Objectively Re-Assessing Your Current Sales Opportunities

There are two escalating pressures in today’s marketplace that are creating a need for a more disciplined approach towards sales opportunities:

• The need to be more specialised and individualised in dealing with clients because we can no longer afford to treat all situations in the same way.
• The reality of competition. Often to increase market share, you must do so at the direct expense of the competition. The  competitive intensity of the sales environment is escalating with the globalisation of the economy.

These are the main “drivers” behind the demand that organisations adopt methodologies and processes to manage these issues.

By utilising a rigorous and formal opportunity assessment we are aiming to achieve two sets of objectives:

Business Objectives

• Determine which sales opportunities should be pursued at the direct expense of others.
• Given resource limitations, decide where and on what basis resource should be allocated to a sales opportunity.
• Determine whether our company is over-investing or under-investing in a sales opportunity.
• Enhance forecast accuracy.
• Use “proven” criteria to reduce the cost of sales.
• There is a need to create strategies on a growing global market.

Sales Objectives

• Identify, quantify, and categorize opportunity assessment criteria.
• Increase “Hit-Rate” (Win – Loss ratios) by avoiding unsuitable business.
• Discover where we and our competition stand with a customer.
• Cover everything your clients say they need.
• Gain a complete and accurate view of a sales situation prior to writing a sales plan to win.
• Calculate the probability of winning or losing a deal early in the sales process.

All sales professionals claim to be permanently time constrained: We always have limited time and resources with which to achieve our targets.

We can be involved in only so many accounts or sales situations before we begin to lose your ability to manage what is taking place. At that point we lose control and the competition takes control. Remember to take care of a main need: personalization.

This article has been extracted from Objectively Re-Assessing Your Current Sales Opportunities by By Jonathan Farrington.