Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 10, 2013

That''s one of the primary reasons that so many companies are complaining that there aren''t enough new business opportunities in the pipeline. The lesson here is that these new sources of potential business are simply that - sources of potential business - that you can''t control.

Opportunity 221

Opportunity Pipeline Hiring Real Estate 221

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 2, 2012

But what about too many opportunities in a salesperson's pipeline? So how does all of that that play out with new opportunities? An abundance of opportunities should be a good thing but it's very easy to make them go bad. (c) In most cases, too many is not only rare, it's a good thing, not bad. Isn't that a good thing?

Opportunity 175

Opportunity Sales Qualified Lead Conference Pipeline 175

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 2, 2012

But what about too many opportunities in a salesperson's pipeline? How does that play out with new opportunities? An abundance of opportunities could be a positive, but could very easily become negative. (c) Isn't that a positive? Maybe not. A veteran salesperson could have a large business book to maintain as well.

Opportunity 156

Opportunity Sales Qualified Lead Conference Pipeline 156

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 11, 2018

If you happened to read the article about most salespeople being fired or arrested if they worked in accounting then this is the sequel - Arrested 2!

Opportunity 160

Opportunity Pipeline Data Account 160

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 28, 2024

Are the opportunities made of gold bullions or lumps of coal? The current closable opportunities (B) are at 23% of the forecast (C) and at less than 10% of the quarterly target (D). Early stage opportunities should not have an assigned value. How many opportunities do the assigned values represent by team and by salesperson?

Pipeline 170

Pipeline Opportunity Decision Maker Top of Funnel 170

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 31, 2024

In its most generic form, stages correspond to opportunities as they move from suspect to prospect to qualified opportunity, to closable and finally, closed. There are stages to a journey, like driving to the airport, the airport check-in and wait, the plane flight, baggage claim, and the drive to your final destination.

Sales Process 182

Sales Process Decision Maker Sports Construction 182

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 20, 2024

Every company should have a custom-built scorecard that accurately predicts which opportunities they are likely to win. (A If the scorecard predicts they are likely to win an opportunity, all future discussions, efforts, and resources should be focused on winning that opportunity.

Revenue 193

Revenue Margin Sports Quota 193

Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 12, 2023

More than half of all salespeople are missing and skipping important milestones in the sales process each and every day and their egos get more bruised from failing to close those opportunities than my body got bruised from my not so thrilling adventure to the ground.

Prospecting 331

Prospecting Sales Process Closing Opportunity 331

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 14, 2022

I heard from Bob last week and whenever I hear from him it usually means he got himself into a jam with another sales opportunity. Regular readers are familiar with Bob, one of the worst salespeople on the planet. New readers might want to catch up on the six prior articles about Bob. Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6.

Closing 294

Closing Influencer Opportunity Prospecting 294

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 27, 2023

They fail to learn about competitor’s pricing When they get asked for a quote or proposal they provide it without knowing if the prospect has and will spend the money They are unable to sell value because their their pricing has no context They set themselves up for price objections for all of the previously mentioned reasons They extend the (..)

Sales Methodology 203

Sales Methodology Sales Process Proposal Objections 203

Understanding the Sales Force

MARCH 16, 2020

They see it as an opportunity to show and tell and talk about capabilities. Most salespeople will seize on an opportunity to share what they know because it is so much easier than asking lots of tough, timely questions. He's right. Let's take a look at the science.

Industry 339

Industry Opportunity Company Consultative Selling 339

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 25, 2024

When they are coached, is it to make them more effective (coach them up) or help them with an opportunity (strategic coaching)? Sounds way too arrogant and promotional, and I don’t even believe it. Are the salespeople in your company getting coached every day? Is it to challenge them?

Coaching 333

Coaching Guidelines Margin Incentives 333

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 27, 2024

On top of that, Dave met with four new opportunities this week, quickly disqualified one, uncovered compelling reasons to buy on three of those meetings, where two had tremendous urgency allowing him to quickly get them qualified. As a result, he has two excellent, large opportunities that he has a very good chance of closing in February.

