Empower your Corporation with Sales Opportunity Qualification for corporations

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foreign McGowan president of strategic enhancement group how do we ensure our sales people are going after the right opportunities that's a question we often get asked by our clients everyone is so busy these days and sales people don't have time to chase every opportunity with the same effort and energy additionally ing to research by CSO insights over the past five years win rates have fallen from 50 percent to 47 percent no decision rates have gone up from 20 to 25 percent so how do we know which are the right opportunities today we're going to focus on three questions you want to make sure your sales people have answers to will the customer buy something does the opportunity have value for me and my company and will the customer buy from me let's look at that first question will the customer buy something is there a compelling event a strategic reason for the client to buy something are they showing a sense of urgency if the answer to one or both of these questions is no then it's likely they won't move forward and the salesperson will spend a lot of time and energy on an opportunity that turns out to be a non-decision does the opportunity have value for me and my company salespeople and their managers always have to ask is this business worth it does the opportunity warrant the amount of resources your company will need to spend to Win It not all business is good business this makes me think of an opportunity one of our clients had the size of the opportunity was good not huge but initially my client thought it seemed worth it but when they got well into their clients buying process they realized it had already taken a lot of their resources sales sales management upper management the head of research plus many others the client did not appear to be even close to a decision the buying process kept dragging out their client would be in a big rush for some information or a meeting the sales team would scramble to meet those requests and then months would go by before the client asked for more information the buying process was taking so long it became obvious there was no sense of urgency plus the amount of time and resources they had put into this so far concerned them if the client demanded so many meetings and presentations during the buy-in process what would it be like to work with them after the sale was the size of this sale really worth it ultimately my client decided not to pursue the opportunity and removed themselves from the process it would have been nice if they had figured this out much earlier in the sales process I believe if they had asked is this business worth it earlier and answered it honestly they would never have put that kind of time and energy into it the final question will the customer buy from me here you want to look at how well your company's offering fits the client's needs you also want to answer honestly is are offering better than our competitions salespeople should do their research and be able to show some evidence to prove that their conclusion is correct in summary after asking the following questions and coming up with the evidence to support your answers you and your sales people will be in the best position to decide whether this is good business to pursue and make that go no go decision those three questions are will the customer buy something does the opportunity have value for me and my company and will a customer buy from me if asked and answered honestly with evidence to back it up your team will be spending their time more wisely and going after opportunities that make the most sense and can deliver a win to learn more about managing opportunities please visit strategic enhancementgroup.com