The Math of Sales Formula

Welcome to 📈🧠 Scale Smarter.

Today’s issue at a glance:

• Scaling Your Startup → The Math of Sales Formula

• Scaling Yourself → My 6 Favorite Email Hacks (plus 3 Gmail Advanced Features I can’t live without)

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🚀 Scaling Your Startup: The Math of Sales Formula

Developing quotas and analyzing your sales funnel allows you to build repeatability around your revenue. It also makes it a smoother transition as you shift from founder-led sales to having SDRs drive sales activities.

I’ve been working with a new startup client in my startup B2B sales bootcamp. We’re focused on building a repeatable sales system that prioritizes cold outbound over the phone.

While we were getting ready for their first Lead Sprint, they asked a great question:

How many prospects do we need to reach out to and how many calls do we need to make to reach our goal?

Introducing the Math of Sales Formula:

Let’s use an example and work the formula backwards to answer their question: You’re selling product management software (similar to Clickup or Asana) by the user (seats) to growing startups via outbound outreach.

And let’s say your goal for a salesperson is to close 60 seats each month.

Now let’s do the math...

Win: 60 seats/mo = 12 Accounts 

If your goal is to reach 60 seats per month, then you need to win 12 new business accounts with an average of 5 seats per account.

Need to perform 48 Demos
(Close rate of 25%)

Not every demo that you perform will close or win. A common industry and historical average is 25-35%.

Need to schedule 60 Meetings
(Show rate = 80%)

Not every demo you schedule will show up. A 70-80% show rate is expected. To schedule 60 demos per month = ~15 demos per week or 3 demos per day. 

Need to talk to 200 Prospects
(Book rate = 30%)

And not every business that you contact will agree to a demo.

Need 2000 Contact Attempts
(Connection rate = 10%)

On average, it takes 8 cold connection attempts (calls, emails, etc.) to reach a prospect. To make 2,000 contacts/dials per month = ~450 per week or 90 per day.

Use the Math of Sales Calculator to calculate the outreach capacity to reach your sales and financial goals:

You can also share it with your reps to help them develop their own goals around activities or commission targets.

💪 Scaling Yourself: My 6 Favorite Email Hacks

Let me start by saying I’m no email expert. Tim Ferriss’s inbox batching techniques never worked for me. I don’t think I ever hit “inbox zero.” 

But I did pick up a few things over the years that have saved me a ton of time and stress. I know there have to be other founders out there who struggle with email. This bud’s for you!

Here are 6 hacks I’ve personally used that you can steal and start using in your inbox to get your time back (plus 3 bonus Gmail features that I make me better at the emails):

1/ Hit The Snooze Button 😴

• If I don’t have time to get to it today

• Push newsletters to the weekend

• Remind me to follow up

2/ Schedule Send Times 📆

• For AM: If I’m working at 11pm, I don’t want to stress my team out, so I’ll schedule for 8am so they see it until the morning

• For EOD: Sometimes I don’t want to get a response or deal with an additional followup/ask, so I’ll schedule for 5:30pm

• For Monday: I would draft my weekly email on Friday afternoon and schedule to hit inboxes Monday at 7am

3/ Labels

• Mark emails as “Need Action”

• Mark emails as “Awaiting Reply” + snooze

• Can pull up everything with a specific label

• Folders can reach the same effect in other email clients 

4/ Filters

• Tag Expenses and apply specific “Expense” label

• Tag Weekly Updates (consistent subject line)

• Tag clients “from:[client_domain.com]” + Label

• Star Emails with only you in the To field

• Auto tag emails from VIPs (board members, investors, direct reports, etc.)

• Auto Archive / Mark Read anything without you in the To field

• Internal-only filter: “from:[your_domain.com] to:me”

5/ Templates

• Gmail Settings > Advanced > Enable Templates

  • Turn frequent messages into templates to save time. Templates can be created and inserted through the "More options" menu in the compose toolbar. You can also create automatic replies using templates and filters together.

• Streak or Boomerang for Gmail

• Text Expanders

6/ Unsubscribe Ruthlessly 

• Search for emails that “Has the words” Unsubscribe

• Filter specific email addresses or subject lines to “Do this: Skip Inbox, Mark as read”

• Use a tool like Sanebox

✅Bonus: 3 Gmail Advanced Features

1/ Less Clicking With Auto-Advance

• Gmail Settings > Advanced > Enable Auto-Advance

• Show the next conversation instead of your inbox after you delete, archive or mute a conversation. You can select whether to advance to the next or previous conversation in the "General" Settings page.

• Less Clicks!

2/ Set Up “Unsend” For The Save

• Gmail Settings > General > Undo Send: Send cancellation period XX seconds

• Default is 5, but you can set it to 10, 20 or 30. 

3/ Get Crazy With Multiple Inboxes

How to create multiple inboxes:

• Go to Gmail Settings > Inbox > Inbox Type > Multiple Inboxes

• To change multiple inbox settings, click Customize

• Enter the search criteria you want to add for each section:

  • For starred emails, use: is:starred

  • For specific sender, use from:{email}

  • For labeled emails, use label:{label-name}

• Under "Section name," enter a name for the section.

• Next to "Maximum page size," enter the number of emails you want to view in the section.

• Next to "Multiple Inbox position," choose where you want to place the sections.

• At the bottom, click Save Changes.

🎬 TL;DR—Your Actions For The Week:

• Scaling Your Startup: Use the Math of Sales Formula with your sales team to create better quotas and predictability in your sales process.

• Scaling Yourself: Take one of the 6 hacks (or 3 Gmail advanced features) and test it out on your own inbox.

Whenever you're ready, there are more ways I can help you:

💼 Hiring? I built an expert bench of recruiters from companies like Uber, Amazon & Spotify to run the full recruiting process for you. We’re on-demand, can flex up & down, and there are zero commissions or hidden fees—Learn more here.

💰 Need more sales? This private 3-week B2B Sales Bootcamp will teach you the system startups like Neon used to 10X revenue YoY and grow to over $1M ARR without running any ads. I’m running 1-1 and small group sessions to maximize results, so space is limited—Join the waitlist.