Success sales today are part mathematics and part art. Sales teams are assisted by a number of programs that help assess the readiness of a lead to move through the sales process.
Marketing automation solutions such as Marketo and Eloqua include advanced lead scoring capabilities. Marketing campaigns can now be created to automatically initiate depending on a lead’s reaction to a previous campaign. For example, because Mr. Jones registered and attended our webinar about online security, he is sent an email through which he can download a related white paper.
Meanwhile, sales teams can also access real-time business and social intelligence through companies like InsideView. Knowing the latest of what’s happening with prospects in real-time is something that wasn’t possible a few years ago.
When you add to all these solutions measurement and predictive analytics, it’s plain to see how much investment has been made in creating solutions to help the sales process. To close a deal, it comes down to the art of the sale, which includes both skill and the gut feeling of how to approach and interact with any given individual.
With all the tools that are available to find leads and advance the sales process, what could be missing? The answer: when to give up on a deal.
By now, 100s of millions of dollars have been invested in helping marketing people qualify and nurture leads, and sales people to gather data on any company. However, when it comes to when to give up on a lead, it is all left to art.
Sales reps are by nature optimistic people. They look at a prospect and think “I can convince them to purchase my product.” To the credit of some of the great sales people I’ve known, they often close deals that initially seemed to be long shots. Unfortunately, not every long shot is worth pursuing.
There seem to be a few reasons for this. First, if a lead is qualified, but the person is not the likely buyer within the target organization, the sales rep may get trapped in a cycle of having “good conversations” with one person after another, but never with the true decision maker or buyer. A sales cycle that should be 45-60 days could easily become 9+ months if the initial lead doesn’t hold the budget.
Second, culturally, it may be impossible or unlikely that the sales target will come out and say no. For example, this is often a surprise to US-centric sales teams, who may come out of a meeting in China thinking their project is moving forward only to learn later it wasn’t approved or would take several more trips to gain approval. China is not the only place on the globe where people avoid saying no to a salesperson’s face, but it is known for it.
Third, if the sales process extends too long, it raises questions with the lead’s company. “If we haven’t purchased already, do we really need it?” In the end, these sales fall apart simply because there is no longer any momentum behind the project.
Honestly, I don’t have an answer for how to know when a deal is artificially lingering. I’d love to see someone develop a formula that would help companies know when it’s time to pull the plug on a deal that will never close. Sadly, as many a salesperson has realized firsthand, it is more popular to push revenue generators than something that will save time and money. This means that in the end, we must continue to rely on the art of sale to not only close deals, but to know when to give up on them.
I think you're right. Determination is what we need to succeed, but sometimes it's just never going to work out no matter how hard we try because there is nothing there to start with. We have to know when to back off and just accept defeat to save ourselves getting stuck there.
Posted by: Promotional Pens | 05/07/2012 at 05:57 PM