Sales Pipeline Management

What is Sales Pipeline Management?

In today’s increasingly competitive world, companies must focus obsessively on maximising their sales opportunities. They must ensure that:

They invest their sales time, resources and investments in the areas of highest return
They achieve a regular flow of sales into the company to avoid damaging “boom-bust” cycles
They are able to rapidly respond to the changing needs of customers and specific opportunities and adapt their sales tactics accordingly
They can identify and diagnose which areas of their sales approach are working well and which need improvement
They can accurately track and forecast their sales and take corrective actions where needed
Sales Pipeline Management is a key management tool which has been developed to address these issues – yet many companies fail to implement it effectively, if at all.

Many organisations still rely heavily on instinct, guesswork and “seat-of-the-pants” management to control their sales pipelines. As a result, many are trapped in a vicious circle where they over-focus on highly visible areas such as closing late-stage deals, and under-invest in key areas such as early-stage lead generation.

This leads to a further drying up of quality opportunities, a panic-driven focus on closing the few remaining opportunities in the pipeline at all costs, and more neglect of the critical front-end. For small or medium-sized businesses – and particularly for owner-managed companies – this can be even more crippling, as the key business-winners are often also heavily involved in the execution of sold work – and are easily dragged away from working on filling up the earlier stages of the pipeline.

The issue behind these problems is often the lack of a visible and rigorous sales pipeline management process. It doesn’t have to be complex – but it does have to be done.

Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA

Executive Coach CJ Coaching

CRO Akwa Wellness

Ten Key Factors That Maximize Sales

10 Key Factors That Maximize Sales

Some sales people are successful today because they gain the majority of their targeted customers business. They manage the relationship and continuously build relationship equity. That doesn’t mean they operate with the "lone wolf"mentality doing almost everything for the customer.

These sales people are successful because they take full advantage of all the resources their company has to offer. Transactions and promos flow through a managed relationship. They also dedicate a specific amount of their time to new account development and penetration of those accounts with high potential rather than over providing service functions to existing accounts. Ten Key identifying factors that will help maximize sales success include:

1. Not being afraid to prospect for new accounts and new business. Have enough confidence to view rejection as simply a step closer to success.

2. Understanding the value of planning and actually documenting the key actions necessary to meet specific objectives at specific accounts.

3. Become professional with your planned presentations whether it is to an individual buyer or a group of customer decision makers. Perfect your elevator speech that clearly outlines your value proposition. Get it down pat for those opportunistic moments that may occur.

4. Goals are a matter of course and they include more than just revenue and margin growth. Milestones are established for target accounts to highlight progress toward their major goals.

5. No one likes record keeping and paperwork but the really successful sales professional understands the necessity and the value received in return for being methodical with their record keeping.

6. Time management should be forever on your mind and you need to continuously practice efficient time control.

7. You’ve got to be very, very, very hungy! Hungry for knowledge to improve your skills and demonstrate enough curiosity that you don’t wait for company sponsored seminars for education and training. Read, listen to tapes and finance your own self improvement in addition to company programs.

8. Don’t chase orders, chase customers. Be willing to lose an order but fight aggressively to never lose a customer unless you need to prune your territory garden due to unacceptable profitability.

9. Your objective on every sales call is to identify the customer’s real needs, not to just take an order. Take pride in being a solution provider and demand creator instead of a demand fulfiller.

10. Understand that often a key to your success lies in your ability to educate the customer. This may range in the form of business acumen to helping the customer understand real value. Become an expert at demonstrating the difference between price and cost.

The formula for success is simple:

FINDING THE CUSTOMER PAIN - TAKING THE PAIN AWAY = SETTING YOUR PRICE

Customers will pay plenty, if you can reduce their “ain” Find out what the customer’s problems are and where they are in pain. Look at it from their point of view, not yours.

Customers no longer spout off about quality products and reliable deliveries. That’s a given. Although all customers are trained to say “Your Price is to High”, if you find the pain, price is not an issue. Remember the emerging role of the sales professional today is not to increase sales. Let me repeat that— your role today is not to increase sales. Your role as a sales professional today is to systematically and consistently increase the number of customers who choose you to be their #1 supplier……..

And it’s not about Features and Benefits

Today it’s not about the features and benefits of your product or service. It’s about value and how your customers are going to make a profit. You no longer just sell yourself and everything falls into place. Today, relationships are still very important but they are the ante to play. Customers are smarter and more educated. You must bring every resource your company has into play and leverage those resources to create competitive advantage. Learn to really listen to your customers. Let them talk and when there seems to be a pause in the conversation resist the temptation to start talking again. Chances are good that the customer has more to say. The quieter you are the more they will tell you. Listen long enough with a few strategically placed questions and the customer might just tell you exactly how to gain his business. (And it won’t just be about price)

Drs. Christiaan Janssens MBA

Executive Coach CJ Coaching

CRO Akwa Wellness

Simple Sales Statistics

Sales Statistics

Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach
CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Selling Types

Selling types

The diverse nature of the buying situation means there are many types of selling job: selling

varies according to the nature of the selling task. The figure below shows that there is a fundamental distinction between order-takers, order-creators and order-getters. 
Order-takers respond to already committed customers; order-creators do not directly receive orders since they talk to specifiers rather than buyers; order-getters attempt to persuade customers to place an order directly.

