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Written by Hamish Knox; President of Sandler in Calgary, Canada
Creating accountable, sales focused organizations in Calgary
You’ve vanished the magicians from your sales funnel and your team embraced the mindset of “always be advancing the sale,” yet as you look at your most recent sales funnel report you see a few opportunities hanging around that you were told weren’t moving forward.
What’s happened is your salespeople confused “activity” with “opportunity.” This is common especially when their prospect says “call me in six months.”
“Activities” are the attempts your salespeople make to create opportunities.
“Opportunities” are the result of activities that end with your salesperson and their prospect booking a discovery meeting (in-person or via video conference preferably due to the role body language plays in communication and creating rapport) at which they will discover if there’s s fit between what your company offers and the pain your prospect seeks to resolve.
The opportunity gets to say in your salesperson’s pipeline if they have a mutually agreed on next step with their prospect locked in their calendars (phone call, meeting, demo, proposal or presentation; the latter three only if their prospect is qualified). In my career that next step had to take place within 45 calendar days to count unless there was some clear reason why my prospect and I couldn’t at least speak in that time frame.
Your salespeople will exclaim, “but they told me to call them in six months so I’m keeping the opportunity in as a reminder!” In six months your prospect could say “call me in six months,” which means there’s no real opportunity only a lot of hopium and “reminders” aren’t kept in your sales funnel that’s what your CRM or task management software is for (I use ConnectandSell to reconnect with “call me in…” prospects).
We coach the leaders we work with that only opportunities with a real opportunity to close in the next 30, 60 or 90 days (maybe 120 if you have a long sales cycle and/or implementation timelines) get to be in your sales funnel. This causes a lot of anxiety for salespeople who see their current pipeline get cut by 30%, 50% or 80% because they don’t have a confirmed next step with each of those opportunities. It’s a pretty quick call to their prospects to say, “Prospect, I forgot to confirm when we were meeting to move the opportunity we talked about two weeks ago forward. Are you okay to get something in the calendar?”
Your salespeople will quickly discover which of their opportunities are real and which are a bunch of hope and smoke.
At your next sales funnel review meeting coach your team on the difference between an “activity” and an “opportunity” and you’ll quickly discover if hitting your quarterly target is real or not.
Until next time… go lead.
Upcoming Workshop:
Building a High Performance Sales Culture
Align your people, processes and sales culture to consistently achieve maximum results.
WONDERING HOW TO CONSISTENTLY HIRE SUPERSTARS?
Thursday September 7, 2017 from 11:30AM-2:30PM
Click to register online or register by phone on 403-457-1507.
Successfully filling an open position requires the skill to develop an accurate job profile and identify the skills, habits, attitude, and other abilities required to effectively and efficiently carry out the functions of the position.
Workshop facilitated by Hamish Knox of Sandler Training and Lynee Miller of the Devine Group.
Investment includes – 3 hour workshop, Playbook for recruiting, hiring and onboarding A-players, lunch and a copy of “Winning from Failing – Build and Lead a Corporate Learning Culture for High Performance” by Sandler Trainer, Josh Seibert.
Are you:
- A Chief Executive, Owner or President who seeks sustainable top and bottom line growth for your business?
- Do you wonder how to build a team with the right attitudes and behaviors to succeed?
- Seeking to hire the right people?
You’ll Leave With:
- A playbook for hiring, recruiting and onboarding employees.
- A roadmap to properly manage, supervise and motivate your people for growth.
- Coaching plans to improve individual and team performance.
- An easy and efficient process for identifying key competencies that are aligned to company performance.
Attract, Retain and Train High Quality Employees
Click to register online or call (403) 457-1507 to register by phone.
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