During sales management training, I often tell sales managers they need to approach sales pipeline reviews with their sales reps like prosecutors in the courtroom. What exactly do I mean? To start, I’m not advocating that you look to “convict” your sales reps. Instead, I’m suggesting sales managers take an evidence-based approach to sales pipeline inspection. Doing so will remove the biases from conversations with sales reps, and make sales pipelines more accurate and data driven.
So, where do you find this evidence?
Forecasting deals in their pipelines can be tricky for sales reps to do accurately as it can be very subjective. The High Value Trade Table solves this as it enables sales reps to quantify their sales deals, determine which prospects are highly invested, and will ultimately show whether or not they’ve earned the right to forecast it in their pipeline. As a sales manager, it will allow you insight into deals your sales reps are working on and how they are progressing – it provides your evidence. Prior to meeting with your reps, make sure they are using this tool.
…and then you inspect.
Your sales reps will almost always ask about a prospect’s budget – but, they typically miss a second level of questioning that is extremely valuable to uncovering a prospect’s level of commitment. Simply asking a prospect if they have the budget, a sales rep may get a quick, unthoughtful affirmative response – everyone thinks they have the budget. What they need to be asking are questions such as, “when you’ve purchased similar items in the past, can you walk me through the process?”
If a sales rep missed it, they can follow up with an email like:
Prospect,
Thank you for meeting with us today. I wanted to send this follow up to ensure I understand the project and outline next steps.
1. Project XYZ – staffed and budgeted close in Q4.
2. Stake holders include yourself, IT director, etc
We agreed to complete these tasks A, B, C, by (ADD DATE). In addition, you agreed to send us a requirements doc and matrix of your priorities by (ADD DATE).
Please let me know this is correct or feel free to update or confirm.
Regards,
Sending this email shows prospects that your reps are investing and have a timeline associated with their deal. The prospect’s response (or lack of response) will provide real evidence to measure their level of interest. Taking this next step to send an email and ask further questions forces the prospect to think more about it, and writing the answer adds a higher level of commitment. If the email goes unanswered or the prospect never sends the information, it’s likely this deal will end in no decision.
In addition to evaluating their High Value Trade Table, it’s important to ask your reps about champions or access to power. A champion is rare, someone who will sell for you when you’re not there. When a sales rep says they have one, you should ask them for the person’s title and the documented conversation of how they purchased before. Often you will find they have sponsors, not champions. It’s important your sales reps understand the difference between the two.
The bottom line is that to convict in a court of law hearsay is inadmissible – there must be real physical evidence. Given the option, why wouldn’t you want the sales professional to have that same ruthless qualification and attention to detail?
For more on High Value Trades, check out our online eLearning module, Sales Gauge 5 – Negotiating with High Value Trades. If you’re a Salesforce user, you can also download our new Salesforce High Value Trade Tables app available now at no charge on the AppExchange.