Ask a sales manager his close rate and you'll get a number that makes everybody feel good. Ask what denominator he used and the room gets quiet.
Close rate to issued lead is the only honest metric: sales divided by leads actually issued to a salesperson — not canvass contacts, not sits, not one-leggers counted as progress.
Rodney Webb's famous 92% was to sits, not to issued leads. Nobody closes 92% of issued leads. When someone quotes a heroic close rate, your first question is: "Issued lead, or sit?"
Pair this with NSLI — net sales dollars per lead issued — and you can forecast rep profitability to almost zero without waiting for the year-end surprise.