Friday, September 24, 2010

Why do so many sales opportunities stall?


By Ed Ellis – April 2005
For now, let's define a stalled opportunity as an opportunity that hasn't seen a change in status for a specific period of time . (You get to define the length of this time period.) If you want to apply a more demanding definition, you will find some useful suggestions in the article,
There are many reasons why opportunities stall. Let's look at two of the most important reasons:
Reason #1 – Poor Sales Opportunity Qualification
A sad fact of life is that many salespeople do a poor job of sales opportunity qualification. Why is this such a common problem? Basically it comes down to three factors: lack of training, lack of accountability, and lack of inspection . Let's look at each factor separately.
1a. Lack of Training
What is your company's definition for a fully qualified opportunity? Does the definition exist in writing? Are your salespeople trained to qualify opportunities in a specific way?
In my opinion, a sales opportunity has not been properly qualified unless the salesperson knows (at minimum) the answers to the following questions:
  • What business problems does the prospect have that can be solved by one or more of your company's products and services?
  • How significant are these business problems? In other words, what impact do they have on the prospect, both professionally and personally?
  • Can the prospect quantify the impact of the business problems? In other words, can they associate dollar amounts with the business problems?
  • Is the prospect worthy of the investment required for your company to manage a sales cycle? In other words:
    • Are they credit worthy ?
    • Do they have a budget to invest in solving their business problems?
    • Are all key decision makers engaged in the decision process?
    • Does the company take proposed investments out to bid ? If they do, are they willing to give your company some advantage in the bid process as a reward for designing the solution to their problems?
    • What is their time frame for implementing a proposed solution?
1b. Lack of Accountability
Accountability pertains to creating and communicating clear expectations for sales performance. If your company does not have clearly defined performance expectations for salespeople, or if those expectations have not been communicated to (and ingrained in) your salespeople, you are likely to be disappointed with the results they produce.
To determine whether your company is truly holding salespeople accountable, do your best to answer the following questions:
  • What percentage of each salesperson's sales leads will be generated by your company's marketing and advertising efforts?
  • What percentage of each salesperson's sales leads are they expected to source for themselves?
  • What are the primary prospecting methods that your salespeople are encouraged to use?
  • How many "discovery conversations" (first meetings, whether in person or on the telephone) should a salesperson book with new prospects each week or month?
  • What percentage of a salesperson's sales should come from new business?
  • What percentage of a salesperson's sales should come from repeat business?
  • How long should the average sales cycle be for each of your company's products and services?
  • What percentage of their opportunities are your salespeople expected to close?
  • At what point is an opportunity considered to be "in trouble" (which means it should immediately be brought to the attention of management)?
  • Who decides whether an opportunity is "lost" ?
  • How are lost opportunities (and the reasons why they were lost) tracked?
1c. Lack of Inspection
Sales opportunity inspection involves sitting down with salespeople on a regular basis (I recommend weekly) to discuss the status of every opportunity in their pipelines. These discussions should have two goals:
1.     To determine whether each opportunity has been properly qualified
2.     To determine whether each opportunity reflects an accurate status
NOTE: Don't worry – this is not as time-consuming as it might appear. Once you slog through the initial pipeline discussion and help the salesperson clear the "deadwood" from their pipeline, future discussions are much more streamlined.
How do you determine whether an opportunity has been properly qualified and reflects an accurate status? By asking questions! The sales manager should ask the salesperson the same questions that the salesperson should ask their prospects . If the salesperson does not know the answers to key questions, or if their answers lack key details, the salesperson should be assigned specific opportunity qualification tasks to complete prior to the next pipeline review meeting.
Sales opportunity inspection is truly a critical sales management activity. Why? Because companies waste incredible amounts of time, money and resources on opportunities that can't or won't close! The sooner these (poor quality) opportunities are identified and removed from the sales opportunity pipeline, the sooner your salespeople will have more time to invest in finding truly qualified opportunities!

Sales Process - We're Only As Good As Our Next Step

by Ed Ellis


No sale can be counted upon unless the prospect is actively engaged in the sales cycle. What does it mean to be "actively engaged"? This is defined by the prospect's willingness to commit to a next step.


What is a valid next step?

A valid next step is a specific, scheduled appointment with an agenda designed to move the sale closer to "closed". The appointment may be in person or via the telephone, but it must be on the prospect's calendar. Plus, the salesperson must have an agenda to advance the sale, not merely check the status of the prospect's decision process. Finally, the purpose of the call cannot be to schedule a future substantive discussion.
While there is no guarantee that an opportunity that meets these conditions will close, the chances of securing revenue from an actively engaged prospect are far greater than the chances of securing revenue from a prospect that refuses to commit to a next step.
It is human nature for salespeople to maintain unrealistically hopeful feelings regarding contacts who are willing to talk with them on a regular basis. Often they concentrate their efforts on these contacts under the guise of "relationship building." Unfortunately, most relationship building is nothing more than the passage of time.
If discussions and meetings are not specifically designed to advance sales opportunities, they usually are not very productive. So, while salespeople should maintain positive attitudes, to be successful they also need to be very realistic.

