Loading summary
Transcript1 lines
- [00:01]
A
Why does your pipeline look full but nothing is moving, let alone closing? Yeah, the syndrome of the full pipeline, but nothing is moving. That's the topic. And the show begins right now. You're listening to the Sales Hunter podcast with Mark Hunter, where the focus is to help you as a salesman, sell with confidence and integrity. And now, here's your host. While your pipeline looks full and nothing's moving, let alone closing. Okay, I'm going to call out the elephant in the room. It's not what we're talking about, but I'm going to call out the elephant in the room. Do you have it full to keep your boss happy? Is it to keep your boss happy and that's why you have it in there? Okay, if that's the case, there's a whole separate conversation that you need to have with your boss. And I'll tell you what, I've got podcasts, I've got resources on my website to deal with this, because managers cut the crap. You only want stuff in the pipeline that is going to have potential to close, Period. Okay, let's get to the subject. I'm off my rant. First of all, let's not confuse activity with opportunity. Wrong again. Now, you know I love talking about activity. And I always say, hey, if you do enough activity, things are going to happen. And you're right, it is. But make sure it's the right activity with the right opportunities. You have got to line this up, because what I find happening is people will stuff their pipeline with stuff just to give them a warm and fuzzy feeling. It's time to cut it out. I want you to have in your pipeline only. Only those opportunities that have a real potential. Closing now, what's that real potential? It's going to vary by industry, it's going to vary by customer, it's going to vary by territory. So I can't really say. But what I'm saying is this, that if you have something in your pipeline, and we'll say you have five stages, this is an easy way to measure if you have five stages in your pipeline, if it is not moving by at least one stage every 30 to 45 days, get it out of there, get it out, or at least park it off on the side, way off on the side, but get it out, because it's all it's going to do is it's going to waste your time. In other words, if every 30 to 45 days at the max, it's not moving a stage, so you have five steps in your selling process. Get it Out. Get it out. Move it. Move it over to your marketing list. If you're a solopreneur, move it over somewhere else. But don't waste your valuable cycles chasing those people, okay? Activity does not always equal opportunity. Here's what I want you to dial in on. Are you doing activity with customers who have shown an interest, but there's no intent? I've been on a soapbox on this for the last several months, and it's very, very key because there's a lot of people. And I do. I do this, too. I have had. I have had people, salespeople reaching out to me because there's, yeah, I've got a level of interest, but there's no level of intent. So I've got to be asking difficult questions right up front. Hey, how have you made a decision like this in the past? Why is this important? Who else have you been talking to? What are some other solutions? What happens if you don't solve this issue? I want you asking questions like this up front early on. Now, you notice I wasn't talking about budget necessarily, because budget's really not typically an issue. Now, capital expenditure items and so forth, they may have to be budget and so forth, but that's a separate issue. Okay? But what I'm saying is I got to find out if there's a level of intent. Because if there's a level of intent and the issue is strong enough, then you bet my activity is going to help me create an opportunity for the customer. Now, activity can also consist of just getting to know the customer. So again, I'm going to do that right up front. I'm going to do that right up front because I got to understand the customer, to understand who they are, how they operate, et cetera, et cetera. But then I've got to quickly pivot to now beginning to determine as to whether or not there is intent. Now, along the way, what are you doing? You're creating trust. You're creating a level of confidence. Oh, you're demonstrating integrity. You're demonstrating integrity because you're putting the customer first. Because here's the whole thing. We have to realize that we are selling to the customer on the buyer's timeline, not the salesperson's timeline, period. Now, there are too many industries that have been hijacked by salespeople. Automotive industry, I mean, how many automobile dealers wind up having big sales at the end of the month because they got to meet their quota, they got to make their quota. Salespeople guilty of this, too. And I used to when I was in corporate America, end of the quarter, got to sell more. So I'm not talking about this. What I'm talking about is true intent. That's the opportunity. Now here's the whole thing. Does the deal in your pipe have a clear next step? In other words, what is the next step that you're taking them through? In other words, you've got this opportunity in your pipeline and you have a clear next step. My clear next step is to get a meeting with so and so. My clear next step is to go visit this location. My next step is that they're going to send me this information. In other words, a clear next next step. This is absolutely key. What I'm looking for is I'm looking for customer participation. This is key. If the customer is not willing to engage with you, you got to stop and ask yourself, is the opportunity real? If the customer is willing to engage with you, this shows that there's some intent. So I'm looking for that. I don't hesitate when I'm dealing with a customer to sit there and say, hey, take a look at this and let me know your thoughts and opinions. And I can use whether or not they respond back to me with their comments and thoughts as to whether or not this is a valid opportunity. It's a real quick way to help me determine. Now, it's not perfect. None of these ideas I share with you are absolutely perfect. But what I'm doing is I'm asking you to make sure that there is a next step. Because if there's not a next step, you just got this thing parked in your pipeline to keep yourself happy. Next piece is you've got to make sure that there is a defined problem. Is there a defined problem? Because again, if you have not been able to find out from them what their defined problem is, that's why I love asking the questions I share with you at the beginning. What happens if you don't solve this? What are the other options you're looking at? Why is this issue so important? Why now? Why are we talking now and not a year or two from now? You've got to be able to ascertain what the defined problem is and what I'm looking for with the defined problem, if it's any size of a deal, I'm looking to hear it from two different people. Two