Are Your Sales Folks Chasing the “Wrong Prospects” Today post- Covid?

66 %. 

These days, researchers say, sales prospects are now already over half way through the “decision process” (“Customer Decision Journey”, or CDJ) before they even speak with a sales person. 

Remarkable, but true. 

So, the usual opportunity - and time - to build rapport between sales person and prospective customer is now way limited from just a few short years ago. Hey, and there’s also so much information, online reviews, customer comments, social platform remarks and such out there...you know what I mean. 

Add to this the well-established statistic that most sales people only successfully close 1 out of 3 prospects that they seriously pursue. 

The window – and odds for success – have now seriously narrowed, right? 

However, given this dilemma, I believe we can improve on all this and give the sales organization a better shot at success by being smarter. And employing some pretty good basic tools out there in the marketplace (and BTW, there are some pretty amazing new AI-powered “predictive platforms” I have been reviewing that will roll out in the next few years to help us all). 

Thus, taking a reasoned, data – driven approach now to sales prospecting and enablement in the 21st century has become a much more refined and sophisticated endeavor indeed! 

Brings to mind one of my favorite sales books by my Atlanta friend Rick Page titled “Hope Is Not A Strategy”. Not every prospect is a good prospect as sales folks once thought. so better study – up before tossing that new prospect into your “funnel”. I’m serious. 

As I mentioned before, there are some pretty good tools and resources out there and one “model - based” approach in particular I developed and discussed in my earlier book “Seller’s Edge”. In the book, I introduce a 6 element “buyer profiles” model – where do you think your ”ideal sales prospect” falls in my model which includes elements like Price (my successful prospects buy on Price mainly, etc.), Future, Needs and others? 

To arrive at these elements, I researched hundreds of sales event assessments at many global organizations my consulting company assisted reaching over several decades. The elements coalesced around my 6 elements hewing generally around “price” and “risk” (see my book, “Seller’s Edge”).   

So, I recommend that you find better ways of prospecting for customers post – covid. Ways that will improve your win –rate over the next twelve months. 

Hey, I know you can do it! 

So here are a couple tips to get you pointed in this new direction. 

Tip #1. Do some serious scrutiny as to why you “lost” major sales events last year by employing a lot of data points like, for example, late to the game in being considered, too expensive or poor references, to name but a very few. And, most important, use a “third party” when you conduct v2v interviews – you'll just get good unbiased input when you do, I promise! 

# 2. Bake your findings into your company’s prospecting process as soon as possible and see if your hit rate doesn’t get a whole lot better than 1 in 3! I’m willing to bet it will. 

All for me at this point. 

Until we sit around the table to talk again. 

Ciao.