How many messages until a sale: the calculation that changes the pitch
Photo: Avila Ops Tecnologia
The calculation: new conversations during the month divided by sales resulting from those conversations in the same month. If 80 people contacted you on WhatsApp in January and 10 bought, you need eight conversations to close one sale. This number tells you what each incoming message is worth, how much you can pay for an advertising contact, and whether the month’s problem is too few people or too few closes.
It changes the conversation from “business is slow” to “fewer conversations arrived” or “the same number arrived, and I closed fewer.” These are different problems with different solutions. In a month with a long holiday, such as Carnival, the first statement is usually true. The calculation shows whether the second is too.
How do you calculate with what is already in WhatsApp?
You do not need a system for the first calculation. You need an hour and your phone.
- Open WhatsApp Business and count conversations that began last month. If you use labels, count “new customer” or “quote.” Otherwise, scroll through the list and count people appearing for the first time.
- Count that month’s sales originating from those new conversations: paid orders, booked services, signed contracts. Verify against invoices or Pix statements, which do not lie, and exclude repeat purchases from existing customers and counter sales.
- Divide. Conversations ÷ sales = conversations per sale.
- Repeat for the previous month. Two months already show whether the number is stable.
Example: a custom furniture store received 45 conversations in January and closed three projects. That is 15 conversations per sale. A snack bar taking WhatsApp orders received 600 and sold 540: just over one conversation per sale. Both numbers are right for their respective businesses. What matters is tracking yours.
What should you do with the number?
| Use | How to apply |
|---|---|
| Conversation target | If you need 12 sales next month and close one per eight conversations, you need 96 conversations. This becomes a target for ads, posts, and referrals |
| Advertising ceiling | If each sale contributes R$ 300 in margin after product costs, fees, and its share of fixed costs, and you need eight conversations, each can cost at most R$ 37 to avoid a loss; in practice, much less |
| Diagnosis | If conversations rose but sales did not, the issue is service or the offer. If conversations fell, the issue is acquisition |
The last use changes the conversation most. Owners tend to ask for more advertising when sales fall. With the calculation, the answer is sometimes “conversations are arriving; what is blocking them is the delay in sending quotes.” Budget does not solve that. We show precisely where customers stall in Where customers get stuck: finding the bottleneck with what you already have.
Why does manual calculation stop working?
Because it depends on counting every month, and the month you skip is the one that held the answer. Also, the raw figure hides stages. Between “contacted” and “bought” lie “received a quote,” “replied,” “asked for a discount,” and “disappeared.” Each stage has its own rate, forming the sales funnel explained in avilaops.com/glossario/funil-de-vendas.
When each conversation is recorded with its current stage, the number appears automatically every day without counting on your phone. That is what CRM connected to WhatsApp does, as described in avilaops.com/guias/crm-para-pequenas-empresas-com-whatsapp. The same records feed the dashboard’s five morning numbers: new conversations, open quotes, sales, average order value, and conversations per sale.
What to do now
Calculate last month’s figure on your phone today and write it down. Repeat on the first day of next month. If you want this number updated automatically with the intermediate stages, the path is moving beyond spreadsheets without losing your history: avilaops.com/sistema-para-pequenas-empresas or contact us on WhatsApp: wa.me/5517997811471.
Frequently asked questions
What is a good number of conversations per sale?
There is no universal benchmark because it depends on what you sell and its price. The useful number is yours, tracked monthly. If it worsens, service or audience changed; if it improves, you are closing better or attracting better-fit people.
Should I count conversations with existing customers?
Separate them. Conversations with previous buyers become sales with far less effort. Combining them inflates results and hides new customer acquisition costs. Count new conversations and repeat purchases on separate lines.
What if conversations come through Instagram, the website, and WhatsApp?
Add them all, but record each source. In two months, you know which channel brings conversations that close most, and that is where time is worth investing.
Turn what you learned into your next step.
Tell us about your company and what you want to improve. We can explore the right tools, integrations or custom project together.