Salespeople can use this simple rule to validate whether or not a prospect is truly "hot"

 
At the end of every prospect meeting, the salesperson should determine if there is a reason to meet again.
If there seems to be a reason to continue, the salesperson should attempt to schedule the next appointment BEFORE leaving the meeting.


This approach has two advantages:
  1. If a prospect is truly interested in moving forward, he or she will readily grant the salesperson more time and schedule it in his or her own calendar. If the prospect does NOT want to continue the sa or she will hesitate to schedule more time.
Too often a prospect will say, "Call me next week to schedule our next appointment." This is often used as a way to get the salesperson out of their office. Every salesperson has experienced prospects saying these very words, then not returning telephone calls the following week.
Some salespeople are reluctant to ask for a next step for fear that the answer is going to be "no". These salespeople are only creating false hopes, which do NOT generate sales.
  1. Putting a next appointment on the calendar before the current meeting ends ensures it can take place in a timely manner. Why is this important? Schedules can fill up, even if the follow-up scheduling call takes place just a few days later. By scheduling the next appointment before leaving the current appointment, a salesperson can come back to the prospect in the shortest possible time. The benefit of this is shorter sales cycles.
It is important to emphasize that next steps need to be structured to productively advance a sale. A scheduled visit to "check the status of things" or to "see if they are willing to consider our company" is NOT a valid next step!
Additionally, any scheduled next step must be within the normal sales cycle. A prospect that agrees to receive a call on a date outside the normal sales cycle cannot be seen to be actively working toward a purchase (though of course these calls DO deserve follow-up).
When these "Next Step" rules are followed exactly, it is not unusual to see that just a small percentage of the opportunities currently being worked by a sales team meet the criteria. This is entirely intentional!
The simple truth is that prospects for which valid next steps have been scheduled have a much greater likelihood of purchasing. These are the "real" opportunities. Tracking the number of "real" opportunities in each phase of the sales cycle will tell managers whether salespeople have enough potential business in their current pipelines to ensure future success.


By categorizing opportunities in this manner:

  • Salespeople and managers will be able to separate reality from fiction and opinions from fact
  • Managers will be able to assist salespeople with the prospects that truly matter
  • Managers will be able to set salesperson prospecting activity expectations at a level that will ensure sufficient concurrent "live" prospects to produce consistent success
  • Salespeople and managers will be able to provide more accurate forecasts


Remember, time is your only inventory!

Don't waste your time chasing prospects that are not serious about buying your products or services. Use the "next step" test to validate whether or not an opportunity you are pursuing is a REAL opportunity.
If the prospect is willing to schedule a next meeting on a specific date at a specific time with a specific agenda for advancing the sales cycle, you have a real prospect. If your prospect is not willing to make this kind of commitment, you need to question how serious they really are...and spend more time finding real prospects!

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Mirrors

                      
 by Edward Ellis

Mirrors, mirrors all around
Why don’t I hear the joyful sound
Of myself clapping as I stroll by?
Is it you or is it I? 


