KEYS TO BUILDING A RELIABLE PIPELINE Know your close rates Know your conversion rates from 1st call to 1st meeting and from 1st meeting to proposal, etc. Define your sales process Qualify prospects hard Only allow qualified prospects in the pipeline Prospect enough to fill the pipeline with the above criteria

You started the year with your pipeline predicting a strong 1st quarter. But with two months of the quarter in the rear view mirror, sales are down, close dates have moved into the future, and making your number by the end of the quarter will require herculean effort. If this sounds like what you go through quarter after quarter then you might be suffering from a serious sales disease called Pipeline bloat!

Every business owner and sales manager knows that a robust pipeline is the key to future revenue growth. However, the pipeline must be accurate and reliable so that appropriate business decisions can be made. Pipeline bloat occurs when sales people fail to qualify prospects before entering them in the pipeline. They use their own judgment to determine who is qualified and who is not. Business owners contribute to pipeline bloat by putting pressure on salespeople to find new prospects without having objective criteria to define who is qualified. Here are 4 things you can do to expand your pipeline and eliminate pipeline bloat:

• INCREASE PROSPECTING – The Optimal Salesperson® prospects consistently but most salespeople don’t do enough prospecting. You must know how many cold calls you need to generate the number of prospects which will yield the sales you need to meet your goal. Far too often I see sales organizations go into the end of a period needing to close 50% of the pipeline to make their goal, which seems reasonable except that historically they only close 20%. In this case the problem isn’t the closing rate; the problem is not enough prospecting.
• FOCUS ON QUALIFYING PROSPECTS – Many salespeople put any and every prospect in the pipeline. The Optimal Salesperson® knows that prospects should only be in your pipeline if they meet certain minimum criteria you establish. I believe as a minimum no prospect should be counted on if you haven’t talked to the client; uncovered a compelling reason to buy from you; and have had a discussion about money.
• END PURSUITS SOONER – Hope is not a strategy. Be honest with yourself. As soon as The Optimal Salesperson® determines that the prospect is focused on someone else, she ends the pursuit. There is no use in staying in the game just to keep the other guy honest.
• IMPROVE SELLING SKILLS – Learn to get better referrals. Learn how to get to higher levels in the organization. Learn how to ask better questions. Learn how to uncover the client’s budget. Identify your own self-limiting beliefs and work to overcome them. It’s a new economy, new skills are required. Optimal Salespeople® know that they are either getting better or falling behind.

You can’t be truly successful in sales unless you prospect consistently. Many people will disagree believing that as long as they get their number by the end of the quarter or the end of the year it doesn’t matter when it comes … or how it comes … or at what expense.

The struggling salesperson makes a lot of calls one day but then gets wrapped up chasing one or more deals and then doesn’t prospect for a few days or weeks. They are busy writing a proposal that is “critical”. Or they are engaged in solving a problem for a client (which they personally just HAVE to handle) or they are catching up on some paperwork. And there is always a golf outing to attend. Whatever the excuse (and they are ALL excuses) prospecting is sporadic at best and the pipeline ends up having some major holes in it. For a three month sales cycle, lack of prospecting in April leads to lack of sales in July and there is very little you can do about it in July to fix it. The optimal salesperson® prospects every day and, no matter what is happening, does not a let a week go by without hitting their prospecting numbers. They realize that like a tomato farmer who can’t harvest in July what he didn’t plant in April they can’t close in July what they didn’t add to the pipeline in April. Even if the struggling sales person is successful in pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the end of the quarter time after time, it takes a toll. He will attract lots of adult supervision by his manager, he will be under constant stress personally, and his family will feel the effects of his lack of consistency as he has to spend extra time selling and be unavailable to them. Or worse, they will feel the stress.