There are three types of order-takers: inside order-takers, delivery salespeople and outside

order-takers. Order-creators are termed missionary salespeople. Finally, order-getters are

either front-line salespeople consisting of new business, organisational or consumer

salespeople, or sales support salespeople who can be either technical support salespeople or merchandisers. Both types of order-getters operate in situations where a direct sale can be made.


Christiaan Janssens
Executive Coach
CRO @ Spa Akwa Belgium

Cross-selling and up-selling

Cross-selling and up-selling

Cross-selling is the action or practice of selling among or between clients, markets, traders, etc. or the action or practice of selling an additional product or service to an existing customer. This article deals exclusively with the latter meaning. In practice, businesses define cross-selling in many different ways. Elements that might influence the definition might include the size of the business, the industry sector it operates within and the financial motivations of those required to define the term.

The objectives of cross-selling can be either to increase the income derived from the client or clients or to protect the relationship with the client or clients. The approach to the process of cross-selling can be varied.

Up-selling is a sales technique whereby a seller induces the customer to purchase more expensive items, upgrades, or other add-ons in an attempt to make a more profitable sale. Up-selling usually involves marketing more profitable services or products but can also be simply exposing the customer to other options that were perhaps not considered previously. Up-selling implies selling something that is more profitable or otherwise preferable for the seller instead of, or in addition to, the original sale.

The difference between up-selling and cross-selling are fairly nuanced, which is why many sales reps and marketers talk about cross selling and up-selling as a single discipline. Philosophically, when sales reps up sell, they convince your customers to increase the value of their orders (both to you and to them) by:

- Moving up to a more expensive version of what they're already considering purchasing (e.g., the six cylinder vehicle instead of the four cylinder, upgrading from economy to business class for a flight, a 42” TV instead of a 40”)

- Adding to their orders with additional vertically related products or services (e.g., "Would you like fries with that?", extended warranty, DVD player to go with the TV, paper to go with a printer, a hands free car kit to go with a mobile phone)

Vertically related are products or services that enhance or are related to the core or base product. A cross-sell refers to sales of another product/service type horizontally related (i.e., another type of product/service usually orthogonally related if at all) to what you're already considering. For instance, when one purchases a new vehicle and the car salesman encourages the buyer to use the manufacturer's auto financing capabilities... Another cross selling example is when one calls the reservation centre of an airline and at the end of the call the agent asks if buyer needs a rental car at the destination, and if so, he/she would be delighted to connect him/her to one of their car rental partners.

How to up-sell

A little not a lot

Up-sell works better when there’s only a small difference in price between the item that you’re suggesting your customer purchases and the product they’re looking at. Otherwise it can be as successful as convincing someone who’s taken a second hand Toyota Corolla for a test drive that they should purchase a Porsche instead.

Match key features

Up-sell works best when the key features of the product are kept the same.

Be brand aware

For some products, a customer considering a particular brand is more likely to up-sell to products by the same brand. This is relevant for cross sell as well. Sure, that Canon lens does fit the model of Sony camera your customer’s looking at, but they are much more likely to purchase a Sony lens for their Sony camera. If they’re considering a Nokia phone you’ll probably have more luck up-selling them to the next model up also by Nokia.

Benefits count

When trying to persuade your customer to spend more, make sure you clearly spell out the benefits of upgrading from what they were originally considering.

How to cross-sell

Choose carefully

Certain products work better than others for cross-sell. Think like your local supermarket.

Watch the price

Cross-sell works better when the suggested items are half price or lower than the item being purchased.

Relate

Products that naturally go together work better for cross sell.

Higher price

Cross sell tends to be more effective when the original product is higher priced or requires more thought. Cross sell is less successful when trying to convince a customer to spend extra when they were going to buy a lower cost item.

Closing The Sale

Close the Sale

Empathy

Empathy is an intimate understanding of the feelings, thoughts, and motives of the other person, the prospect or the customer. That's why empathy is of prime importance in selling. Empathy is putting yourself into the prospect's shoes. It's knowing and feeling what your prospect is feeling. It's knowing exactly how to proceed depending on the information the prospect has given you.

Until you develop empathy for your customers, until you develop the skill of calling for and getting a favourable agreement that sales people call consummation, you probably won't make it in selling. The customer should sense that you understand and care about helping them solve their problems, not that you are just looking for a sale.

As a salesperson, you must truly believe that you can satisfy the prospect's needs, you must see the benefits, features, and limitations of your product or service from your prospect's view; you must weigh things on the prospect's scale of values, not your own, you must realize what is important to the prospect.

