Clearing The "maybes" from sales pipelines.
This is one in a series of articles on approaches to
enhancing sales management performance. The articles include coaching,
appraising, motivating, managing hiring, territory management and many
others.
Nothing helps sink sales managers and sales staff for that matter than
lots of "maybes" that are clogging up the sales pipeline. Your
preference should always be to have your staff get clear answers to
their proposals. " Yes" is fantastic, "No" is good, too, because it
lets you know that you need to improve something and as a sales manager
you should make sure you find out what went wrong every single time.
It is the "maybes" that cause most sales people and sales managers grief. These maybes:
- lull you into a false sense of security
- encourage you to stick with proposals, prices and products that aren't right
- mask poor performance from you staff
What to do!
- Identify all the "maybes" and then look at all those that are older than average
- Personally call some of them, with or without your salesperson's
input, to learn the real reason for the delay. Be prepared to close the
sale without resorting to lowering the price
- When you have a good picture of the reasons for the causes of "maybes" make changes to:
- Systemic problems like proposal templates, training, pricing etc
- Staff problems like attitude, activity and competence
- You may well find at least one staff member who has been hiding
lots of "no's" and as a result you will have a choice to make about
their future with your company.
If you are a sales person, then go review your maybes before your boss does.
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Last Updated ( Tuesday, 26 July 2005 )
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