The sales pipeline is a visible roadmap of your team’s success rate. Team meetings that discuss strategy and development help, but sometimes it’s challenging to get the whole picture. Reliable and relevant data is the only answer to confusion and non-concreteness when it comes to pipeline efficacy. Sales deals could be more polished and have streamlined execution by tweaking a few parameters of your pipeline. It’s essential to see the warning sign and fix it in time to avoid any future risks and close the best deals.
Interpreting customer emotion and being responsive
There are several ways a sales call can go wrong, but very few ways it can go right. That’s because the right blend of numbers, emotion, and proactiveness is hard to create. Any steps that seem unimportant and hence skipped could come back as deal risks in your sales cycle later. Sales reps must first identify the kind of deal they’re handling to plan and execute all the steps correctly. Some deals are easy to close, some are tough, but some are never going to close. If the last category of deals is spotted in time, then the second category can be paid more attention to and is going to yield better. Here are some ways this can be accomplished
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- Monitoring the last activity
Looking at the last time a prospect was responsive to the deal is good to assess their interest and likeness of conversion. If their last activity were not so recent, it would be time-saving to change your sales strategy and allocate your time more efficiently.
- Comparing with personal or team average in case of non-action
In case a deal takes forever to close, looking at the personal or team averages for such deals is smart. Doing this will help reps gain a rough estimate of the time and effort needed for the deal to close. If a lead you’re handling has a history of moving the close date or changing deal numeration frequently, you can be more prepared. Strategizing better can help win a stubborn lead.
- Use of AI monitoring
Sales automation is the answer to cutting tedious data analyses. AI can’t take decisions for you but will equip you with all the tools you need to arrive at the right decision. Looking at the lead’s history and purchases will prove to be instrumental in knowing whether you’re above or below the power line. AI-based automation tools help make the forecasting process more specific and data-driven than emotions.
3 things that are keeping you from converting leads
Leads are potential customers, hence it’s unreasonable to expect conversion from all of them or even the majority of them. Statistics suggest that more than 3 quarters of leads end up not converting. So, for a sales team, it’s far more beneficial to focus on the ones that they can win, and direct their sales efforts effectively. Here are some reasons that can explain low conversion rates.
- Not getting the timing right
If you’re too late to approach a lead, it’s a lost cause already. There’s a small window available from the time a lead learns about the product or service offered. This is when your prospect wants information on the specifications, pricing, and other aspects. Reaching out and bringing valuable insight within this window is your best bet at gaining a new customer.
- Not filtering leads
Say you get a hundred leads, it’s reasonable to expect to convert at least 20 of them. But the rates won’t even be close to this number if the leads are not filtered. Before making calls, learn to identify the leads that need the product you’re selling instead of focusing on one’s that may want it. Doing this will increase your chances of winning high-quality leads. Converting a lead into a customer is all about pitching to the right person with the information that they want to hear, and when they want to hear it.
- Inadequate or improper follow-ups
Follow-ups are the last obstacle to tackle in your pipeline. Even when you’ve pitched to the right prospect and it went well, it can all be in vain without good follow-up actions. Using CRM automation helps to a great extent in scheduling follow-ups correctly, but it’s far from an all-in-one solution. In the couple of times that you follow-up, learn to place subtle triggers that motivate the prospect to engage in your proposal. Be careful not to do a trigger overload because that’s the fastest way to lose a lead. During your conversations, focus more on trust-building and less on immediate actions.
Conclusion
There’s no one who can forecast the perfect sales pipeline for a certain product or service. But with detailed data analysis and CRM tools, the optimum pipeline strategy will be formed and your conversion rates will improve noticeably. Remember that selling better requires you to understand prospects’ emotions better.
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