Who has never heard of the sales funnel? Who in sales doesn’t use one? Entrepreneurs should use this tool to preview sales and revenues but how many of them neglect this fantastic tool to generate forecasts? Here are some friendly reminders coming from everyday situations.
Updating opportunities
The moment I get involved in a sales force coaching mandate, my first action is to get the corporate sales funnel graph from the CRM or Excel sheets. Too often, it unfortunately presents data that hasn’t been updated for over 60 days…
A sales funnel should reflect sales to come in the future, not the past. How come a proposition due to be closed in March is still on the chart in June? Did the representative do his follow-up?
Even if the project is postponed, one has to update the opportunity and get info regarding when the deal will be signed. A sales director should not be preoccupied regarding his sales force following up but pay attention to the reasons why a deal is postponed. If postponed many times, one has to validate if the opportunity is still on or not.
Note that many organizations omit putting deals coming from their agents or are not being consistent to get the data from them. Not being close or in a different time zone are no excuse not to update their opportunities.
No exceptions. Businesses that follow up sales in a CRM or other tools have to have up to date information about all opportunities and their progressions in the sales funnel. Tolerating out of date data is a prognosis for non-performing sales figures.
Qualifying opportunities
Another element I often see is a sales funnel filled with badly and unqualified opportunities. One has to distinguish between the intent and a real project. Therefore, number of opportunities should simply not be indicated in a sales funnel.
Opportunities have to fit 5 criteria to be added in the sales funnel:
- Being able to be identified, can be given a name, a clear description
- Being (realistically) priced
- Having a date of closing or for a purchase order or for an estimation
- Type: Request for Information (RFI), Request for Proposition (RFP), Request for Quote (RFQ)
- Chances to get it: on a scale from 1 to 5 or a percentage, what are the chances you get the order?
When cleaning up the funnel, maybe some will just be deleted because they don’t meet the 5 conditions. When adding them in the funnel, it is highly probable the client sincerely had a project which died after a couple of weeks or months for different reasons.
It is way better to have an honest and realistic sales funnel than one which is too optimistic, Your forecasts might create high expectations and therefore disappointment.
A little trick of the trade, slice down big opportunities in many little ones and organize them in time. A 200,000$ mandate should be made of many mandates in chronological order. On the forecast side, it’s more accurate. Same for sales, as a rep, you want to set expectations at the good level and winning many 50,000$ deals repeatedly is more positive than having won only a part of a 200,000$ deal.
Benefits of a clean sales funnel
Finally, with an up to date sales funnel, the sales director will invest his energies to provide help to win accounts instead of babysitting data entry.
For instance, a clean sales funnel can help identify rapidly opportunities that need attention in the short term to get to a closing. Same for opportunities that have not yet converted. It is key to act rapidly to avoid loosing momentum. Less urgent opportunities will come when they are to be taken care of.
Therefore, sales meetings will be shorter, to the point and about short-term action to be taken with an eye on the longer term.
A clean and up to date sales funnel is a basic tool for a sales team that perform. It is also an essential forecasting tool for management.
When was the last time you updated your sales funnel? What is your update frequency? Don’t hesitate to reach out should you need help.
Happy selling.
