Sales opportunities

The outcome of both prospecting and account development work is a series of identified sales opportunities. Each opportunity must be clearly identified as such, and systematically managed to maximize the conversion rate from opportunity into signed deals.

The best way to define your sales opportunity process is to match it to your customer’s buying cycle. Once a potential need is identified, customers typically move through a process of confirming that the problem is large and urgent enough to address, exploring options, narrowing the options down to a shortlist, evaluating each short listed option in detail, making a tentative decision, resolving any concerns, negotiating terms, and finalizing the purchase decision and agreement.

Your sales process should be designed to facilitate moving prospects through their buying cycles as quickly and efficiently as possible. Essentially, you are helping them problem solve, and your sales process will be much more effective if you think of it as helping your customers solve their problems in a systematic and thoughtful way.

Early on in the sales opportunity process, you must qualify the opportunity to see if it really is an opportunity, or if it should remain in prospecting or account development. Normally this qualification process includes asking the following questions – Is there a clear decision maker identified?  Do they have an urgent problem or need?  Is the budget approved and allocated? Is the budget a good fit with your solutions?

The early stages of the sales cycle should typically be focused on exploring customer needs in detail.  This includes quantifying the value of solving the problem and the cost of not solving the problem. Once the cycle progresses, it becomes important to provide in-depth explanations of your solution, pricing, implementation and support programs, etc. Of central importance is the ability to use facts to show how your solution fits the customers needs better than the other options they are considering.

The final stage is negotiating and “asking for the order”. While much had been said about closing techniques, in reality if you have properly identified and addressed all your customer’s needs and concerns, they will be happy to make a decision and proceed. If they don’t, it is because you have not yet uncovered all of the issues related to that opportunity.

It is best to manage the sales opportunity process like a project, with a written action plan that lays out each step. You should draft and share this action plan with your prospect, gain their input and agreement to it, and keep it updated on a weekly basis as you progress.