Sports 182

Sports Analysis Outbound Examples 182

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 21, 2023

Momentary panic can spell the end of a call, meeting or opportunity. It could even spell the end of that opportunity. I’ll explain how to always respond appropriately to Your Prospect. I pulled up to pump number five at my usual Cumberland Farms convenience store/gas station.

Prospecting 170

Prospecting How To Call-back Objections 170

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 15, 2019

Salespeople frequently have hallucinations where they think there is something there, like a great opportunity, and in reality, there isn't anything there. And then there are the salespeople who don't see an opportunity when there is actually a great one hiding in plain site. You could even call it a hallucination. Not even close.

Opportunity 324

Opportunity Closing Sales 324

Understanding the Sales Force

DECEMBER 7, 2020

I'm going to share the story of a real salesperson and his current, real opportunity, but change the names of everyone involved. I hear stories like this every day but this particular one happens way too often.

Opportunity 272

Opportunity Closing Sales Process Sales 272

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 27, 2021

Have you ever had a sales opportunity that was completely under control, you were following your sales process, everything was looking great, and then, from out of nowhere and without warning, surprise competitors appeared? Then again, my wife and I have cut down a lot of trees and cleared a lot of brush in the last twelve months.

Competition 296

Competition Sales Sales Process Opportunity 296

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 27, 2022

They also had a large number of opportunities stalled in the pipeline and they believed that training on more effective techniques to conduct follow up calls would help. One of their issues was their 20% win rate was much lower than they thought it should be and they believed their salespeople needed some refresher training on closing.

Software 261

Software Software Follow-up Groups 261

Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 20, 2023

Sales Leaders at nearly every company complain about unqualified opportunities. This is so easy and transportable. Sales Leaders at nearly every company complain about lack of new business. Motivate and incentivize your salespeople! Motivate and incentivize your salespeople! Referrals and Introductions are an after-thought at most companies.

Motivation 156

Motivation Pipeline Hiring How To 156

Understanding the Sales Force

OCTOBER 12, 2022

I receive calls and emails that begin with things like "My salespeople are complacent" or "My salespeople need some training on closing" or "My salespeople aren't bringing in enough new business" or "My salespeople need help with negotiating" or "Our team has a lot of stalled opportunities."

Selling Skills 295

Selling Skills Hotels Call-back Negotiation 295

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 8, 2019

The various weeds were like the many types of opportunities in most sales pipelines. Similarly, we must leave and nurture the opportunities that will grow and produce sales, and weed out the undesirable opportunities that distract us from what is most important.

Pipeline 214

Pipeline How To Groups Objections 214

Understanding the Sales Force

JULY 6, 2022

Most of those lists were simply subsets of other lists and the reasons included things like compensation, morale, workload, changing quotas, culture, toxic management, the job was misrepresented, too much pressure and lack of growth opportunity.

Retention 193

Retention Customer Hubspot Compensation 193

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 21, 2023

To avoid wasting time and chasing opportunities that have ghosted you, read articles about qualifying. To improve your chances of closing the business, instead of reading articles about closing, read articles about reaching decision makers.

Hiring 156

Hiring Decision Maker Forecasting Face-to-face 156

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 21, 2023

To avoid wasting time and chasing opportunities that have ghosted you, read articles about qualifying. To improve your chances of closing the business, instead of reading articles about closing, read articles about reaching decision makers.

Hiring 156

Hiring Decision Maker Forecasting Face-to-face 156

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 22, 2024

They’re having a great conversation, the prospect needs what you have, there is money available, you’re with the decision maker, and you start making some assumptions about how good this opportunity looks. If you have a scorecard in your head, it is probably giving you a score of close to 100.

