This short High Sales Growth idea is aimed at sales people who want to make more sales but have too many opportunities in their sales funnel. They are just too busy to be effective.
We’ll cover why opportunities should be dealt with swiftly, what needs to be done to move them forward and dropping non-opportunities.
Focused sales people make more sales. However, too many sales opportunities diffuse focus and result in lower sales. It is likely that many of these opportunities are locked and not moving forward. We just hoard them in hope that one day they magically will come in.
My experience with many clients is that these locked opportunities lose their conversion probability very fast as time passes (see below as illustration).
The steep slope soon after the opportunity is discovered suggests strongly that early decisive sales engagement is key to higher conversions.
For some businesses the time frame to win an opportunity is just a matter of seconds. For other businesses it is days, months or even years. What is yours?
The longer these opportunities stay in the pipeline, the lower the chances of conversion. It is imperative to unlock sales opportunities and keep them moving forward if we want to be rewarded for the considerable efforts and Sales and Marketing costs made to identify a sales opportunity. Just as important is to identify the non-opportunities and drop those with vigour. A simple example is when it appears impossible to have a meaningful conversation with a senior person. These are not opportunities, they are prospects.
Below is a simple tool (no CRM needed, just a simple spreadsheet) to capture sales opportunities, analyse them quickly, identify what the blockage is and what needs to be done to unblock them. A short discussion with your manager or other seller will also help to identify the non-opportunities so these can be dropped.
By listing each current sales opportunity, its estimated value, the ultimate decision maker, any agreed time frames towards a purchase decision, the issues the prospect wants to resolve and how they perceive your pricing proposal, you will see why the opportunity is locked.
- In the E Stack example, it clearly shows that more work needs to be done on pain points (needs).
- In the Coaster example the next step is to close the deal!
This read covers the knowledge bit only, you still need all your sales skills to actually move the opportunities forward. This means getting attention from the decision makers, developing interest and desire in your product and gaining commitment.
In the event you simply do not have enough quality opportunities in your pipeline, it is a matter of increasing your pro-activity and search for them
Feel free to get in touch via mail in the top right button or gert.scholts@thebestsalescoach.co.uk how this tool can benefit your sales and unblock your opportunity pipeline. My complimentary sales surgeries have a reputation to uphold!
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