What Percent of my Time should be Spent Cold Calling

On Linkedin a person posed the question: “HOW MUCH TIME SHOULD I SPEND COLD CALLING?” Answer: Enough to fill your goal!!! It doesn’t matter whether it is a personal goal or a goal set by the company here the formula I use. . .

Take each of the prospects in your pipeline, and assign each one a percent value for the chance of it actually occurring. Use either 90%, 75%, 25%, or 10%. Some people use 50%, but really, there is either a good chance it is going to happen or not a good chance it is going to happen.

A “90%” means that you have just about finished the contract – there might be some legal terms that need to be approved.

 A “75%” means you’ve finished selling, and started the contract talks.

 A “25%” means you met the right decision makers, but you haven’t gotten to the contract phase.

 A “10%” means you are working your way through the company to find the final approval maker.

Take the value of each contract and multiply it by the percent value:
$100,000 x .90 = 90,000 Project A
$50,000 x .75 = 37,500 Project B
$150,000 x .75 = 112,500 Project C
$300,000 x .25 = 75,000 Project D
$60,000 x .25 = 30,000 Project E
$100,000 x .25 = 25,000 Project F
$100,000 x .25 = 25,000 Project G
$100,000 x .10 = 10,000 Project H
$200,000 x .10 = 20,000 Project I
$100,000 x .10 = 10,000 Project J
$100,000 x .10 = 10,000 Project K
$100,000 x .10 = 10,000 Project L

Total of Projects 455,000, If your goal is $600,000 then use have a shortfall of $145,000 or 24%. You should be spending 24% of your time either cold calling or business networking to find new clients. 

If you do not have the hours in the week to spend that much time hunting for new prospects you need to find someone who can. Some companies have inside sales people calling for the outside sales people. Other companies outsource the whole demand generation process.