A Great Lead
As a business owner or sales professional, you spend much time trying to generate more business. What if you could spend all that time more effectively? What if you could improve your time to close a deal? Think of all the great things you could do with all the time you saved!
The Close Deals Faster email series is here to help. We'll take you through some practical steps to get great leads and then provide tips on effectively closing those deals.
What is a Great Lead?
An effective sales process starts with excellent leads.
A significant lead is a lead that you have a very high chance of winning by the end of your sales process. But how can you know the chances of winning a deal before you even start speaking with the prospect?
The answer comes from four criteria you must evaluate:
- Your company's strengths
- The deal characteristics
- The prospect's profile
- The competitive environment
Let's go ahead and start with your company's strengths. The quintessential question is whether your company is the right fit for this particular prospective customer. Say you're a graphic designer specialising in package design and get a lead from a prospect who wants to design a logo. While you can create logos, it's certainly not your forte. You can choose to compete for this deal, but your portfolio is all about package design, and at some point, your prospect is going to want to see it. When he does, you'll have nothing relevant to show.
You get the idea - you don't want to compete for leads for which your strengths wouldn't be a competitive advantage. Next, consider the specific characteristics of the lead itself. Consider the expected quality, time, and budget for the job.
When does the prospect need the service done or the product delivered?
- Can you finish the job on time?
- Is the customer familiar with the prices that you charge?
- What is the expected quality of the job, and can you meet it?
- Don't forget that you might be overqualified for a specific job.
While the customer would happily get a better quality job, this usually triggers pricing issues.
Estimating the schedule and budget can be difficult sometimes. If that's the case, historical data about projects you've been involved with can be beneficial.
Another important criterion to evaluate is your customer's profile. Have you worked with customers from that industry and of that size before? If so, you'll have the necessary testimonials to present and a good understanding of the work process involved.
Is this a high-profile customer?
If it is, you might forego a good profit at first to have this customer in your portfolio.
Does the customer have a good reputation in the market? Is the customer serious enough about making this project happen?
Lastly, you should ask yourself who your competitors will be in this deal and your objective chances of winning against them.
Once you've answered all these questions, you'll have a good perspective on whether or not this is a deal you'd like and can win. It's important to remember that you'll have to make a trade-off between some of these criteria. These trade-offs will depend on your preferences and your company's stage. For instance, you might get a high-profile customer with a low budget, but you'd prefer to take the deal anyway to build your reputation in the market.
Next, let's see how you can ensure you get more leads that are an excellent fit for your business.
Managing The Sales Process
Stay organised with a solid sales process.
Sourcing great leads is just the beginning. Once you get a significant lead in the door, you’ll want to do everything you can to win the business. Getting well-qualified leads is hard enough, so you don't want to lose sales because of poor sales process management.
It’ll be helpful to start with some definitions. Your sales process should be visualized as a funnel. You get many leads at the start of the funnel, with only a few of them making it through the whole process. Each step in the process is called a "Sales Stage", and the sales stages together form your "Sales Funnel." Different companies have different funnels, but in general, it’s helpful to keep the funnel small and straightforward.
What's familiar to all funnels are the three closed stages:
- Unqualified, the bucket for the deals that weren't a good fit.
- Lost were the deals that you wanted to win but lost.
- Won, where the deals you won (hopefully many) are stored.
In between these, there are a few other stages.
Let's look at a simple example of a sales process. A new lead will usually be placed into the first stage of the sales funnel - let's call this stage "Incoming." At this point, you evaluate this lead (according to the essential questions we mentioned earlier). If the deal is qualified, you forward it to the next stage in the sales process, which we’ll call the "Qualified" stage in our example. Two weeks pass, and you've held a meeting with the prospect. You’ve gathered enough requirements and are now at the point where you must create a price quote.
Now, you can move the deal forward to the "Quote" stage. Once you prepare the price quote and send it to the prospect, you can move the lead to the last active stage, which in our example is "Closure." This is where the final details will be sorted out, and the negotiation will usually occur. After the Closure stage, you will either win or lose the deal.
Creating such a funnel and taking your leads through it has some powerful advantages:
- You’ll know exactly which stage of the funnel each of your leads is at, and you’ll be able to predict your sales in the short term.
- Viewing a funnel report lets you see where you’re losing most deals. By having these insights, you can do something to affect them. For example, if you’re losing many deals in the quote stage, it might mean that you’re not preparing your quotes fast enough or that your quotes are ineffective.
