Archive for the ‘opportunity’ Category
Sunday, May 30th, 2010
Most sales team have a “sales process”. This is a set of steps they take to help the customer make a good decision about their products and services. It typically goes from suspect stage to close stage of the sales cycle. Often these sales processes are written in a very salesperson focused way. They seem to have the goal of “closing” the customer and the worksheets and notes associated with each step are carefully guarded and most certainly never shown to the prospective customer.
In this approach, a sales process is something done TO the customer instead of WITH the customer.
What if salespeople took a different approach and invited their prospective customer into the process? What if salespeople re-wrote the sales cycle steps with the goal of helping the customer make the best possible decision for them? Maybe it is called a Decision Process instead of a sales process?
When a company hires a consulting firm, the consulting firm typically has a process they use on each engagement to understand the customer and then suggest and execute solutions to meet their clients needs. These solutions are typically repeatable based on the diagnosis. This is much of what salespeople do, but salespeople differ in the fact that they try to keep their process a secret.
Having a tried-and-true, repeatable process builds confidence in customers. Salespeople might want to consider sharing their process and invite the customer to take each step with them. They could share their reports and forms along the way. Along the way, making sure to stay true to their promise of helping them make good decisions and then, together, document and demonstrate it throughout the process. This builds confidence and trust in the salesperson and the process.
To build trust, move an opportunity along a decision process with your customer. They will get on the offense with you instead of on the defense against you.
Sales Managers , To get sales team meeting agendas on this topic and many others, subscribe to Meeting to Win. We’d love to work with you and your team!
Tags: CRM, customer meeting success, customer meetings, move deals, sales process, transparency
Posted in Account Management, CRM, best practice, customer meeting, efficient, opportunity, performance, sales consulting, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas | No Comments »
Sunday, May 2nd, 2010
Sales cycles have typical steps. Customer like to take certain steps to make a decision and salespeople take certain steps to make a sale or help their customers make good decisions. Salespeople can accelerate the decision process by strategically examining the sales cycles for opportunities to add efficiencies. The benefits of doing this exist for both salesperson and customer. Customers need solutions and making efficient decisions on which solutions to purchase must be in their best interest. Salespeople benefit from getting to a go/no-go decision sooner, also. They either get to start helping a customer or, at least, realize they aren’t the right solution and can move on to the next one sooner. I am not suggesting that anyone rushes through an important decision process, I am simply suggesting a regular examination of the sales cycles to look for ways to improve the decision process and begin solving problems faster.
To do so, first list out all the steps a salesperson and a customer make to get to go/no-go on your solutions. Jot down the timeline and if there are pre-requisite steps for any of the steps.
Now, carefully examine if there is an opportunity to:
- Consolidate any two steps into one step.
- Eliminate an unnecessary step altogether.
- Simutaneously conduct two or more steps.
List out the benefits to the customer for making the decision with this new sales cycle. Then, make sure that you and the customer are clear on the steps both would like to take to help the customer make an informed yet timely decision. Stay two steps ahead with both understanding what the steps are, who should be involved and what decisions they should be able to make along the way.
The sales cycle is an important process where important decisions are made. Running it as effectively and efficiently as possible is in everyone’s best interest and a salesperson’s responsibility. Enjoy accelerated sales cycles with this simple exercise.
This week’s Meeting to Win sales team meeting agenda is Consolidate to Accelerate. Sales Manager who subscribe to the sales team meeting agenda service will receive a 60-Minute agenda that will lead their teams through an examination of their own sales cycles. Each participant will leave with a new plan for one live deal in their pipeline. Join our subscribers by signing up to get your weekly sales team meeting agendas from Meeting to Win.
Tags: consolidate sales cycles, CRM, customer meetings, existing customer, sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agendas, winning in sales
Posted in Account Management, CRM, agendas, customer meeting, efficient, opportunity, sales activity | No Comments »
Thursday, February 25th, 2010
As we continue with Pipeline Health Check week, we want to address risks in pipelines. If you know your risks, you can reduce the risks or at least manage them more effectively. As you examine your pipeline this week, check for these risks:
- A large percentage of the revenue in your pipeline is from one deal.
