It would be wonderful—at least for some—if everything could be automated as has been done in factories. A complex machine such as an automobile can be put together practically from scratch along an assembly line, and there’s never a human hand involved. Computer-driven robotic precision goes into every rivet placed, every weld dropped. And with ...
Progressive pipeline management—otherwise known as opportunity management—is completely dependent on the information available to sales reps. It often happens that such data is somewhat sketchy and incomplete, which of course paints an unclear picture of the risk involved in a sale. The poorer the information, the more the activity of the sales force resembles haphazard ...
While the handling of sales opportunities is a technical subject that we’ve been exploring in some detail, there is an underlying factor that affects any salesperson’s opportunity management. It is also the underlying element to sales techniques. That is, the way an opportunity is viewed. A Matter of Viewpoint Often the way that a salesperson ...
A quality CRM tool is crucial both to the operation of a sales force and, factually, of a business itself. But as a sale travels further up the pipeline, the precision of that CRM application increases in importance. By the time you’re well into opportunity management—that stage of a sale in which a sales rep is ...
Sales management and sales forces don’t much care for pondering lost opportunity. It’s usually like, “We lost it, it’s gone, move on.” And it’s true that considering past losses is completely useless as an exercise just for itself; if one is simply mentally rehashing them, it can be productive of nothing but a bleak outlook. ...
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 ...