Aarghhh! My sincere apologies to the real poets of the world! The things I do to amuse myself…
Mirrors lie. All those pieces of glass with the reflective coating on the back – lie. You know they do. They never, never give us a true picture of ourselves. First of all of course, everything we see in them is backwards. We don’t see “us”. We see a skewed, backwards “us”. It’s not at all what other people see. We also frequently see ourselves as too fat, too skinny, too tall, too short, too old, too young, too wrinkled, nose too big, nose too small…
Any or all of the perceptions that I just mentioned could be a realistic interpretation of our reflection – or they may be in reality, totally inaccurate. We may feel the need to diet, diet, diet because we see ourselves as much too fat when in reality, we’re about twenty pounds underweight. We may see giant, wrinkles under our eyes and make a panic call to our friendly reconstructive surgeon when in reality, it would take a magnifying glass to positively identify the tiniest of creases. And I’m not really a wrinkled, graying, fuzzy, balding, old geezer. The mirror is clearly showing me as a mature gentleman with interesting, distinguishing features.
Unless we’re putting out a bunch of effort to really see that which is being reflected back to us, we are only going to see that which we expect to see. Even then we’ll never hit 100 percent accuracy. It’s just the way our little minds work.
Our self-image, even without a mirror, is always at least a few degrees off from reality. We may imagine (image) ourselves as charming, outgoing and friendly when in reality we may be a loud, obnoxious pain in the rear. Or we may view ourselves as lower than pond scum and not deserving of a second look from anyone when in reality, we may be quite nice and pleasant to be around. It would be beneficial if we could have a more realistic picture of ourselves. It would be good if we could be more aware of our strengths – and of course, it would be really good if we could identify some of the areas that could use a bit of improvement.
Here’s where other folks can come in handy. First, another’s honest evaluation of us has the potential of providing at least a basic view of ourselves. You gotta remember what’s liable to happen here, though. To begin with, the “honest” part of the evaluation may (will?) be questionable. Well-meaning people sometimes just flat lie to keep from hurting our feelings. Apart from that, their observations of us will be shaded by their experiences (programming). We will be the recipient of their perception of us. And to top it all off, we will hear and process their information according to our experiences and programming. This may or may not correlate with their intended meaning. About the best we can hope for here is that we may get an indication of how we are perceived by others. Or use the old rule of thumb. (OK – so it’s my thumb and my rule…) If one person out of a hundred thinks you are a doofus, you probably don’t need to worry about it. Get up to fifty people and you likely have a problem to address. If ninety-nine percent of your acquaintances agree that you’re a butthead, you can expect to receive your certification in the mail sometime next week.
The remainder of this equation for performing a self-check using other people requires using our own self-evaluation abilities – which are of course, packaged in our own personal box of brightly-colored perceptions. (Are you getting the idea that none of this stuff will work out perfectly?) It boils down to a saying I heard a long time ago. If you point your finger – accusingly or in judgment – toward another person, you will always have three fingers pointing right back at yourself.
This is the mirror we alluded to at the beginning of this article. We see and subsequently condemn or judge in others, the imperfections or short-comings that exist in some form within ourselves. Our observations of others and our resulting comments – or even thoughts – can give us a good idea of some of the things it might be beneficial for us to work on.
Here are a couple of examples. The words “He’s an idiot!” from our lips is an indication that we may feel inadequate, stupid or an “idiot” relative to some section of our lives. “She dresses like a pig!” may mean that we’re not at all happy about some part of our appearance – or the impression we feel we’re giving to others. The flip side of this is that the positive thoughts we have about others, whether they are expressed verbally or not, often reflect the positive qualities that exist within ourselves. There is no pat formula for determining the meaning of these comments or thoughts. They can only be interpreted by their owner. That would be us.
None of life’s mirrors can provide a completely accurate reflection. But they can at least give us a few hints of some things we might want to think about.


Friday, September 17, 2010

How To Start, Survive, and Finish Your Journey To Super Success

  by Edward V. Ellis, Sr.


"The more you hate, the more you love."
What an ironic statement. Whoever said those words must have been drunk. The bottom line is this: It is extremely difficult to like or love something that you despise.
But what can we do to solve this dilemma? What if you're trapped in an environment that you don't want to be involved in? What if you're sick and tired of your job that you feel like puking every time someone mentions your work?
Of course, you take inspired and motivated action to get out of your present rut and start living the life you've always dreamed of.
Guess what? It's not going to be easy. You will have to come out of your comfort zones to discover potentials and opportunities waiting for you. You have to conquer your fear and take calculated risks. You have to stay focused and persevere despite the difficulties you will encounter.
Success doesn't come easy. It takes heart and passion. It may also take some time before you can actually reap the fruits of your labor.
But how do you actually survive this stage? This is the moment when you're working extra hard to reach your goals. This is also the instance when you're enduring whatever adversity hits you.
For example, you're employed in a job that you hate. You know deep inside that you would not like to stay in the rat race throughout your life. So you decided to engage in a part-time business or to study night courses. Good move, my friend.
So far so good. A few days later, time started running out for you. Your family complains that you've never spoken a word to them in such a long time. You're getting crazy over your very hectic schedule. Soon enough, your attitude changes negatively. You get mad and frustrated over the tiniest setbacks. You hate the world for all the misery it has brought upon you.
Stop right now!
That is not the way to go. You are attracting negative elements into your life. Yes, you have to work harder, dig deeper, and sacrifice more to attain your ambitions. But no, you don't have to hate the world and feel bad about your difficult situation. Remember the Law of Attraction. If you hate the world, the world hates you back.
So what do you have to do?
Learn to love your current situation. See all the positive sides of life. Be enthusiastic. Love your boss, your coworkers, your family, your friends, and even strangers that you meet on the streets. It may not be easy, but nothing is impossible with a strong will power. Just don't fall in love so much that you totally forget about your dreams.
Balance is the key. Dream and take some positive action to move you toward your goals. Take it one step at a time. But while you're slowly crawling into the long journey to success, be patient and be as enthusiastic as possible. Don't hurry up too much that you totally forget how to enjoy life.
One fine day, you will finally attain what you have always longed for. But when that day comes, don't spit back on the face of those who belittled you before.
Stay humble. Don't look down on others when you see that you are becoming more successful than they are. Help them. Inject your positive aura into their personalities. When you give, you will yield back equal or greater rewards.
Are you ready to begin the journey? Start it with the courage and desire to improve your life. Survive and go through it with persistence, enthusiasm, and positive thinking. Finish it with a resounding bang of accomplishment and with the desire to help others succeed as well.