Do you remember your previous conversations with each of your key contacts for each active sales opportunity? What did you commit to do and what has your customer committed to do?
Are others in your business able to access this shared information to quickly gain insights and provide assistance?
We want to begin to recognize the things we do all the time, or once in a while, that really don’t directly impact our success.
I urge you to immediately begin collecting the information you’ll need to take your game to the Next Level. In so doing, you’ll instantly become far more effective in every sales opportunity in your pipeline.
Documenting Your Process:
The easiest way to begin is by keeping track of what you do and communicate in each sales conversation within a sales opportunity. Just the mere fact that you are tracking your actions will make you more efficient and effective. Think of it like a diary of each sales conversation and the relationship you are building with the other person.
Look closely at the activities you have been engaged in for each sales opportunity and ask:
- What did we do during our most recent meeting or phone call?
- Topics discussed.
- Questions we asked.
- Information we presented.
- What and when of our commitments.
- Why did we do each of these things?
- What was the purpose or intent?
- What were we trying to get our customer to think differently or do differently?
?
- What did we recommend or ask them to do next?
- Specific actions to take
- Information (of theirs) to collect or provide.
- Information (of ours) to review
- ?
- What did they agree to do going forward?
- Which of our requests did they agree to?
- What commitments did they make?
- What had they done since the last time we met or talked?
- Which commitments, previously made, did they deliver on?
- What did we agree to do going forward?
- What commitments did we make?
If we can’t answer these questions listed above, it’s either because we didn’t have a reason for doing the things we did, or because we didn’t recommend or ask our customer to take any specific action of any kind. If this is the case, we are not following a process at all. (Read more about Sales process or the customers’ Buying process)
I also recommend that you read “Think like your customer – a winning strategy to maximize sales by understanding how and why your customers buy”- by Bill Stinnett – www.SalesExcellence.com
To properly qualify opportunities, and stay in step with our customers, we all have to understand what they are planning to do, and what we are planning to do.
Having a CRM System gives you easy ability to link conversations and sales activity to a contact + company account + sales opportunity in one step. Knowledge becomes readily accessible and shared with your sales team – a key benefit of a CRM system. A CRM system allows you to document your process and the accumulated knowledge becomes a “shared diary” of the business relationship.
How can you better integrate your relationship building conversations into your process for reaching excellence?
