Breaking Bad Calculations

Breaking Bad. What’s all the fuss about? It’s not that I don’t watch a bit of telly now and then. It’s just that, as the growing trend, I tend not to follow the broadcast schedules any more.

So when a group of friends were telling me I must get into Breaking Bad, there was another sigh. How can I fit in time for 54 episodes of another American series? It was tricky enough for me to watch this year’s must see English tv (Broadchurch, Foyle’s War, Endeavour).

Then it only went and won this year’s Emmy on Sunday for best show on tv. So it must be a belter, right?

The premise was explained to me thus. Chemistry teacher diagnosed terminally ill. Works out how much cash he needs to live his life and leave his family catered for. Makes drugs in his lab. Has willing student sell them.

That money equation was explained to me as the Breaking Bad Calculation.

Rather than aimlessly drift through working life, you can strive to secure a specific amount of cash to ‘retire’ on, or in this case, leave a family financially safe.

It struck me straight away that this kind of thinking is so applicable to Sales. Yet seems so rarely deployed.

The mirror of life-funds must surely be hitting your numbers. More specifically, knowing what work is required to hit them.

If your close rate is one in three (and a close ratio of 1:3 is the worst a proper solution salesperson should exhibit), then where is the funnel value treble your quota coming from?

If you need, say, a dozen customers to make target, then from where will the 36 prospects hail?

And the logical extension of these, is thinking like if you need to have 50 first appointments, then how many phone calls to make them?

At your next forecast session, a cheeky Breaking Bad slide should impress your boss. And as a cheeky aside, have you done something like this for your sales plans on your latest super-glitzy new product push?