One of the common frustrations that many clients speak to us about is around the difficulties they face trying to effectively forecast their sales revenues.
It’s a tough one to answer on its own and it is generally a combination of many factors that make for any significant improvements.
One of the most obvious and simple steps is to get a good qualification method implemented into your sales process. When used properly (and honestly) it can very quickly identify true ‘prospects’ from potentially time consuming ‘suspects’. All too often we look at a spectacular list of ‘great prospects’ but within an hour of proper rigour and weeding it can be reduced by anything up to 75%.
Perhaps one of the most startling thoughts about not having a sales qualification method is when you sit with a business owner and spell out the implications (primarily the cost) of not having one, these often include:
- Do you actually need as many sales resources as you have?
- Are you sending your people out to close business that doesn’t exist?
- Do you waste money trying to find certain prospects that aren’t interested in you?
- Are your ‘gold plated’ opportunities actually worthless?
- Finally – are your sales staff as good as you/they think they are?
There are a whole host of acronyms that are used in sales qualification methods (BANT, SCOTSMAN, MEDDIC) and they all have their merits. But for me the real key is to just commit to something and follow it diligently and consistently from there onwards.
There are many benefits of adopting a qualification method, including:
- More focus on real prospects
- Less time wasted on opportunities that are never going to close
- It can easily form a key component of a structured sales process
- Better alignment of your sales resources
- More clarity on the training needs of your people
Ultimately if it does nothing else it will go some way to reducing your blood pressure at the end of the month.
You know what we mean… when you forecast something good for the month but only end up closing a quarter of this figure… because nobody wants to be in the boardroom when that happens!