different people. Now this is really key, especially if you're in capital expenditure, you may need to go to three, four different people within the company. The reason being is this one person may say, it's critical. But unless they're the economic buyer, the one that can pull the trigger, who really cares? And chances of you reaching the economic buyer right out of the chute, probably not there. Unless it's a small company and you're dealing with the owner, the CEO, something of that nature. So what does this mean? This means you have got to back up the bus here and you've got to really make sure that you understand what the defined problem is. And then you've got to figure out if your solution is the right solution and how is your solution going to be better than other options out there. In other words, I'm, I'm, I'm already going through this now. That doesn't mean I take it out of my pipeline. But I got to be thinking, because again, is this going to really move forward? Because they may have defined the problem and I just can't, I just can't address it. So what I may do is I may have to say, hey, there's a better solution for you, and it's over here. Now, does that mean I dropped the relationship? No, I'm going to keep the relationship because chances are there's something else I can help them with. And this is, this is absolutely key. So stay in the game with them. But here's the thing. If there's no defined problem, there's certainly no intent. And that means all the R is interested. And I'm sorry, but I don't get paid to have conversations with people who are just interested. I want to take my time. I'm interested in a lot of topics, I'm interested in a lot of things. But is the salesperson going to be willing to spend time with me on that? No, because it's not of intent. Stop and ask yourself this question. I want you to go back and I want you to look at every deal in your pipeline right now. I want you to go back and, and look at every deal you have in your, in your pipe. And I want you to ask yourself this question, do I have a very clear next step? Sales managers, you're listening to this. This is something you, you're going in to your CRM system, looking at your people and looking at their notes and saying, okay, what's the clear next step? This is why go back. And I said, you know, if you have a five step selling process, what are the gates they got to go through to move to each one? So I got to understand what's the clear next step? Okay. And then I got to really ask myself, do we have clarity as to what the defined problem is. Now, sales managers, if you're listening to this, the piece you want to look for is the defined problem. And why and who did the salesperson hear it from? No assumptions. Salespeople get themselves into trouble when they play this game of assumptions on the defined problem. I think this is what the problem is until I hear it from the customer. And like I said earlier, I'm listening for it from two people. Two people that this is what their defined problem is. Then I know that, okay, I got something, something to go with. Or minimally, if it's a smaller business, we'll say, and it's one person making the decisions. Am I hearing them talk about that defined problem twice on two different meetings, two different occasions? This is key. This is absolute key. You see, the whole thing here is I want to qualify based on truth, not hope. I should say qualify based on truth, not assumptions. Salespeople are notorious for making assumptions in their pipeline that are just that, assumptions. Now, they do this. Salespeople do this because, oh, I work in this industry, and all these companies are very, very similar. This company's got this problem. So therefore this company's got this problem. You don't know. They may have that problem. So it may make them interested, but it doesn't give them intent. So now what? I want to come back and I want to look at this. So now I've gone through and I've cleaned up my pipeline. Now I can get down to a very methodical, systematic approach of how I'm going to be reaching out to you. Now, this is what's key here. The fewer people I have in my pipeline, the more qualified they're going to be, and that means I can spend more time with them. Let's back up the bus. You've got leads. Okay, fine. They're at that. That level. One of your selling process. I'm not talking about those. You can. You can have those all you want. Have those all you want. But you got to figure out if they don't get to 2, 3, 4, and 5, get them out of you in stage one, move them over to your marketing list. But once they hit this qualified stage, and again, there needs to be a method. You need to have this very well mapped out. And again, listen to some of my podcast, terms of how you reach out to prospects, et cetera, et cetera, then you can begin to say, okay, are they in two, three? Remember, they're not moving every 30 to 45 days. And that's at the Most. For some of you who are selling consumables, short sales cycle, it may be every two weeks. For some of you who are capital expenditures, it may be closer to every couple of months. That's okay. Every three months even. It's okay. So you get. But. But if it's not moving, get rid of it. Because what you're going to wind up with is you're going to wind up with a sewer pipe. My whole objective is I want my pipeline to look like a water tap. When it looks like a water tap, as soon as I have them qualified, these leads qualified, they are moving through and they're moving through with a fairly high regard. What's the close ratio? It's going to again, vary by industry, but once I get a qualified prospect, I should be able to close at least 25% of those deals. And again, it's going to vary by industry. Once you get to stage three, once you get to stage four, it should get up to about 60 to 65% because there'll be ones that will fall out along the way. Totally understand that. But this is going to help you manage your pipeline much more effectively. Hey, my name is Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. I'm walking you through in this podcast, the Sales Hunter podcast, specific steps that you need to be doing and it's all done with integrity. Have you bought my book? Have you picked up my book? Integrity first selling. Hey, buy it for your entire sales team. Reach out to me, because I love doing kind of what I call Integrity first selling unplugged, where I just come on a zoom call teams, call and discuss the book. In fact, I'm doing one of these later on today. Yes, if you're having a sales meeting, I want to be speaking at your sales meeting. Reach out. If you need training, reach out. My whole objective is to help you see and achieve what you didn't think was possible. That's what the Sales Hunter podcast is all about. That means you better subscribe to it so you get every episode. I'm Mark Hunter, the sales hunter. Great selling.