more potential customer interactions will help them achieve their sales goals.

Want to hit more homeruns than the key is to get up to the plate as many times as possible?

Yes, that is a formula that works for a very rare baseball player who can consistently deliver on their at-bats with lots of homeruns during a full season. Seems like it’s doable but those players are limited in number, not the standard.

Same thing in sales. More leads don’t always equal more sales.

Quality Over Quantity: Finding the Balance

In fact, even for the most amazing sales professionals, they also know there is a limit to the number of leads for them to be effective.

Even more so, you should get to a point in your sales career where you are efficient enough to not need more leads. In fact, you realize that you do better with less leads than you did when you were new and inefficient.

So, what is that right amount of leads? It will vary based on your industry, lead sources, and you.

Let’s talk about one group the following logic doesn’t apply to: salespeople who have a ‘one-call’ close sales cycle and product. If your goal is to sell someone on the first interaction and if they don’t buy from you there is zero follow up from your part, then you can stop reading this article. It could be retail, door-to-door, outbound or inbound phone calls. If there is zero expectation of a 2nd interaction, then the more leads you can get each day the better. One note though…more is still not always better – because it’s tough to sprint a marathon. You will burn yourself out if you are doing so many sales interactions where you are just going from sales conversation to sales conversation most or all day. You will wear down over time, probably lose performance, need to take time off, maybe quit or get fired – then come back to a new sales role ready to go.

Assessing Your Lead Volume

Now, for the rest of you…

The way to know if you have the ideal amount of lead volume in a given period (day, week, month, etc.) is if you can make your follow-up outreach. And not just one post-initial conversation call/email. As many as it takes for what you sell and to whom you sell.

If you are dealing with so many first, initial sales interactions (again, face-to-face or phone/video) that keep you from following up with ones who didn’t buy during that first interaction, you are receiving too many leads.

The Reality Check: Follow-Up as the Key to Success

I work with a lot of companies that are in need of more sales. They find my content and hope that I can just help their team say better things to move people forward, leveraging Authentic Persuasion. It’s the silver, magic bullet that sales leaders and salespeople think exists.

As soon as I engage with the team, processes, and CRM, the silver, magic bullet becomes obvious – get the team to make their follow-ups. Most of the time it’s not even about calling them more, it’s about calling them at all.

If the team can’t get to them, the question is why? Is it a will issue? Or is it a bandwidth issue?

If it’s bandwidth – then that means you need to provide them with fewer leads, prospects, phone numbers – whatever a ‘lead’ means to you and them. Just be careful not to overcorrect and cut the lead volume down so much that you incite a mutiny and end up with morale issues. There is a happy medium where they can work hard on the new leads they have AND make their follow-up calls as needed. They can do both (despite what they think or tell you).

The Hidden Danger: Cherry-Picking Leads

It’s important to regulate that lead volume for another reason – cherry-picking. When some salespeople realize the leads are flowing in abundance, they will start to treat them differently.

It can come in the form of prejudging – physical appearance, accent/tone/words, etc. It can also come in the form or prioritizing.

If your salesperson knows there is another new lead waiting or coming soon, and their current conversation isn’t going well, how hard will they try to move it forward?

Lessons Learned: My Mistake as a Sales Manager

When I was new to being a sales manager, I made a short-term painful mistake. I was running an enrollment team that was taking inbound transfer calls from another team. I had a TV installed where my team could see it – displaying who was on a call, who was waiting, the number of calls, length. It also showed any calls holding in the queue. We had to pay for these calls even if we didn’t answer – so I wanted the team to be aware in case they were figuring out when to take a break or lunch.

That’s where my mistake came in. Quickly the reps realized that when they were on a call where it wasn’t going well – for example, the classic “I think should talk to my spouse” statement, they would look up at the TV to see if there was a call holding. If there was, they would say “okay, makes sense, you have my number – call me back when you are ready” and then hang up.

Their thought was that this call is going to take work, the next one might be a laydown.

Conclusion: Monitoring and Adjusting Lead Volume

If you – as a sales leader – monitor your lead management, CRM, activity metrics and results, you will see what I see – if they need more or fewer leads.



And if you want help calculating the ideal number of leads – contact us and we will analyze what works best for your team and for the company.