Question: So we’ve been doing the Aspirin Campaign and we started doing it religiously for the last couple of years. Of course, COVID created a bit of a challenge where not everybody was getting mail to their home offices. And so that was a challenge. But part of it is that we weren’t getting the stellar results that we were thinking about or originally dreaming about perhaps. But I have been tracking all the numbers in the metric spreadsheets as the campaign recommends. So we’ve got a pretty good handle on our numbers now, and we’ve got a part-time caller that’s been doing it fairly regularly. We’re now at the point where we’re doing 40 letters per week with a part-time caller that is getting good at the script and understanding it. We’re running at about a 0.8% response rate. She’s a little discouraged. On the one hand, I keep saying the numbers are within what I’m hearing from other peers and in groups like this. Is there a particular KPI we should be drilling into? Is it a matter of saying this is in line, keep up the good work and keep at it? We are getting responses, but it’s not people just running through the front door…
Robin Robins: Right, it’s not EVER what you want. Let me tell you something, marketing is about hitting a lot of singles. Very few home runs. Even in my business, I don’t hit home run after home run. If I think that I’ve got to hit a home run with every campaign, then I won’t even start because the chances of it happening that way are so slim. While you were talking, I was pulling something up on my screen to share with you. So I’m up on the TMT dashboard, under the Appointment Generating Miracle, and I give some averages on that PowerPoint in there that might be helpful.
When we look at metrics and results for TMT, when we’re doing cold outbound prospecting like the Aspirin Campaign you’re doing, we get to the decision maker 26% of the time, and then 10% are booking an appointment and 70% actually sit. If we call 100 prospects, we talk to 26, then we schedule 2 to 3 appointments and have 1 to 2 actually sit for it. When we call on engaged leads (somebody who just recently clicked something we had out there) we have 23% to 26% of conversations with the decision-makers. I always look for about 25% as kind of like the midterm. Appointments set from conversations are a little bit higher, it’s 36% over 10% because these are people who recently clicked on an email that we sent out to go read a blog. We go and do an email to a blog post and people click on it to go read the blog post, then we call them, and then we’re setting appointments.
36% of them are sitting in appointments, and 72% are sitting. So again, we get a little bit higher sit rate with our engaged leads. We’ll get 6 out of every 100. Those are engaged leads though, NOT inbound. We get to the decision maker 28% of the time and set appointments with 29% of them, and 71% sit (which that number has actually recently gone up for us.)
If we talk to 100 prospects, we get 28 scheduled, 8 appointments, and have 5 to 6 sit, and that’s with inbound leads. People who are not just engaged with us in any way. See an engaged lead for us is when we do an email broadcast and say, “Hey, we just posted this blog”, and then you click to go read the blog. That’s not necessarily an inbound lead. That’s an engagement. It’s someone who is engaged right now.
The difference is an inbound is somebody who just opted in and downloaded something and/or registered for a webinar. So I just want to make sure I give the difference there. Just to give you general statistics, the typical full-time SDR (sales development rep), or appointment setter will schedule an average of 15 sales meetings per month with 12 that will sit. That is a big broad general average for SDR’s. For specifically MSPs, an SDR should be able to get to the decision maker at least 15% to 20% of the time. So that means if your appointment setter calls 100 people, she should get to talk to 15 to 20 CEOs and book 5% to 10% of those on a meeting, roughly one per 100 prospects call. That is a big general average.
She’s not hitting a home run. For example, I have one SDR that produces three times the appointments in production as everybody else does. Same list, same tech, same offers, same script. Why? I don’t know. You’re always going to have some of your superstars, but in general, this is what you’re going to get. And when you are running a business, you’ve got to do your numbers based on averages. Based on what we should be able to do, not based on what your rockstars here and there will do. You can’t grow a business on rockstars because there are not that many. You have to base your numbers on averages. So these are pretty basic, standard averages. If you’re already producing these numbers, then you’re doing good.
You always want to try and beat “average” though, right? So you might change your script up, or you might change your list a little bit, or whatever. But by and large, this is what you’re going to get, right? And there are a lot of variables. Like I say in this Appointment Generating Miracle on our members dashboard, who you’re calling makes a difference. The relationship and if it’s ice cold versus an older unconverted lead, the script, the offer, the person making the call, etc.
Our updated Appointment Generating Miracle 3.0 is broken into three sessions. In the first one, I’m really kind of giving you General information on numbers you need to know, I even include an ROI calculator. You can see your worst-case scenario, here’s what it’s going to cost, and here’s what the return is going to be. You also get to see a little bit of our company’s playbook so you can see what we give our SDRs, and then, of course, there is a full session attached.
In conclusion, I wouldn’t say to go back and make your SDRs frustrated. Just let them know that this is the minimum. And we always want to try and beat that.
