Is Your Sales Pipeline in a State of “Sales Attrition”? | challengethailandtriathlon.info

Have you ever considered the amount of “Sales Attrition” that you are having in your sales pipeline? You probably haven’t even heard of the term… that’s because I just coined the phrase. As a reminder, Attrition is the reduction or decrease in numbers, size or strength. Therefore “Sales Attrition” is the decrease in any and all sales activities that directly result in the decrease of the number of deals that you potentially can make during the coming months. As a salesperson, you and your management team should be expecting that your efforts will result in the increase of your list of potential deals all the time, eternally. There can be no exception to this rule. I thought that it might be good to review a few of the top reasons why salespeople and sales teams face Sales Attrition (in no particular order)1. The sales team doesn’t have a clear understanding of the ideal customer that they should be targeting. As are result, they spend too much time chasing the wrong deals. Understanding exactly who you should be selling to is an absolute must have in sales pipeline management.2. If a sales person is spending time with a qualified prospect, they spend the wrong amount of time on the deal relative to the potential payoff of the deal. Don’t spend 45% of your time (annually for example) on a deal that will get you only 15% of your quota.3. The salesperson doesn’t know when to throw in the towel. Know when to walk away from a deal. Again, this results in wasting one of the most valuable commodities that a sales person has, his or her time.4. The sale person doesn’t know how to follow and pace the client through the decision-making process and they don’t track the client as they are moving from the “just kicking the tires” phase to the “writing the check” phase.5. The sales team hasn’t done the proper ecosystem development within their industry to generate the quantity and quality of leads that they will need to you’re your sales pipeline.6. The sales team doesn’t properly follow up on potential opportunities in a consistent and timely manner throughout the sales process. This is an insidious and hard to diagnose sales pipeline crusher.7. The sales team isn’t properly supported by sufficient marketing efforts. How many new prospects are you adding to your sales pipeline daily, weekly or monthly.8. The sales team doesn’t understand the metrics regarding how many contacts that they have to be converting to sales on a daily, weekly or monthly basis in order to meet their sales goals and quotas. Understanding the metrics is absolutely critical when it comes to accurately forecasting your sales pipeline and closing sales.9. The sales person is not technically proficient enough to add value as an “expert” to the prospect to maintain their high value to the client through the sales process. If you can’t be the expert… have one that you can bring to the table even if you have to hire that expert to be part of your team.10. The sales professional underutilizes the internal resources available to them via their own company or other leveraged business partners. Know your strengths and use them to the greatest leverage at every point in the sales cycle.Now that you know what you might not be doing consider how you might change your behavior and work style to improve every activity noted above. Address each of the list items courageously and truthfully. Improve every effort in all of the items listed above and you are sure to see that instead of having sales attrition you will have sales addition (okay, I couldn’t pass up the opportunity for a little alliteration…. you get the point).