The Optimal Salesperson® realizes that prospecting has a very high priority every day and every week no matter what else is happening. She realizes that the early part of the sales cycle doesn’t actually take that much time. The initial call to set up an appointment, even if it is a cold call, will only last a few minutes. The calls that don’t connect take a minute or less. So even 30 calls that only connect with 5 people should only take a couple of hours per week. No one is so busy that they can’t find a couple of hours per week. One trick is to do the prospecting first then fit the other stuff in around it. Everyone knows that proposals and paperwork fill up whatever time you give it. So give it less time. Success in sales is achieved by consistent daily activity not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of prospecting dormancy. So prospect consistently. Remember, nothing less than your family’s standard of living depends on it.

I may not refer you to my colleagues even if I think highly of you because I am unsure of whether my colleague is open to having you call. I may not be sure of what you will say and I do not want either to be embarrassed. However, if you let me call my colleague in advance, and see if they would be interested in talking to you and have problem you can fix, it is a win for everyone involved. it is a win the colleague because he gets a recommendation to a trusted source; it is a win for you because you will close half of this type of introduction; and it is a win for me because I helped two people I care about. Change your beliefs about introductions and watch your production soar while your prospecting time shrinks.

Your forecasts are unreliable. Deals look good and then stall. You seem to be wasting a lot of time with prospects who don’t ever make a decision. You have lots of prospects but still struggle to hit your numbers every month. If this describes you, then you may be suffering from a common sales malady known as pipeline bloat. This is a chronic condition among salespeople who do not qualify prospects properly or fully. Here’s a typical scenario. The prospect responds to some marketing material and the salesperson calls to follow up. The prospect says that they have an interest in the product and asks for some information. The salesperson gives some information and skillfully gets an appointment to visit the prospect. The salesperson researches the company online and discovers that they fit their ideal demographic perfectly. The salesperson meets the prospect and discovers what they are looking for and shows them the product. The prospect is excited by the product and indicates he is very interested indicates he has authority to buy just has to ”check with the boss” and requests a proposal. The salesperson emails the proposal and notes in his calendar to follow up in a few days and updates his pipeline indicating a nice sale this month. Two months and 15 phone calls later it still hasn’t closed. The prospect is not quite as excited but still interested. Two months after that the project dies.

This could all have been avoided if the salesperson had done a better job of qualifying up front. Resist the urge to write a proposal until you have uncovered a compelling reason to buy. You need to know more than just what they want. You must know why it is important to them. What problem does it solve? What happens if the problem doesn’t get solved? What have they tried in the past? Why did that not work? When do they need it and why is that date important? Whose life will be affected and how will it be affected if they don’t fix the problem? There are many more questions but you get the idea. Don’t fall for the prospect’s excitement. Of course qualification is not complete until we know how much they want to spend and what the decision process is and when the decisions will be made. Spend more time in the qualification process and you will end up writing fewer proposals because most won’t qualify for one. But you will write more business. You will waste less time with unqualified prospects. You will do less chasing. Your forecasts will be more accurate and you will get rid of pipeline bloat forever.

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Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010 and Optimal Selling, Sales Conversations of the Optimal Salesperson.

No! It is not closing business. No! It is not qualifying prospects. These are very important and are of course how salespeople are ultimately paid. However, the number one priority for sales people is prospecting … Building a pipeline. Put enough people in your pipeline and no matter how bad you are at the qualifying and closing you will hit your goal. Yes, I know that if you are better at qualifying and closing you need fewer prospects. However, the secret to success in sales is consistent daily prospecting; not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of doing nothing. I would rather be a master prospector than be a master closer and have no one to work my magic on! Here is a one-minute video that speaks to this topic.

Identifying your prospect is critical if you are to grow your book of business rapidly and efficiently. When I ask salespeople to describe their ideal prospect, I often get vague answer s or answers which are not very useful. They say things like “I sell widgets to small and medium sized companies in the Midwest.” Or they say “I work with people with a net worth of $10 million and up to get them a better return”. How can I refer to either of these people? I don’t know what kind of company uses widgets or who in the company buys them or who my friend wants to be introduced to. And how am I supposed to know what someone’s net worth is?

Every salesperson should identify their typical ideal prospect in writing. The ideal prospect is a company who values your opinion, uses a full range of your products and pays you a fair price. Your description should include:

Problems that you solve for this type of company.

What the general demographic characteristics are.

Who you need to make contact with.

