Use when you need to turn outbound prospecting into a measurable, backsolvable funnel instead of guesswork - for quota planning, activity targets, funnel diagnosis, and A/B test sizing. Triggers include "how many emails do I need to send", "backsolve my quota", "what's a good reply rate", "how many meetings per 100 contacts", "my outbound isn't converting", "where is my funnel breaking", "is this A/B test significant", "how many contacts to hit pipeline target", "what activity do I need this week", and "what conversion rates should I expect for cold outbound". Workflow: define the canonical funnel, plug in your real (or benchmark) conversion rates, backsolve required weekly activity from a quota, diagnose which stage is broken, and size tests honestly. Do NOT use for writing the actual messages - use [[cold-email-craft]]; Do NOT use for designing the multi-step cadence itself - use [[outreach-sequence-designer]]; Do NOT use for fixing inbox placement - use [[cold-email-deliverability]].
---
name: prospecting-metrics
description: Use when you need to turn outbound prospecting into a measurable, backsolvable funnel instead of guesswork - for quota planning, activity targets, funnel diagnosis, and A/B test sizing. Triggers include "how many emails do I need to send", "backsolve my quota", "what's a good reply rate", "how many meetings per 100 contacts", "my outbound isn't converting", "where is my funnel breaking", "is this A/B test significant", "how many contacts to hit pipeline target", "what activity do I need this week", and "what conversion rates should I expect for cold outbound". Workflow: define the canonical funnel, plug in your real (or benchmark) conversion rates, backsolve required weekly activity from a quota, diagnose which stage is broken, and size tests honestly. Do NOT use for writing the actual messages - use [[cold-email-craft]]; Do NOT use for designing the multi-step cadence itself - use [[outreach-sequence-designer]]; Do NOT use for fixing inbox placement - use [[cold-email-deliverability]].
---
# Measure & Backsolve Your Prospecting Funnel
Outbound is a math problem wearing a vibes costume. Every rep "feels" like things are working or not; almost none can tell you how many contacts it takes to book one held meeting, or how many contacts per week they need to hit quota. That gap is where pipeline targets quietly die. The core insight: a funnel is a chain of multiplied conversion rates, so a target at the bottom *dictates* the activity at the top - you don't guess your way to quota, you backsolve it.
The common trap is optimizing the wrong stage. Reps obsess over open rates (now nearly meaningless post-Apple Mail Privacy Protection, which pre-fetches and inflates opens) while ignoring that their *positive* reply rate is 0.4% because they're emailing the wrong persona. Measure the stages that actually predict revenue - positive reply rate, meetings-held-per-100-contacts, contact-to-SQO - and treat the rest as diagnostics, not goals.
## When to use this skill
- You have a pipeline or meetings quota and need to know the weekly activity (contacts, sequences) required to hit it.
- Your funnel is underperforming and you need to localize *which* stage is broken and what that points to.
- You want to project outcomes from a planned activity level ("if I send 500/week, what do I get?").
- You're about to call an A/B test a winner and want to know if you have the sample size to.
- You need realistic benchmark ranges to sanity-check whether a rate is good, bad, or fantasy.
## The funnel (and what each rate roughly is)
These are **rough industry ranges for cold B2B outbound, not promises** - yours depend on ICP, offer, and channel. Use them only to sanity-check, then replace with your own data ASAP.
| Stage | Transition | Rough cold-email range |
|---|---|---|
| Contacts loaded | → delivered | 92-99% (rest = bounces) |