For Sales Professionals time is valuable. You or your organization have probably hired sales assistants to take paper work and other stuff off the sales staff's plate. Why? Because salespeople are only doing their job if they are focused on selling of course. Working with customers, whether on the phone or in person, is where effective Sales Professionals spend their time. But it's not that simple. If you're in the food service business and I gave you a list of Realtors to call on, would it make any sense to spend your time meeting with those Realtors? Of course not.To really super charge your sales performance, you have to take a close look at WHO you are spending your time on. The fact is virtually every salesperson spends too much time on leads that are not at all likely to purchase. They just don't know how to tell the difference. Qualifying leads is not a new concept. You've probably already spent a lot of time in sales training and meetings listening to some preaching about it. But can you say that you are good at qualifying leads - really? How many of your proposals go no where? How many of your face to face presentations lead to a long series of put-offs and no sale? Why does this matter? Because just like you don't want to waste prime selling time with paper work and administrative tasks, you also don't want to waste valuable selling time on leads that aren't going to buy! The key is to know the difference - QUALIFYING.
If you qualify well, or better said, qualify accurately and do it up front, as a first step in your sales process, then you can minimize the time you spend on leads that won't buy and maximize the time spent on leads that will.
So first let's consider how big an impact better qualifying could have on your business. Here are a few questions you'll need to answer:
- What are the crucial steps in the sales process?Examples - Set appointment, presentation, proposal, close
- How much time is typically spent on each step?
- How many new leads or prospects go through this process within a given period (week, month, quarter..)?
- How many of them buy?
If you don't have this information, start by making a list of every presentation, proposal, etc. that you do for about twice the length of your typical sales cycle. Then just crunch the numbers.
Here's an example:
Let's assume you work with 50 new leads each month and each decent lead typically gets a 30 minute phone call, a one hour presentation and a proposal that requires 30 minutes to create. Add to that all the calls and emails that go into coordinating meeting times and following up, trying to close and you're easily up to 3 hours per lead or 150 hours per month. We'll assume that you have a 20 % overall close rate so, that means 10 out of 50 leads buy. So it takes 15 (150 divided by 10) hours of sales time to get a purchase.
So, in this example, 80% of the prospects you invest time with don't buy. That's 40 leads getting 3 hours each or 120 hours of sales time spent on leads for no return, every month. What if you just started asking the right questions up front and decided not to go on appointments until you get the right answers or at least to hold off on the presentation and proposal? Imagine that you could filter out 20% of the leads up front with a solid, simple series of questions that you use as the "bar" that leads have to get over before they "earn the right" to your valuable time? Now, 20% of 50 leads is 10 leads x 3 hours amounts to 30 hours freed up each month! That's almost a week of your time! Obviously that's significant. It lowers the time spent per sale from 15 hours to 12 hours. That in turn gives you more time to spend with qualified prospects who are going to buy which increases your commission checks!
But first, you must learn to ask the right questions up front and refrain from delivering time consuming and expensive presentations and proposals to leads that don't past the test. The good news is that its not really that hard to do. The hard part is being consistent. It's easy to "fall in love" with a lead. They have a way of telling you what you want to hear. It's takes self-discipline to hold your ground but that's easier when you understand the costs in time and money for spending time with the wrong leads.
Here's how you do it:
First, decide upon a set of questions that must be asked of every lead and the answers that determine whether the prospect is qualified. One way to identify these questions is to look at your customers. What do they have in common? Maybe they're in a certain industry or region. Maybe they're of a certain size. Maybe they all shared a similar challenge when they purchased from your business.
Some are obvious like "Are you the decision maker?" In fact that is the most important and most often neglected question. It's easy to make excuses in this area. You'll tell yourself, "I can't get in to see the CEO initially. I have to start with someone else and earn their trust so that they'll help me get the CEO's attention. Maybe so but, a staff engineer is not the decision maker. If you haven't spoken with the decision maker, then be very careful about the time you spend with this prospect.
Once you've identified the "Qualifying" questions and answers your next step is developing a process to respond prospects who don't meet your Qualification Standards. Most importantly, you need to become comfortable saying NO. The lead thinks she's qualified. She's going to ask "Can you send me a proposal?", "Can you come in for a demonstration?" and you'll have to break some bad habits. Most sales people see it as their role to please the customer. It's tough for them to say no. But remember that NO saves you time and puts more money in your pocket.
Of course, there are "softer" ways to say no. The best thing you can say is something like "Before I waste your time on a presentation, I'd like to find out more about your needs to be sure we're going to be able to help." Most importantly, you need a strategy to respond to these requests from leads that aren't decision makers. "Who will make the final decision on this purchase?", "Before I waste your time on a presentation, can we arrange to meet with the CEO to understand their needs?", etc.
There will be a period of trying things, learning and adjusting but, if you start trying, you'll get better and better at it. The absolute most important step is to hold yourself accountable. Of course, as I write this I realize it probably doesn't sound simple or easy. I think it's like taking the training wheels off your bike when you were a kid, once you get the hang of it, you can't believe you didn't try it sooner. Craig Klein, founder and President of SalesNexus, provider of online, hosted contact management and CRM systems. As a sales person, Sales VP and business owner, Craig has been exposed to the good, the bad and the ugly of sales.
|
Sales Gravy FEED
