Marketing and selling products and services
is a metric game and time management
business model. In this economy, success is
all about knowing your numbers and managing
your time — number of leads generated; the
number of qualified prospects generated from
those leads; the number of leads that
progress through your sales cycle steps; and
ultimately the number of deals closed.
Do you know your
metrics?
How do you
compare?
Every lead that is not
qualified distracts from your available time
to find and sell product and professional
service prospects that are in the buying
cycle now.
Speed
is a business success tool.
When your sales
pipeline is small, your sales forecast
accuracy and lead quality diminishes.
To increase the size
of your sales pipelines and time management
success, focus on making your targeted
prospects take action steps with you during
your sales cycle to prove that they are
qualified. The world is full of professional
lookers that will waste your time . . . and
ultimately reduce your revenue capture
success. The faster you qualify a prospect
based on the action steps they take . . .
the more you will sell.
“There are a
lot of things that go into creating success.
I don’t like to do just the things I like to
do. I like to do things that cause the
company to succeed. I don’t spend a lot of
time doing my favorite activities.” –Michael
Dell
To
be more successful, do what you don’t like
doing first.
What
kind of action steps should prospects take
to prove that they are qualified?
-
Have your prospects confirm their
targeted date of purchase and when they
want to be operational – to make sure it
is within your normal selling cycle
time.
- Have them tell
you who will be signing the contract.
- Get them to
verbalize how your offering will fix
their business issues. If they can’t,
then you may have incorrectly
communicated your business value.
- Get your
prospects to talk to your existing
customers earlier in your sales cycle.
Customer referrals communicate your
value three dimensionally through the
eyes of others.
In sales, you work for
yourself and you are an entrepreneur. You
own your business. Accelerate your speed,
improve prospect lead qualification and
apply perseverance and you can sell more
even in today’s crazed economy.
“I’m
convinced that about half of what separates
the successful entrepreneurs from the
non-successful ones is pure perseverance.“
–Steve Jobs
I welcome your
comments.
About Rick Erling
and The CxO Group
Rick Erling is CEO and
Founder of The CxO Group, LLC. We are a
managing partner of the Value Forward
Network and have
business coaching partners in five
countries making us one of the world's
largest management consulting groups focused
on helping companies increase corporate
revenue capture.
We work with senior executive teams to
integrate sales process, marketing
methodology, corporate strategy and
financial management into one outbound
revenue capture program to increase
corporate revenue. We do this by assessing
the value your customers see and the value
you think you have and then measure the
"value variance" gap between the two. Once
we have identified the "Value Variance"
between the two, we then make appropriate
strategic and tactical recommendations on
your corporate strategy and marketing
programs to close the gaps. When this is
completed, we then train your sales team to
sell to management more effectively using
techniques that are linked to our
recommendations.
Top-performing organizations
are increasing their companies' revenue,
within a constricted economy by investing in
business growth acceleration strategies. For
more on increasing your revenue capture
effectiveness, subscribe to my
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If I can help you or your firms revenue
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The CxO Group,
email me,
or call me at (972) 727-6880.
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