From a prospecting perspective, starting the New Year correctly depends upon your quota and how many, if any, prospects you have in your sales pipeline.

A few examples:

- Several industries that rely on MRR (monthly recurring revenue) and the Rule of 78 need to have all of their customers (not prospects) in no later than mid-year.

- Other industries that have a 6-month sales cycle need to have all of their prospects identified by mid-year so they close by the end of the year.

So, you need to determine:
- how long is your average sales cycle
- how big is your average sale
- how many sales do you need to make to meet your quota
- what is your close ratio (of initial prospect meetings to making a sale)

An easy formula to use is delineated below. Let's say:

- Your monthly quota is $100,000
- Your average sales is $25,000
- You would need to make on average 4 sales per month
- Your close ratio is 25% (from initial meetings to closing a deal. I hope it is higher. If not, we need to talk)
- Therefore you need to have 16 new opportunities per month to close 4 deals (25% of 16 is 4)

A very important question is how much time do you need to spend prospecting to get 16 appointments (these numbers will change based on how effective you are at prospecting, how well you prospect into your existing accounts, avg. deal size and close ratio, how many good leads come to you, etc.).

Using the same numbers as above:

- Let's assume you need to make 30 attempts (phone, email, voicemail, etc.) to get 1 appointment
- And each attempt, on average takes 3 minutes (this includes the first call which should take you much longer because it includes the research, preparation, etc.)
- 30 attempts x 3 minutes = 90 minutes = 1.5 hours to get one appointment
- to get 16 appointments you would need to spend 24 hours in a month or approximately 6 hours per week or 1.2 hours a day.

So there you go. In the above example, you would need to dedicate 1.2 hours a day. Very easy stuff. Let me know if you have any thoughts or questions!