According to a recent Harvard Business Review article entitled Dismantling the Sales Machine, the time has come to let salespeople utilize their “on the ground” judgment and sales techniques when it comes to making various decisions about opportunity management. According to the article, “Selling today requires flexibility, judgment, and a focus on results—not process.” The ...
When you’re forecasting sales and the performance of your sales funnel or sales pipeline, your metrics are key. That’s because metrics provide the analytical information you need to ensure your sales team (and sales funnel) are doing all the right things. But what metrics should you measure? Read on, and I’ll outline five of the ...
The key component of all sales strategies is opportunity management. And the key element of opportunity management is evaluating risk—having as much information as possible to outweigh the possibility of the sale becoming a loss. There are many components that make up a sales cycle, including the strengthening of interest and the evolution of that ...
As a lead moves along the sales pipeline, at some point it becomes an opportunity. This means it has the real potential of becoming what everyone in the sales force is after: a closed sale. Whereas qualifying a lead might be relatively simple, opportunity management is a bit more complex. This is because the stakes ...
It used to be that cold calling was the primary method of lead generation itself. It was a do-or-die proposition: those that succeeded at it remained salespeople. Those that didn’t usually found other careers. This was because salespeople were usually “flying blind” not knowing if the person they were calling was even remotely qualified as ...
It used to be the norm—and in some quarters it still happens—that the sales force generated its own leads. But today it is far more common to leave sales reps doing what they do best: closing sales. The job of lead generation is left to Marketing. As anyone informed will tell you, leads is a ...
It used to be that businesses owners—especially in those businesses that were sales-centric—would sweat the holidays. While it was mandatory that they paid their employees, those employees weren’t in the office and leads and sales were not being made. Money was being spent but none was coming in; not really a viable proposition. But today ...
The subject of “what constitutes a lead” is often the subject of heated debate between a sales force and a marketing department. Marketing is generating leads and sending them over to sales reps; the sales reps are firing back comments such as, “You call these leads? These guys were barely interested!” Today astute companies not ...
