Closing Rate

[Steve B]

Does anyone measure their closing rate? I know it will be hard to compare across our various businesses, but I wanted to get a feel for what others are doing.

My business is a one-term service that usually sells for about $1,000. My closing rate in 2012 was exactly 40%. I do all of my "selling" when they call me to ask about my service (pet fence installations). They have usually found my website and reviewed it before they called me - so the website did some of the selling also. I never make follow-up phone calls and I usually don't send follow-up emails either. The forty percent includes those that commit on the first phone call and any that call back and commit later. I thought 40% was pretty good, but some of my friends who also install dog fences claim they close between 70 to 90% of their calls. The guy who claims 90% does a good job of following up with people after the initial phone call. However, none of these guys actually measures their performance, they're just giving me their gut feel for what they think their closing rate is.

Can anyone else that has a good idea of their closing rate share their information?

[Freelancier]

It's going to be different for different businesses. We have four businesses and each has a very different closing rate.

For the consulting services, if they have a project that interests us, our closing rate is 80%. Once they contact us, we know how to reel in the ones that are going to be the customers we want.

For our rental home, closing rate is about 20%, because we get a lot of tire-kickers, but we do get an agreement with about 1 in 5.

For our software product, our closing rate was exactly 0.00 until the past 6 months, and we're running at about 15% right now (about 1 in 6 who do the download buy it).

For our compensation statements business, our closing rate for anyone who contacts us is 90% (we don't know about the ones who just come to the web site and then never contact us).

The only closing rate that bothers me is the one for the software product, because it means we either don't have the right feature set to make more sales OR we haven't made it a no-brainer to close the deal. So that's the one I focus on improving, with a goal of around 33%, which should be pretty good for software products.

So... you need to look at your business and decide if you're landing enough of the sales contacts that you want to land... or figure out why you're not.

[billbenson]

Since Nov 2011 I've done 982 quotes and closed exactly 45% of them. That's actually better than I thought.

[Steve B]

That's great information guys. billbenson - what's an average sale for you? I figure it might be expected to have different closing rates on higher versus lower priced sales.

I've already made some changes to my process and I'm following all the things that the 90% guy is doing. It's too early to say for sure, but it seems to be having a positive effect. If I can go from 40% to 50% - it adds significantly to our bottom line. If I can get to 60%, my wife no longer needs to work. This has the potential for a significant improvement to our income with very little additional effort.

[billbenson]

I'll PM you Steve

[Steve B]

Thanks billbenson.

Anyone else? Since we're all in "sales" in one way or the other, I would have thought a lot more people would have information on this.

[Harold Mansfield]

If I get them on the phone, I'll close 80% of the people I speak to. Many times getting some money from them that day.
But that is a little misleading. A lot of my calls are people who need troubleshooting help right away, so just answering the phone gets me half way there.(You'd think other service providers would figure that out by now)

I'm about 20%-30% on things I bid on against other people, and about 50%-60% on closing a cold call into a full website or other services job.

I'm about 75% with closing the following:

- Small Businesses that are either single person operations, are run by one person or at least have an organized hierarchy .
- Start Up Small Businesses.
- Redesigns or new websites. Even if they got screwed before. Actually especially if they got screwed before.


I do better with woman, and there seems to be more of them. 80% of my clients have been Women.
I do better with college educated people, than I do people with no clue about anything.

I up sell roughly 40% of all jobs additional services.
Roughly 90% will hire me for additional work, or just basic help and maintenance down the road.

I can even break it down to area of the country and other demographics.


Sounds all good right? But it's not. I don't get enough calls, but I'm working on better marketing as we speak. But at least now I know who to target and how.

[BobbyD]

Based on the overview your provided, I think your friends numbers make sense. If you do no followup and get 40%, getting 90% being good at followup sounds normal. You appear to be in a market where much of the selling is done before hand leaving the close as the last step. Following up at the right time can double close rates so it all makes sense to me.

Bobby

[wskdigital]

Wow, 40% closing rate on a $1000 product. I would say that's a great closing rate. I do a little less than 10% and my services start at $450 and go up to about $1200. But, like it was mentioned earlier, It's different with all businesses. Can you PM me your website? Maybe I can get a few pointers.

[billbenson]

Wow, 40% closing rate on a $1000 product. I would say that's a great closing rate. I do a little less than 10% and my services start at $450 and go up to about $1200. But, like it was mentioned earlier, It's different with all businesses. Can you PM me your website? Maybe I can get a few pointers.

Who are you pointing this question to?

[Steve B]

I'm sure he meant me.