If you’re a sales manager, you need to know where your salespeople are with their accounts. If you’re a salesperson, you need to know even more. Taking a critical look at where you really are in the sales funnel process with your accounts is time well spent.
Our How Selling process is a series of seven steps to move the prospect from a decent lead to revenue on the books. These same seven steps can be used to track your current account activity. Most b2b salespeople should have some accounts in every step, all the time.
Here are some gut-check questions to ask yourself for each of the steps to the sale:
Find: How many new leads have entered your funnel?
Select: How many leads have you qualified as worth targeting?
Approach: How many targets are you actively approaching for a meeting?
Define: With how many accounts are you actively engaged in needs analysis?
Solve: With how many accounts have you completed a needs analysis and are now working collaboratively to build a buyable solution?
Confirm: For how many accounts do you have the appointment set to present your final recommendations for new or incremental business?
Deliver: How many solutions have been sold and now require your management to ensure that the client is more than satisfied?
This gut check can take place during a one-on-one with the sales manager, but why wait for that meeting? Write down the seven steps, and then list the accounts that are in each step.
Do you like what you see?
Where should you be putting your focus and effort this week?