- You are not positioned with decision makers in late cycle pipeline opportunities.
- Your pipeline is heavy on early or late sales cycle deals – no balance.
- You have not added new “suspect” opportunities to your pipeline consistently.
- In mid-cycle deals you do not have a crystal clear picture of the decision process and who is involved and in what capacity at each decision point.
- You haven’t discussed money in mid and late cycle opportunities.
- You don’t know the competitive landscape in most of your opportunities.
- Your pipeline does not have at least 3X your sales goal in opportunities.
- You have deals that have stalled out with no progress forward in a few weeks.
- You are guessing at the size of opportunities instead of basing it on real diagnosis.
- You are chasing deals that are not in your company’s sweet spot.
These are just a few of the risks to look for as you examine your pipeline. Know your risks and take steps to minimize them – the smallest steps can make the biggest difference when pursuing sales performance goals.
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
At your next sales team meeting,
- Ask your team to bring their pipelines.
- Go through each of the risks above as a group.
- Add risks to the list that apply to your team.
- Ask each person to honestly assess their pipeline against the final list of risks.
- As a team, set one action item each person can do to minimize their most dangerous pipeline risk.
- Plan to follow up as a team and do this exercise again, setting the next action item as you move toward healthier and healthier pipelines.
Meeting to Win provides in-depth sales team meeting agendas with training exercises, practice sessions, discussion topics and ideas to help your sales team sell more. This Friday’s agenda is the Pipeline Health Check and will lead your team through exercises that will lead to more balanced, healthier pipelines. Join us and get your own weekly sales team meeting agendas. Learn more here.
Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, communication, free sales team meeting topics, how to have productive sales team meetings, opportunity, performance, sales management, sales manager tips, sales managers, sales meetings, sales team, sales team agenda., sales team meeting agenda, sales team meeting agenda topics, sales team meeting ideas, team meeting, tips for meetings | No Comments »
Sunday, February 21st, 2010
(Meeting to Win provides new sales team meeting agendas for sales managers every week. The agenda that goes out to subscribers this Friday is called Pipeline Health Check. To learn more about weekly sales team meeting agendas, visit us at http://www.meetingtowin.com/. To download the Pipeline Health Check sales team meeting agenda, visit our store here.)
Is your pipeline healthy? When you get your annual physical, the doctor is checking your blood pressure, weight, etc. They know what healthy looks like and they are looking at you to determine how healthy you are. The same can be done with your sales pipeline. Here is the difference. Often salespeople don’t have a clear definition of a healthy pipeline to compare theirs to. Often the definition is incomplete. The most popular one I’ve dealt with is “3 times your goal”. Well, that is somewhat helpful, but who knows if what I have is realistic or just my hopes and dreams – and a way to keep my manager off my back.
The first step to take in achieving a healthy pipeline is to understand what a healthy pipeline even looks like. Define that first and then work toward developing a pipeline that is the picture of health.
Sales Team Meeting Idea:
- As a team, create a list of characteristics to describe a healthy pipeline (3 times your goal, relationships with key decision makers, moving at a certain pace, size of deals, etc)
- Then, each team member should look at their pipeline and provide a quick assessment of where theirs lines up (right size, etc) and wehre it falls short (not enough deals, wrong size deals, etc).
- The team should share 1-3 ideas per salesperson on how to bring each pipeline in line with the picture of health.
- Everyone should walk away with 1-3 action items that will result in healthier pipelines across the board.
- Plan to check back in a month for another Pipeline Health Check to determine how the actions are working.
- Keep this up on a regular basis to keep pipelines strong and healthy.
(Subscribe to Meeting to Win to get more in-depth sales team meeting training exercises on topics like Pipeline Health Check, Maximize Customer Meetings, Build a Better Value Proposition, Troubleshooters and many other powerful topics. To download the Pipeline Health Check sales team meeting agenda, visit our store here.))
