Tuesday 23 August 2011

Get some real action into your sales pipeline.

As you know, sales leads can grow cold quickly. Every lead and opportunity is like a ticking bomb. If your recon says that somebody is shifting, looking to buy, you have to move within a few hours, not days. If you get a web lead that looks promising, you want to call that lead within minutes, not hours. Research shows that the odds of calling to qualify an online lead decreases by more than 6 times in the first hour.


As you convert sales-ready leads in your sales pipeline into opportunities, ask yourself:


Is there a great fit for your product or solution?

Is your prospect actively looking for a solution?

What is the prospect's timetable for finding the best solution?

What are the competing solutions?

What does the company have to lose if it did nothing about the problem?

What is the company's process for making a decision?

What are the company's preferred steps involved in a purchase?

Is there a budget?

What is the full potential of this opportunity?

Do I have access to all the decision makers, and how many of them can I convince?

How long will it take until the sale is converted?

What are the potential obstacles that stand in the way of the sale?

What are the realistic chances of closing this sale? (25 percent, 50 percent, 75 percent)


These questions will help you prioritize the opportunities in your sales funnel, and they will help you develop a realistic sales forecast every month.


Action 1: create a list of your most important and most urgent opportunities, and refresh this list daily by checking it against the questions.


Action 2: check again and if the prospect does not fit find more prospects to open.


Good luck.


Boiler


No comments:

Post a Comment