Do you know the number of leads you need to generate to reach your income goals? This may seem like a simple question, but I haven’t found a lot of folks that have the answer.
There are two things to consider regarding this question. First, there are your expenses. You should make sure to have an online accounting program advanced enough to help you analyze your costs and how they relate to your profitability.
Second, you need to know how well you are able to turn your prospects into sales (conversion rate). The more efficient you are at converting leads, the more income you will be able to make.
Let’s take a look at the process more closely:
The first step is to determine your monthly sales goal. Let’s use $100,000 as the figure for our purposes.
The next step is to work out what your conversion rates are. In order to keep this example easy, suppose that all of your leads come from your website.
Suppose you convert 2 and a half out of 1000 visitors into paying customers. That’s a .25% conversion rate.
Here is a formula to calculate the number of visitors your would need to meet your monthly sales goals. To keep this example simple, we will assume every “conversion” described above will ultimately purchase from you.
(Desired Sales / Sale Price / Conversion Rate) X 100
The formula would look like this, if you want to achieve $100,000 a month in sales, you have a conversion rate of .25% and your average sales price is $20:
($100,000 / $20 / .25) X 100 = 2,000,000 visitors needed per month to achieve your sales goal.
Wow! That is a lot of visitation! Not to worry, there are things that can be adjusted. You can increase the average sales price. Or, you can increase your visitors or the conversion rate.
Many begin by increasing the conversion rate. By testing various options and changes, it is possible to improve a .25% conversion to about 2%.
Take a look at the difference that makes to the number of visitors you need to achieve your goals:
($100,000 / $20 / 2) X 100 = 250,000 visitors per month to achieve your sales goal.
I could live with that change!
By increasing your average sales price to $47, you can improve your results even more:
($100,000 / $47 / 2) X 100 = 106,383 visitors per month to achieve your sales goal.
Everyone would rather work smarter than harder. Hopefully these examples drive home the importance of planning the leads you will need to reach your sales goals, and testing the factors you can change to become more efficient.
Get more small business success strategies and claim your free white paper: “7 Ways Your Stone-Age Accounting System is Stealing Money From You Every Day … And, How to Get it Back This Year” to learn about an online accounting program that makes it simple to track your conversion rates.
Writing surveys is easy; or is it? The reality is that writing surveys is easy but writing surveys that will be effective is more difficult. The following are twenty tips that if followed will help you with your survey questionnaire design and help you write effective surveys.
1. What is the purpose of the survey?
There are many reasons for conducting surveys and questionnaires. By correctly phrasing the questions and structuring the answers surveys can be used in a multitude of ways and for a variety of reasons. When compiling a survey don’t lose sight of the survey’s purpose.
2. Give the survey a good title
The survey title represents an opportunity to instantly summarise a survey’s objective and encourage respondents to participate. Respondents need to invest time in completing the survey so encourage them that the investment they make will be worthwhile.
3. The length of the survey needs to be as short as possible
Every question that is asked should be asked for a reason. Minimize the questions providing you with ‘nice to know’ information and concentrate instead on the ‘need to know’ questions.
4. Use plain English, avoid jargon and acronyms, maintain consistency and don’t ask questions that may result in ambiguous answers
Word the question carefully. If a question is ambiguous then there is a real risk that any analysis of the resulting survey data will be worthless or at the very least suspect.
5. Don’t have long questions
Use succinct sentences wherever possible. Long questions can lead to a higher level of incidents where respondents abandon a survey.
6. Ask only one question at a time
Avoid confusing the respondent with a question like ‘Do you like golf and tennis?’
7. Do not influence the answer
It is important not to load the question. ‘Should irresponsible shop keepers who sell tobacco to children be prosecuted?’ is likely to have no value.
8. Make sure that the selected answer format allows the respondent to answer the question being asked
Ensure that the respondent is able to answer how they really feel or they may abandon the survey. As a last resort consider the benefit of including a “No comment”, “Can’t say”, “Don’t know” or similar response option.
9. While you are compiling the survey consider, when the survey is complete, how the compiled data is going be analysed
Appreciate that questions that allow for a free text open ended response is likely to be difficult to score and/or summarised. Consider how answers can be grouped. For example “Indicate your length of service?” – ‘less than 3 year’, ‘between 3 and 5 years’ and ‘more than 5′.
Group the questions into clear categories as this makes the task of completing the survey easier for the participants.
11. Target your respondents
You may want to target a specific group, in others a cross section. If you can’t easily control the respondents consider including questions/answers that will allow you to filter out respondents that don’t match your target profile.
12. Allow the respondent to expand on their answer or make comments
Allowing the respondent to make additional comments will increase their satisfaction level and will also give valuable feedback on the specific questions and/or the survey as a whole. Remember though for a large sample collection it may be difficult to analyze free text open ended responses.
13. If you are conducting a confidential survey ensure that your pledge for confidentiality is honoured
If you have guaranteed the respondents that the survey is confidential ensure that the individual data is not to be shared with anyone and not used for any other purpose. Confidentiality must be maintained at all times and any identifying information destroyed once the survey has finished.
14. Weigh up the advantages and disadvantages of allowing respondents to be anonymous or identifiable
If your respondents are to be anonymous then appreciate that you will be unable to follow up or match “pre” or “post” surveys. Allowing people to remain anonymous will however allow people to respond without possible peer pressure.
15. Carefully consider the best response format
Being consistent with the format used for responses is good practice. Keep in mind that when analysing the data radio buttons are easier to analyse than check boxes that offer the respondent multiple responses. If a radio response can be used do not use a check box.
16. Give the respondent an idea of how much time the survey will take
If the survey appears to be a stream of never ending questions then respondent drop out can become a problem. It is good practice to give an indication as to how long the survey is likely to take so the respondents can choose the best time to complete the survey.
17. Provide respondents with the survey end date
Encourage respondents to complete the survey as soon as possible but advise respondents as to the survey’s end date so that they have the opportunity to schedule the necessary time.
18. Pilot the survey
Before publishing a live survey publish the survey as a trial to check for questions that are ambiguous or confusing and to ensure that the survey is aesthetically pleasing.
19. Before publishing the survey proof read the survey several times
Check and check again that the survey is grammatically correct and makes sense. If practical get a colleague to check the survey before you publish, if you are unable to do this then take a break before checking again.
20. Thank your respondents
To complete surveys respondents need to invest their time and should be thanked either in a covering letter, at the end of completing the survey or in a follow up letter. You may even want to consider incentives such as entry into a prize draw or a reward.
Getting started is easy and there are many survey software websites to choose from.
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