Wow! Can you believe the year is nearly ½ over? And every year I look around at this time and marvel at how off course from my goals I may be at this point. Sometimes in a very good way due to opportunities landing in my bath, and sometimes in a not so good way due to opportunities vanishing. End of quarter reviews are good to take stock of where you are, refocus and direct your energy where it can do the most good to make 2013 your best year ever!
Step 1 – organize your opportunities. I love pipeline management tools, CRMs, Sales reports and all those things that most people hate for one simple reason. Properly used I can greatly increase my productivity and my income. So whatever tool you use you need to make sure is updated with each prospect in their proper stages. Keep it simple. Here are mine:
- Suspect – someone I think is an opportunity but I haven’t spoken with yet.
- Prospect – I have had a conversation with this person and they have an interest in my service.
- Qualify – Meeting held and there was enough of an interest to warrant next steps. They have also shared with me their commitment to addressing the problem. I will also flush out Proposal – I will work with my prospect to outline the best solution to address their needs, this is not about ‘throwing something together’, but working with the prospect for them to have ownership in this solution.
- Decision – Review the proposal with prospect for them to clarify additional steps and determine steps to get started.
- Timeline – Managing the opportunity to keep it moving while the ‘stars align’ for you to get going.
- Win/loss Review – Your best lessons learned are from postmortems on your sales opportunities. Taking time to find out why your customers elected to work with you.
Step 2 – Get real. When you look at your opportunities find out where you really are with your chances of closing business. If you are unsure, pick up the phone and call the prospect. Don’t email. Take it off line for a real conversation. Find out what will happen next to advance the opportunity. Ask what would happen to cause them to shelve this, put it on hold or not do it. These are tough questions, but the answers will help you recognize what you really have in your pipeline. If the answer is no – then ask ‘who do you know who is dealing with similar issues and is committed to finding a solution?’ Go for the referral.
Step 3 – Call your existing clients who love you for a mid-year review and ask what they would like to have more access to. Seek out resources to further engage them with you. Either through your company or through your Center of Influence. Develop these relationships by bringing them great opportunities. Both with the client and with your referral partner.
By taking stock of your true opportunity base you will determine what you currently have in process that could close in the near future, in reaching out to your existing clients you will discover cross selling and referral opportunities and then through reaching out to your Center of Influence you will keep them top of mind with you regarding the investments you are making in their ‘emotional bank account’.
For more information on developing great Center of Influence relationships you can go to http://www.old.salezworks.com/9-steps-to-prospecting-executive-briefing/.