Taking a complete—and critical—look at your sales process can help reach challenging stretch goals. Here’s how to do it.
By Phil Krone, President
To reach a stretch goal you almost always need to improve a lot of small things. That’s especially so in achieving ambitious business development targets. One proven way is to conduct a “self-audit” by stepping back and taking stock. If you don’t know where to start, here are some factors that could be inhibiting the revenue growth of your firm, your team, or you.
Want to jumpstart the process?
Review the list below and identify your top five issues. Then, call me at 847-446-0008 x 1 and schedule a time to talk. When we connect, I’ll discuss with you, at no charge, how to address those issues with or without our assistance. Beforehand, to make the most of our conversation, estimate how much you believe each issue is costing your business in lost revenue, lost customers, and lost opportunities to acquire new customers.
Possible Company or Firm Issues:
- No clear definition of the target market
- No list of suspects to match the target market
- 20 percent of your business developers are bringing in 80 percent of the revenue
- Specific groups within the firm need special business development help—senior partners, third-year associates, women, minorities, rookies, and others
- No corporate sales process
- Sales support materials aren’t up to date or are just not effective (brochures, website text, case histories, sell sheets, books)
- No or poor alignment between sales, marketing, and operations
- No differentiation of value from competition
- Too few qualified leads from marketing efforts
- Disappointing sales for new products or services
- High salesforce turnover
Possible Individual Issues:
- Too few prospects in the pipeline
- Unacceptable win rate when competing for new business
- Difficulty turning social situations into business opportunities with grace
- Prospects get stuck on price and don’t recognize value
- Too few referrals
- Giving away too much intellectual property within the sales process (creative ideas are stolen)
- Sales process educates but doesn’t persuade
- Low success rate responding to requests for proposals
- Difficulty winning large opportunities
- Too much time spent with unqualified prospects
- Sales cycle too long
- Difficulty communicating the company’s differentiation—and getting paid for it
- Poor net realization: how much you collect versus what you should have quoted, billed, and been paid for
- Poor negotiation skills
- Still using a “canned” sales presentation
- Difficulty getting existing clients to follow your advice.
It costs far less to address these issues than you might think. A recent client broke into a new, higher value market, reduced her time with unqualified prospects, and increased her referral rate. These improvements covered her investment in training and sales process development many times over.
To learn more, get in touch with me at pkrone@productivestrategies.com or 847-446-0008 Ext. 1.