How many clients do you need?
You need the revenue your business must produce in a year — the arithmetic gives that number — divided by what one engagement sells for. A bookkeeper who needs $93,600 and sells a monthly close at $850 needs about 110 client-months, or nine clients at any one time. But that is only the first of six divisions. Behind the clients are proposals, calls, replies and contacts, and it is the last of those — contacts a week — that decides whether the clients arrive. This page shows the six divisions in full, because a plan whose numbers are hidden is a plan nobody keeps.
What are the six divisions?
Revenue target divided by average deal value is deals needed. Deals divided by the share of proposals that close is proposals. Proposals divided by the share of discovery calls that become proposals is calls. Calls divided by the share of replies that become calls is replies. Replies divided by the share of contacts that reply is contacts. Contacts divided by the weeks you work is the number for Monday. For the bookkeeper, with rates of 40, 60, 50 and 20 percent, that is 9 deals, 23 proposals, 38 calls, 77 replies, 383 contacts, and 7.6 a week.
Why is feast and famine a scheduling problem?
Because a contact made this week becomes a paid engagement in about eight weeks. The empty November was decided in September, in the busy weeks when the calls were skipped. The cure is not effort; it is a fixed, small number of contacts every week, including the busy ones, so that eight weeks from any Monday there is something in the calendar. A saw becomes a line.
What if the weekly number does not fit in the week?
Then the arithmetic has told you the shape of your business. A course business needing $82,200 at $950 a seat found it needed 127 contacts a week — fifteen hours of email against six available. The number was not wrong. It said a $950 seat cannot be sold one email at a time, and forced the question of what a contact is. The answer was one program officer who refers ten people, and the weekly number became eight.
Which rates should you measure first?
The ones you assumed. Most people enter a 30 percent close rate from a benchmark and never count; one consultant's real rate was 12 percent, and for a year he did a fifth of the selling his plan required while believing the plan. Count proposals sent and closed, calls that became proposals, replies that became calls, for thirty days. Then enter the real rates and let the weekly number move. It usually moves up, and month two is a better time to learn that than month twelve.
What should you do tonight?
Do the six divisions on the back of the floor page. Put the weekly number in the calendar as a recurring block. Then write the minimum viable week — three contacts and one hour is a common answer — for the weeks when delivery takes everything. The rest of the pipeline instrument is in the book and the Binder.
The weekly number needs the floor first — run the arithmetic. Then the ten instruments, and the book and the Binder.