Part of fully evaluating an opportunity is gaining a clear understanding of your prospect company’s decision-making process. On a broader scale, it is an integral and vitally important part of sales key account management. Sometimes the decision-making process is simple; for example, in smaller companies, the purchase approval might be signed off by one person and ... Read Post

This is an important question when it comes to any opportunity in sales strategies: Is the deal worth winning? In the very beginning of the life of a business it may seem that any opportunity is worth pursuing—and in the long run that may be true, whether or not that opportunity is profitable. While profit ... Read Post

A key factor in sales account management—and of course in opportunity management—is fully identifying a sales opportunity. That begins with answering some key questions about the opportunity itself. The answers can be researched by salespeople themselves or, probably better, by inside sales reps or sales assistants before an opportunity gets forwarded onto salespeople. That way ... Read Post

Your sales pipeline captures the journey sales reps carry out, from their first point of contact with a prospect, through to a close. Following a solid sales process is at the heart of sales efficiency. Typically, your sales pipeline has five stages. These are: Read Post

Within sales strategies, the use of BANT—an acronym for Budget, Authority, Need and Timing—has been around for decades. Salespeople throughout the world memorize this acronym and mentally run through it whenever qualifying an opportunity, and sales management routinely preach it so that salespeople will remember it. Within each of these four elements, however, there is ... Read Post

As we have discussed in recent blog posts, there are numerous levels to qualifying a sale. There is the basic fundamental of a buyer or other person at a company interested in your product or service. There is the fact of the budget being available or not. Moving up a bit further, there is gathering ... Read Post

Sales Pipeline management is best conducted with heavy emphasis on fully qualifying opportunities. The better an opportunity is qualified early on in the sales process, the easier the sale is going to go and the less risky it’s going to be. An important part of qualifying opportunities is the understanding and tracking of buyer patterns. ... Read Post

When a raw lead is passed to a sales rep or an inside sales rep, there is often much information missing from it. It usually only has the company name, contact, the contact’s job title, and a phone number and/or email address. A sales rep’s time is valuable, and such sketchy information doesn’t describe the ... Read Post