Sales Opportunity Management
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The document discusses the importance of opportunity management in sales and the role of a flexible CRM solution in improving sales effectiveness. It highlights the complexities in managing opportunities, understanding buyer behavior, and the necessity of analyzing past lost sales to enhance future strategies. The author outlines six vital qualities that a CRM should possess to support sales processes and ultimately boost closing ratios.
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Sales Opportunity Management
- 2. Nikolaus Kimla [email protected] www.pipelinersales.com CEO at Pipelinersales Inc. Written by... Based on the ebook: Opportunity Management
- 4. The stakes are higher: a well-paid salesperson is now going to invest valuable time into working the opportunity, engaging key people at the target company, making presentations, and utilizing all possible sales techniques. Sales Techniques: Opportunity Management While qualifying a lead might be relatively simple, opportunity management is a bit more complex.
- 5. Sales Techniques: Opportunity Management The salesperson isn’t dealing with the actual decision maker or makers. The budget isn’t there. Someone in the prospect company sours enthusiasm for your product or service. The prospect’s buying pattern isn’t fully understood. A competitor comes in under the radar and undercuts you. Despite the best sales techniques, a sale can go off the rails for any number of reasons.
- 6. Sales Techniques: Opportunity Management By accurately evaluating the risk factors: ● knowing all about your target prospect company ● knowing which employees within a company are vital for you to engage ● having an understanding of your target company’s buying process ● knowing all the qualifying questions to ask and get answered How can the odds be improved in your favor?
- 8. Knowing the Buyer Once an opportunity has been basically qualified (with a method such as BANT—Budget, Authority, Needs, Timeline) the salesperson must know about everyone on the buyer’s side that will be influencing the purchasing decision.
- 9. Knowing the Buyer The salesperson must also be well-versed in the buying pattern of the target company. What route does a purchasing decision take through the organization? Is there a seasonal aspect to their buying that could influence your sale for better or worse? How long does a purchase normally take?
- 10. Knowing the Buyer Another very important element of knowing the buyer is understanding any possible relationships or potential relationships that company might have with your competition.
- 11. Knowing the Buyer Tracking all of the above requires a flexible, intuitive CRM solution. Every possible bit of required data should be readily available in CRM for a salesperson to access and run with, so that he or she is well-armed for any unexpected events that may occur on any particular sale being worked.
- 13. Sales Rep Flexibility According to a recent Harvard Business Review article entitled “Dismantling the Sales Machine,” "Selling today requires flexibility, judgment, and a focus on results—not process. Process-driven sales machine approaches fall short, because they give sales reps no room to exercise judgment and creativity in dealing with highly knowledgeable customers."
- 14. Sales Rep Flexibility It can certainly be of great assistance to a sales rep to have a sales process to follow. But there comes a point when the salesperson knows best when to take a particular action and what that action should be, and it’s not always the one called for in the sales process.
- 16. Analysis of Lost Opportunities If sales management or even members of the sales force can statistically analyze past losses as part of opportunity management, such analysis can yield plentiful data that is helpful to the creation of new sales strategies, helpful to the improvement of closing ratios and helpful to taking time out of sales cycles.
- 17. Analysis of Lost Opportunities The actual problem comes about when information about past losses is not readily available. In the absence of such information people will naturally make assumptions. When incorrect such assumptions can obviously be quite destructive and will not lead to any meaningful correction of relevant issues.
- 18. Analysis of Lost Opportunities The key comes about in saving detailed records of past losses. When a potential sale becomes a failed close, all the information relating to it should be archived in such a way that it can be retrieved. The answer is a leading-edge CRM solution that contains such an archive, and allows access to all of the key data relating to failed closes.
- 19. 6 Vital Qualities of a CRM Solution
- 20. 6 Vital Qualities of a CRM Solution A CRM solution is crucial to sales. As a sale travels further up the pipeline, the precision of that CRM application increases in importance. By the time you’re well into opportunity management, your CRM solution had better be fully supportive or you run the risk of losing those opportunities. Here are 6 qualities a CRM solution should possess for it to fully empower opportunity management.
- 21. 6 Vital Qualities of a CRM Solution 1. It should allow complete and accurate rating of leads. 2. It should allow for complete data about the prospect company. 3. It should allow for flexibility of salespeople. 4. It should contain full facility for the analysis of lost opportunities. 5. It should be completely adaptable to your sales process—and any changes in your process that may occur in the future. 6. It should allow for placement of applicable documents in each pipeline step to which they apply.
- 22. A flexible, intuitive CRM solution is the backbone of your opportunity management. Make sure yours allows your sales force to proceed rapidly, confidently and successfully.
- 23. Pipeliner CRM meets all of the requirements laid out in this presentation. Download it today.
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