Closing 212

Closing Proposal Discount Decision Maker 212

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 2, 2018

Several recent LinkedIn posts have urged readers to pick up the phone instead of trying to find new opportunities by using social media. I wrote a very popular article about using the phone 3 years ago called, The Next Can't Miss Game Changer for Sales. Check out some more surprising data.

Social Selling 272

Social Selling Data Social Media Up-Sell 272

Understanding the Sales Force

APRIL 15, 2024

Our son’s college season nears the end under continuing horrible, rainy, windy and cold conditions.

Hiring 182

Hiring Discount Decision Maker Call-back 182

Understanding the Sales Force

AUGUST 16, 2023

They completed the sales call, but they didn’t do discovery and failed to uncover any compelling reasons to buy, they didn’t thoroughly qualify the opportunity, they probably failed to reach the decision maker(s), and more importantly, the impression they left on their prospect was shaky (wobbly) because they failed to differentiate.

Sales Process 227

Sales Process Decision Maker Proposal Follow-up 227

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 9, 2024

The stats for the first week were: 42 resumes received 15 video views at the opportunity landing page 7 completed applications 7 completed sales assessments 4 recommended candidates by the assessment 4 five-minute phone chats 4 30-minute Zoom interviews 4 great candidates recommended to the client I’m done.

Hiring 193

Hiring How To Decision Maker Guarantee 193

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 2, 2018

Conversion ratios - calls to meetings, meetings to qualified opportunities, qualified opportunities to closable, and win rates, all compared with the same ratios from a prior period.

Sales Cycle 209

Sales Cycle Pipeline Coaching Revenue 209

Understanding the Sales Force

NOVEMBER 20, 2020

A sales team looks its best on January 1, when every opportunity in the pipeline is a possibility and forecasts predict a banner year. Because my lawn looks its worst on August 1 and its best on November 1, it has a lot in common with most sales organizations.

Data 259

Data Quota Forecasting Pipeline 259

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 6, 2019

Not only do you start the process all over again in several months, but the lost opportunity and lost revenue create negative territory momentum, where the pendulum swings to favor the competition. The difference is huge, especially if you have a complex sale, a long sales cycle, or a lot of competition.

Hiring 263

Hiring Territories Sales Cycle Competition 263

Understanding the Sales Force

JUNE 27, 2023

A consultative approach which requires them to listen and ask questions instead of presenting solutions before the opportunity is qualified? A sales process that is more complex than winging it? Is it the Baseline Selling process or methodology? The question is not whether or not they know what they are supposed to do.

Hiring 156

Hiring Consultative Selling Coaching Report 156

Understanding the Sales Force

SEPTEMBER 29, 2014

I was discussing the OMG Partnership opportunity with a gentlemen from Hong Kong, who objected to our reasonable licensing fees, refusing to pay any fees to a US company. He expected me to waive the fees in exchange for the great opportunity he described. Image Copyright: violin / 123RF Stock Photo.

Licensing 229

Licensing Negotiation Exact Objections 229

Understanding the Sales Force

MAY 14, 2018

That said, spring leaves on May 11 are exponentially more predictable than pipeline opportunities. Why might an opportunity not close when it was forecast to? This year, with the cold April we endured, May 11 came and went and the leaves were delayed. Technically, there are seven possibilities: Closes as forecast and you win.

Closing 159

Closing Forecasting Pipeline Opportunity 159

Understanding the Sales Force

FEBRUARY 20, 2018

I reviewed 5 years worth of statistics on opportunities that we did not close and it seems that prospects were 6 times more likely to do nothing than to do business with a competitor. We don't lose very often and I can count on two hands the number of opportunities I have personally lost in the past 5 years.

ACT 178

ACT Relationals Opportunity Closing 178

Understanding the Sales Force

JANUARY 22, 2019

Consider two very different salespeople working a new opportunity. When I tune into the news, instead of news, all I hear is screaming, hate and accusations. Do the least informed among us have the loudest voices?

Travel 237

Travel Media ACT Groups 237