Tags: energize sales team, pipeline, sales team agenda., sales team meeting idea
Posted in agenda ideas, agendas, down economy, how to have productive sales team meetings, opportunity, pipeline | No Comments »
Sunday, October 11th, 2009
This has been a tough year for many. It’s Q4 and salespeople could be feeling tired and ready to “write this one off” and take another shot at it in 2010. Here’s the problem with that. Momentum is a very cool thing and it’s great when it’s working for you and horrible when it’s working against you. So, even if 2009 is a lost cause in terms of goal achievement, there is no better time (well, a month ago would have been better, but…) to get momentum going for 2010.
To gain more and more momentum as you close in on 2010, try these strategies:
The first five on the list come from the advice my friend Alvin of Tactivity shared in a LinkedIn discussion. I’ve added (and repeated) a few ideas that have helped me, also.
- If you’re on pace to the President’s Club in your organization, then increase your activity.
- If what you are doing hasn’t been working, then complete a thorough cleansing of the pipeline/funnel: Is it real? Is it good business? Can you win?
- Prioritize your activities around the health of your newly cleaned funnel
- Brainstorm a list of possible actions for your top opportunities; then choose only the 3-5 activities that will really advance them towards closure
- Go get it done!
- Conduct business reviews with existing clients to secure relationships, identify risks and uncover new ways to help them.
- Examine your territory for new opportunities a tough economy has turned up.
- Increase your sales activity. Oh, did we already mention that one? Action creates action, energy creates energy. Make more calls!
- Solidify referral partners. Decide to gain 20 referral partners and stay in touch with them, ask for referrals, be accessible and be someone they would be proud to refer (hint: send them referrals, also).
- Stay “on the grid” with prospects and existing customers. Share useful information to help them run their business more effectively. Don’t be out of sight or you know where you’ll be…. Out of mind. Many of their sales reps have “gone dark” lately as companies do lay-offs and reorganizations. Just being there may differentiate you!
- Have a team meeting every week to celebrate successes, share ideas, collaborate on hot deals and challenge each other. This team accountability and celebration is fuel for your sales engine. (You know we couldn’t leave this one out!)
- BONUS: Increase sales activity. In my experience, there is NO substitute. Commit to accelerated sales activity in Q4 if you do nothing else. Yeah, it’s worth mentioning 3 times.
2010 can be an amazing year. Salespeople that build momentum now can get a head start and be rewarded by helping more customers in 2010 than they ever thought possible. Not to mention, for some 2009 can be a distant memory…. Get started today. Staring in January 2010 will be TOO LATE.
To help sales teams build momentum during Q4, Meeting to Win is running a Q4 Push Promotion which means…free sales team meeting agendas for Sales Managers. Sales Managers can subscribe for sales team meeting agendas and get all of Q4 for free. First payment of $10/month won’t be charged until January 2010 (sales managers can unsubscribe any time in Q4 and never be charged). The agendas are designed to motivate sales teams and accelerate performance while continually gaining and maintaining incredible momentum.
Read more HERE then join us by subscribing HERE and entering the Promo Code “Q4PUSH”.
Posted in LinkedIn, Uncategorized, agendas, best practice, communication, culture, down economy, free sales team meeting topics, management tips, meetings, new managers, new years resolutions, opportunity, performance, sales activity, sales management, sales manager tips, sales managers, sales meetings, sales team, sales team meeting ideas, sales tips, tough economy | No Comments »
Monday, December 1st, 2008
I read Seth Godin’s blog this morning. He is on my mind because I plan to pick up his book, Tribes, this week. Anyway, he announced a very neat opportunity for the right person – http://sethgodin.typepad.com/. I sent it to a few people that I immediately thought of. Check it out – it could change your life!
Posted in apprentice, blog, opportunity, seth godin | No Comments »
