The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

You’ve secured the appointment with the decision maker. You’re excited and feeling positive about the sales call. You’ve prepared for the meeting and think you have all the right questions. You move in for the close and just when you think it is about to happen, they throw you a curveball, “I need to talk this over with some other people in my company, can I get back to you next month?”

Other people? But aren’t you speaking to the decision-maker with the power to say yes? Of course, but you didn’t conduct the due diligence on the prospect’s decision-making process to uncover any possible decision influencers.

Studies show that reaching out to leads within an hour of them contacting you makes you seven times likelier to have meaningful conversations, and up to 50% of sales go to the vendor who responded first. There’s also a tenfold decrease in your odds of making contact with a lead if you wait more than five minutes to reach out after they submit a web form.

Whether it’s from clients, management, or themselves, salespeople are under a lot of pressure to perform faster when it comes to their sales process. We live and work in a fast-paced, “want it now” culture that can feel overwhelming at times. Sometimes there’s only one solution to closing more deals, and that’s to SLOW DOWN!

Frustration sets in when you look at all the pending business you have sitting in your sales funnel and realize that a good portion of it has been there for weeks! Those prospects you were sure were going to sign off on your proposal right away are instead sharing reasons why they’re not ready or telling you they need more time to think it over. You know that with every week that passes, the chances that any of them will turn into a sale diminishes greatly and you’re kicking yourself because you are now reduced to emailing your prospect with the subject line "Checking in" since you really have no other options left.

Are you experiencing this uncomfortable, bloated feeling right now?

That bloated pipeline isn’t just uncomfortable . . . it’s frustrating and, ultimately, very expensive. Yes, it can sometimes feel rewarding to say you have “a lot out there,” but we all know that pending business is only good if it ends up closing. 

Spoiler alert: This is not an article on how to close your pending deals. It’s way more valuable than that. 

The problem is not in the proposal or the funnel, but rather with the process.

I’m a sales performance improvement geek, and I admit it!

I enjoy discovering, and sometimes creating, things that help sales organizations improve revenue performance. I encountered some really cool things in 2018 — here’s a list of my top 5.

Which of the following will generate the highest return?

• More customers
• Keeping customers longer
• More revenue per customer

Any one of these can grow revenue. But one has been shown to consistently bring in a higher return on your investment. Most businesses say they are focused on these in the order of the list: adding more customers, than keeping them longer, and finally getting more revenue per customer.

The problem is that the research shows that a focus on more customers is the wrong path to maximize your return. And that it leads you to build the wrong solutions.

Well, you wouldn’t be alone — I hear this from sales managers all the time. Here are the reasons I see that salespeople too often select the wrong companies to pursue:

• They are opportunistic and therefore look for low-hanging fruit where getting access to decision makers is relatively easy. Sometimes that works out, but too often it translates into prospects that do not have the resources to be a key customer in your organization.
  
  
• They let their own preferences dictate who they pursue. There might be particular categories they are comfortable with, or types of individuals they like to deal with that prejudice their thinking about who they should pursue as a prospect.

The advertising game for traditional media is changing and evolving. In this case, change is not a good thing. It’s time for a revolution on your sales team. Are you ready? 

This sounds kind of dramatic, perhaps over-dramatic, but it is true. Some type of revolution needs to take place on your sales team in order for traditional media companies to stay in the game. 

Need proof? Here are some samples of reality:

Proposals come in all shapes and sizes. Some are highly-technical and data-focused, while others are more detail-driven. Some are filled with fluff, while others are pretty worthless. The best proposals are a combination of data, solutions, and detail.

Early in my sales career, I got a call from a veteran Account Executive across the hall. He worked for one of our other properties and saw that I was working with a prospect he was calling on. He wanted to set up a joint sales call. I was skeptical, since I'd recently met with that prospect, and the manager made it abundantly clear that he had already placed his budget for the year, and he was not open to new ideas.

As a group of salespeople were gathered for their weekly sales meeting, their manager said he had an exercise on focus that they would complete first. The manager walked around the room and laid a sheet of paper, face-down in front of each salesperson. He then told them to all turn the handout over. On the sheet was a single black dot in the middle of each page.