- You can prioritise your activities based on the number of leads in specific stages. For example, if many leads appear to be in the quote or closure stage and a resource on your team becomes available, you may ask that resource to start prospecting to fuel the pipeline instead of helping a colleague close a deal.
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Getting To The Yes
Basic negotiation skills can help you win more deals.
The last part of your sales process will likely involve some negotiation. More often than not, this will be a negotiation around price.
Sometimes, it also involves negotiating the delivery schedule for your product or service. People value different things, so be ready to negotiate based on multiple parameters, not just cost.
Understanding basic negotiation techniques can help you win more deals without alienating your prospects. Negotiation is an art, but please consider the following tips next time you engage.
Research
Don't enter into negotiations blindly. Prepare yourself by spending plenty of time doing relevant research. When you know your industry and your product, you have the power to bargain more effectively. There are several places to get the information you need. Most people head straight to the Internet to find what they need. This is an excellent place to start if you know what you want.
But please be aware of unreliable information sources. Just because it's on the Internet, it could be more reliable. Supplement your Internet research - talk to people with experience in your client's line of work and those who know them. Find out what you can offer that will take much work for your customer to turn down.
Improve Your Communication Skills
You can only be effective if you express yourself clearly. Negotiation is a dialogue, and the ultimate goal for both parties is to come away with a clear understanding of the terms of the agreement. Learning and practising Nonviolent Communication (NVC) techniques can improve your communication skills. NVC emphasises speaking in a way that conveys the importance of your needs and feelings related to the topic. Compromise comes more quickly with NVC.
Be Calm and Confident
During negotiations, you need to keep your cool. Your ability to stay calm and collected (even if it's only on the outside) works to your advantage. It sends a message to the bargainer that you know your points are solid and valid and that you are determined to reach your goals. It's much like a political debate in that the person who remains calm often comes out on top.
Use Your Sense of Humour
Humour can bring two people together – even if initially they were entirely at odds with each other. You can use humour to break through the tension when things get tense. If you get your negotiation opponent to view you as nicely, bargaining with them becomes much more accessible. In addition, humour takes the pressure off and helps you see things more clearly.
Every negotiator must sacrifice and give something away to reach a practical compromise. The best negotiators realise that being tough throughout the negotiation can land both parties in a stalemate. You should prepare yourself to give something up before you enter negotiations.
Whether you agree to meet certain conditions or give a slight discount, your willingness to compromise will show the other person that reaching an amicable resolution is essential to you. Remember: We should plan a little wiggle room before the negotiation starts. If there are certain things you must have, don't begin the bargaining process by asking for the bare necessities.
Ask for more than you expect and leave yourself room to offer some concessions so that, in the end, you both walk away with everything you need. Both parties have to feel that they've 'won' something.
Build A Great Customer Relationship
Make sure to deliver on your promise.
For most businesses, repeat business from customers is the single most effective engine for growth. If you want your customers back, you must ensure that you deliver on what you promised. Ensure that the team in charge of the project or fulfilment knows precisely what the customer has requested and what you’ve promised. Document these details (for example, on a deal page) so that you can always refer back to the requirement when the time comes.
Once the project starts, a great way to gauge customer satisfaction is by calling your customers occasionally for small talk about your progress. Framing the conversation this way will help you solicit honest and direct feedback. Perhaps add an automated task in your CRM to follow up occasionally.
In addition to reaching out to customers regularly, recording these conversations is equally essential. Imagine how powerful it is to see one page for each of your customers containing all the previous deals and conversations you’ve ever had with them. Such records enable you to improve your relationship with them, hopefully ensuring they will return to you for repeat business.
Making It All Happen
Don't worry. While all this might look like a cumbersome process that adds much overhead, it can easily be implemented into your business. As a small business owner, manager, or employee, time is your scarcest resource. The beauty of this method is that it's robust but straightforward. It's practised successfully by many small businesses like yours.
You'd be surprised how easy it is to implement this sales process. Pipedrive, our sales tracking and customer management tool, doesn't take more than a computer, an Internet connection, and 10 minutes of your time. In a few days, you'll start noticing how much more productive and effective your sales will become.
Practising these tips will help you tremendously improve your sales process, drive more business to your door, and fuel your business's growth.
