The number to hold against your own team: 7.1%

Our SDR teams made 59,767 dials this week and got 4,261 connections, a 7.1% connect rate. Of those connections, 1,146 turned into ICP conversations of 60 seconds or more. That is about 27% of connects, or roughly one ICP conversation for every 52 dials.

If you run outbound in-house, compare these two ratios with yours: dials to connects, and connects to real ICP conversations. Teams often track dials and meetings but not the step in between. When meetings dry up, that middle step shows whether the problem is data and timing or what happens once someone picks up.

What a qualified meeting looks like

This week, 1,146 ICP conversations led to 45 meetings booked. That is a 3.9% ICP-to-booking rate.

Agencies quoting 10-20% usually count anything put on a calendar, including tentative slots weeks out. We only book meetings inside 7 days. We never book them tentatively. We only book when the prospect qualifies on the call. Every pain point on our live checklist has to be true before we book.

That is why our raw booking rate looks lower, and why the meetings hold:

• 75% 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, 88% were qualified by the client (66 held meetings).
• On our longest-running fintech campaign, it is 93% (14 of 15 held meetings over 60 days).

The 66 held meetings and the 93% on our longest-running fintech campaign are evidence, not the point. The point is that a lower booking rate on a stricter definition gives your AEs fewer wasted slots.

What your buyers are saying

Three themes from this week's call and blog material:

• "We built it in-house." This objection keeps coming up on fintech and insurtech calls. Treat it as a request for a better question, not a no. Our post on it gives two questions that work.
• Buyers are shortlisting with AI assistants. More of your prospects are asking an AI assistant to build their vendor shortlist before they talk to anyone. If you aren't on that list, the first call may never happen.
• Prospects will correct a wrong number. When you offer a spend estimate, they often fix it. That correction tells you what they actually spend, and it creates more urgency than anything you could assert.

One thing to use today

Pull your last 30 days of booked meetings and sort them into three groups:

1. Set within 7 days of the conversation.
2. Set further out.
3. Tentative or soft.

Then check which group your AEs actually held and qualified. If the far-out and tentative slots convert worse, tighten what counts as a booking before you add more dials.

New on the blog

• Why Meeting-Count Contracts Can Beat Platform Fees in Outbound
• The 'We Built It In-House' Objection: Two Questions That Work
• How Buyers Use AI Assistants to Build Vendor Shortlists

If this is useful

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

Cormac