Focusing on your prospect enables you to answer the crucial question in any selling situation: When should you close the sale?

Watch for signs that a deal is near

There's a certain electricity in the air when the prospect is ready to go ahead, but here are some positive buying signs to watch for:

The prospects have been moving along at a smooth pace, and suddenly they slow the pace way down. They're making their final analysis or rationalizing the decision.

They speed up the pace. They're excited to move ahead. Suddenly, they start asking lots of questions. Like anyone else, they ask questions only about things that interest them.

They ask questions about general terms of purchase before they settle on one particular model. Some people immediately start asking questions about initial investment, delivery, and so on. They feel safe doing this because they know you can't sell them everything. If they ask these questions after you know exactly what they want, it's positive stimulus.

Go for a test close after you get positive stimulus. If you think that your customers are ready to buy, try a test question to make sure you are reading the stimulus correctly. As you get more experience in selling, you will become more proficient at reading body language and other buying signals..

Don't shorten the sales process

Some people start relying so much on positive readings that they short cut other vital steps such as qualifying or demonstration. When you shorten the overall selling cycle, it's hard to go back and restore the steps you skipped. Invariably, shortcutting steps causes you to lose many sales. Although it is important to become better at knowing when to close the sale, each prospect should get your full presentation to make sure you don't come up short at the end.

When you ask a question from which you expect an answer confirming that the prospect wants to go ahead with the purchase, you want one of two things to happen:

- The prospect gives you a yes or an answer that indirectly confirms their desire to go ahead with the sale.

- The prospect gives you an objection or asks for more information to enable them to make a -decision.

If you start talking before the prospect answers, you lose control of the negotiations. And you gain nothing. You have neither a confirmation to go ahead nor an objection; you wasted your attempt to consummate the sale.

Would you like delivery on the 10th or the 20th? They pause to think when would be the best time to have the product delivered. You get uncomfortable with the silence and start thinking that they don't want it. You panic and say, Okay, how about if I give you another 5% off? When the total investment wasn't what the prospect was considering in the first place. That's why you always wait for them to respond before you speak, after asking your consummation question, and why it is so important to keep quiet after you ask your final consummation question. If you have a big mouth, this would be the time to put your foot in it (literally) to keep yourself quiet.

If you start looking around or fidgeting, you distract the customer and let them know how uncomfortable you are. Neither of these scenarios helps you move toward a successful consummation. Try to focus your stress in a way that they will not see or recognize it as a nervous action. For example, recite the ABCs backward to yourself, or wiggle your toes — they can't see that, either. Your stress-release can be that simple.

Lead Generation

Lead Generation

While some sales organizations subscribe to the belief that the "quantity" of leads matters most, others place greater value on the "quality" of sales leads.

However attention must go on both the quantity and quality of leads generated. An effective sales organization must maintain a robust network of active sales leads as a means to generate substantive results and increased value for their companies.

Effective lead generation includes proper emphasis placed upon the lead generation process including qualifying methods, strategies to foster product demand, recognition of the significance of differentiation, and an intense focus on customer relationship management (CRM), recognizing that customers tend to buy from people they like.

Sales Closing Techniques: The No Hassle Technique

No Hassle Closing Technique

You must make completing the deal so absolutely easy for him that any thought that might put him off is not there.

Fill in all forms for the customer, do all the paperwork.

Include delivery, installation, setup etc.

Examples

I've filled in all the paperwork and all you need is to sign here.

It will be delivered Tuesday and fully installed by qualified people.

The No Hassle Closing Technique works by being so simple and easy for the other that any anticipated difficulty or hassle that may be holding him back is blown away.

It also encourages him to return the favour as an exchange for your help with the completion.

Sales and buy cycles

http://www.sce.carleton.ca/faculty/tanev/TTMG_5005_P/Session_4_Jan_30_2008/What%20your%20Sales%20Manager%20Is%20Up%20Against.pdf


Every year, the research firm CSO Insights publishes the results of its Sales Performance Optimization survey, an online questionnaire given to more than 1,000 sales executives worldwide that seeks to examine the effectiveness of key sales practices and metrics. In this article, two partners from CSO provide the 2005 and 2006 survey highlights, which describe the challenges today's sales organizations face and how they're responding. An overall theme is the degree to which the buy cycle has gotten out of sync with the sell cycle. Buyers have always had a buy cycle, starting at the point they perceive a need. Sellers have always had a sales cycle, starting at the point they spot a prospect. Traditionally, the two have dovetailed--either because the seller created the buyer's perception of need or because the buyer pursued a need by contacting a salesperson (often for product information). Now the buy cycle is often well under way before the seller is even aware there is a cycle--in part because of the information asymmetry created by the Internet. The implications for managing a sales organization are profound in that sales training must now address how reps handle an environment in which buyers have more knowledge than they do. The authors offer evidence that sales executives are taking--and should take--aggressive action to train and retain sales talent, manage the sales process, and use sales support technologies to meet the challenges of this new environment.