The conversion rate is the share of contacts that clear one stage of your prospecting and move to the next: from contacted to replied, from replied to customer. You work it out by dividing the number who move forward by the number you started with, times one hundred. It is the simplest way to tell whether your approach is working.
Reading your conversion rate stage by stage
A single overall figure hides what matters. The real learning comes from reading it stage by stage.
First work out the share of contacts who reply after a first message. Then the share of replies that lead to a meeting or a quote. Finally the share of quotes that turn into customers. Each step has its own rate.
Breaking it down this way shows where things stall. If many reply but few sign, the issue is your offer or your price, not your opening line. If almost no one replies, it is the reverse: rework the subject and the first few lines. Without this split, you fix things blind.
What counts as a good conversion rate
There is no universal number. A good rate depends heavily on the sector, the average order value, and the channel.
On a cold email to local businesses, getting five to fifteen percent of replies is already solid. Turning a reply into a customer varies even more: a service worth a few hundred is decided quickly, while a heavier contract takes several exchanges and a lower rate is normal.
Compare yourself mainly to yourself. The only benchmark that truly counts is your own rate from last month. If it climbs, your method is improving. Chasing an average found online often leads to false conclusions.
How Kaptor helps you track your conversion
Working these rates out by hand from a spreadsheet quickly wears you down. Kaptor sorts your prospects by status and updates each stage as you send messages and replies come in. You see, without any maths, how many contacts move forward and where the flow narrows.
That reading rests on a clear view of your reply rate and on the overview described in our article on the sales pipeline. You then measure your prospecting instead of enduring it.