It is important to describe in some detail what problems you solve for this type of company because problems are what will cause the prospect to buy from you. It also allows them to relate better to what you do. This will be important in many different situations. If someone asks you what you do you should say “We work with Presidents of small to medium sized companies who are struggling with how to reduce their energy bills.” The person asking the question can relate to that. They might even say, “Hey my uncle runs a company and they are always complaining about the energy bills.” However, if you were to say “We perform energy audits. Our expertise is in Thermodynamics and heat transfer calculations.” No one would have any idea what you actually do. And, more importantly, would have no idea who to refer to you. They would probably say something like “that sounds interesting.”

If you start thinking in terms of what problems you solve rather than what you actually do, you will find that your conversations with prospect go easier, your referral sources will have a better idea of who to refer you to, and it will be easier to find the prospects that you need to fill up your pipeline.

Dan Caramanico is a salesforce development expert and he is the author of The Optimal Salesperson® One of Selling power’s top ten books for 2010. Get his weekly 1-minute video sales tips and some free sales training www.optimalsalesperson.net

Have you ever been in a conversation with a prospect when all of a sudden (or so it seems) they get defensive? Have you ever been cruising right along with a prospect then suddenly they clam up and become guarded about what they tell you? The chances are that whatever you were saying or doing looks like an attack to the prospect. There are several ways this might happen. I will discuss the top three. If you avoid these three pitfalls your prospect will not be as likely to fight you and will be more open to what you have to say.

• Don’t be condescending. This can happen when you have a lot of experience or when you have much more knowledge than the prospect. Inadvertently you can begin to talk down to the prospect, or preach to the prospect or take a didactic stance with the prospect. When the prospect senses this, he or she feels like you are putting them down. This is true even if you are not trying to do so. Many times it is your tonality that communicates to the prospect what they are feeling. To protect against this, you can take a deferential stance which will give the prospect the idea that you hold them in a position as high as or higher than your own, and will almost automatically get your tonality right. Of course your belief has to be consistent with that stance or you will sound phony which is a whole other problem.
• Don’t be arrogant. Arrogance will always cause a hostile environment. The prospect will either fight you or clam up. Most people don’t set out to be arrogant on a sales call. But when they are insecure or feel like they need to prove themselves, they come across that way. Be humble and you will not attract undue resistance. Have the humility to realize that though you are an expert in your field you are a rank amateur in what the prospect’s problems are and how she feels about them. You can’t hide arrogance it comes through your tonality and body language loud and clear.
• Don’t use jargon and Buzz words. Of course every field has its own particular language. But you should be careful not to assume that the prospect understands it all. It may make you feel like the expert when you use big words, technical language or insider terminology but it will make the prospect feels stupid if they do not understand. They won’t tell you they don’t understand they will either stop interacting or go on the offensive. The worst part is they may not remember what you said but they will remember that they did not feel good when you were talking and mark you as someone to avoid. This may all be just a vague feeling on their part , but it will color every other interaction you have with them.

Be careful how you speak with a prospect you may be telling them more than you think.

Related Video

No! It is not closing business. No! It is not qualifying prospects. These are very important and are of course how salespeople are ultimately paid. However, the number one priority for sales people is prospecting … Building a pipeline. Put enough people in your pipeline and no matter how bad you are at the qualifying and closing you will hit your goal. Yes, I know that if you are better at qualifying and closing you need fewer prospects. However, the secret to success in sales is consistent daily prospecting; not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of doing nothing. I would rather be a master prospector than be a master closer and have no one to work my magic on!

Here is a one-minute video that speaks to this topic.

… unless, of course, you are selling something for their own personal use. Here is why:
• Their incentive is to save money. i.e. reduce your price
• They don’t know much about the use of the product or service beyond what is written in the specifications.
• They don’t know anything about the problem your product or service is designed to fix.
• Your value proposition is lost on them
• Once you start in the purchasing department, it is virtually impossible to get to the end user without causing the purchasing department to be upset.
They are an important part of the sales process. You will probably end up dealing with the purchasing department. Just don’t start there.