Work Smarter: Don’t Waste Time on Deals That Won’t Happen

Rachel Clapp Miller

The competitive nature of salespeople mean that they hate to lose. Giving up an opportunity to make a sale just isn’t in the typical salesperson’s DNA.

Like a bad relationship, salespeople can linger too long hoping they’ll be able to change the circumstances. Sometimes though, you need to focus your time and energy on an opportunity that’s worth your time.

The time your salespeople spend trying to turn around a dwindling deal is valuable time that they’re not spending on qualifying better opportunities.

How to Work Smarter

Customer Verifiable Outcomes build qualification into the sales process, and allow sellers to qualify opportunities based on what the customer is doing at a particular buying stage. They may include things like

• Documented pain points that need to be corrected
  
• Knowledge that the organization is ready to invest resources around a new product or recent acquisition

These buying indicators help provide your sellers with the necessary information to advance the opportunity to the next stage of the buying process. The same benchmarks can also be just as effective at indicating when it’s time for the seller to walk away. When you try to qualify a deal, and the information you collect tells you that the opportunity isn’t a good fit, move on.

Help your sales teams work smarter. Help them focus on opportunities that will turn into closed-won deals with a better qualification process. Consider these questions about sales execution in your organization:

1. What sales process are you following in your own organization? Is it repeatable and actionable across the sales organization?
   
2. How do you ensure that your reps aren’t skipping steps in the sales process?
   
3. How do your reps know when to progress opportunities to the next sales stage?
   
4. What are the leading indicators that tell you it’s time to disqualify an opportunity?
   
5. How well is your sales process aligned with the way your customers buy?

Providing your sales teams with the tools to qualify, advance and close sales opportunities will shorten your sales cycles and improve your win-rate. Developing tools like Opportunity Qualifiers and Pre-Call Planners will help sellers consistently manage opportunities. Remember, simply following a sales process doesn’t guarantee the deal will close. Make sure your team is consistently qualifying all opportunities throughout the sales process. It’s a sure way to prove any given opportunity warrants investment of a salesperson’s valuable time and resources.

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