One number to hold against your own team

Of every 100 people our callers connected with this week, about 29 turned into an ICP conversation of 60 seconds or more (958 of 3,338).

Our connect rate was 5.8%. On its own that number tells you little, because a connect can be a wrong number, a gatekeeper or a 10-second brush-off. The useful question is what share of connects become a real conversation with the right buyer.

If your team reports connect rate, ask for the ICP conversation rate as well. If connects are healthy and conversations are thin, the problem is the opening, not the list or the dial volume. On our numbers it takes about 60 dials to produce one ICP conversation.

What a qualified meeting looks like

This week our ICP-to-booking rate was 5.2% (50 meetings from 958 ICP conversations).

Agencies quoting 10-20% usually count anything that lands on a calendar, including tentative slots weeks out. We only book meetings inside 7 days, never tentative, and only when the prospect qualifies on the call. That is why our raw rate looks lower, and why the meetings hold up.

The evidence:

• 80% of last week's bookings were set within 7 days of the call, with a median of 5 days out.
• Of meetings booked in the last 30 days that have been held, 87% were qualified by the client (75 held meetings).
• On our longest-running fintech campaign, it is 100%: 11 of 11 held meetings over 60 days.

A booking rate only matters if the meeting survives contact with your AE. We would rather report a lower number you can trust than a higher one that inflates your pipeline.

What your buyers are saying

Three things we keep seeing on fintech and insurtech calls and in our own inbound:

Buyers research through AI before they talk to anyone. A prospect booked with us this month because he asked ChatGPT who to use and it recommended Nurturance. Whether you like it or not, a model is now part of your buyer's shortlist. If it can't describe what you do in one plain sentence, you may not make the list.

They ask about cost before they have named a problem. "What does it cost?" often comes early, before the buyer has said what is broken. Answering with a number too soon turns the call into a price comparison. Our post on this is linked below.

Your real competitor is the manual workaround. In fintech and insurtech the alternative is often a spreadsheet and a person who has always done it that way. Buyers compare you to that, not to another vendor.

One thing to use today

Pull your last 30 days of booked meetings and count three things:

1. How many were set within 7 days of the call.
2. How many were held.
3. How many of the held ones your AEs would call qualified.

Divide the third by the first. If that figure is well below what your dashboard says about bookings, you have found the gap between meetings booked and pipeline. It takes about 20 minutes and needs no new tooling.

Worth a read this week

• Why Booked Meetings Overstate Pipeline: The 7-Day Rule
• How to Define a Qualified Meeting (and Why 7 Days Matters)
• Connect Rate Is a Vanity Metric: Measure ICP Conversations

If this is useful

We take a limited number of campaigns per cohort, on the 1st and the 15th. If you want to see whether this would work for your team, book 15 minutes at calendly.com/nurturance-sales/discovery-nurturance-inbound.

Cormac