In this time of economic inconsistency, an important growth strategy is getting a tighter handle on your engagement or new sales opportunities. No matter what business you are in, reigning in your sales process enables you to apply the right resources, at the right time, to the right opportunities, and close more new business.

To begin managing your opportunities, start simple.  Set up a sales pipeline report to track each engagement opportunity you have, keeping track of the prospective client organization name as well as the contact name, telephone number, and e-mail address. In addition, you’ll want to track a brief description of each service and/or product that’s of interest and the source of each lead for tracking the effectiveness of marketing campaigns and for determining which marketing activities to favor.  If you don’t already have a contact management or CRM system in place, we have a great Excel template for you to start with – access it by clicking here http://www.convergencecoaching.com/CSCguestsalesandmarketing.htm and choosing “Sales Pipeline Tool.”

As you’re setting up each opportunity, you will need to assign a probability that each engagement will close — we use a simple A, B, or C probability rating in our firm.   An A opportunity is one that needs services we can fulfill, their budget is within our range, we’re talking to the decision maker and their timing to close is within the next 60 days.  B opportunities are 61-90 days out in terms of close date, or once where we are still qualifying the need to ensure we’re a fit.  We rate opportunities a C if their timing is 91 days or more away or if we may not be a fit on service need or budget.  By rating your prospects, you’ll be able to prioritize and focus energies on those most likely to close in the near term.  

Each opportunity should also be assigned a single owner within your firm that is responsible for driving the engagement through the sales process and for updating the pipeline with the last date of contact, and the next follow-up action and date.  These dates provide firm leadership with the exact status of each opportunity and can help identify any technical or leadership resources needed to support the sales process and help project future service and/or product demand, to assist in capacity projections, too.  In this time where most firms have more resources than they have work, it’s critical to be able to project future capacity needed and the pipeline is a rare leading indicator of your firm’s upcoming performance.  Using it strategically can help you apply more marketing and sales resources to avert over-staffing issues and/or take necessary steps to reduce headcount if opportunities simply are not materializing or maturing as needed.

There has never been a better time to have solid information about your firm’s potential pipeline of new work – please start gathering this data in a sales pipeline report today! 

If you’re already using a sales pipeline report, we’d love to hear from you on what you’re using to track and manage it, how often you produce the report, who reviews it and any other wisdom you have to share with us.  And, if you are thinking about tracking your firm’s pipeline, we welcome your questions, too.  Post away!

Gratefully,

Jennifer Wilson

Jennifer Wilson is a partner and co-founder of ConvergenceCoaching, LLC, a leadership and marketing consulting and coaching firm that specializes in helping leaders achieve success.  Learn more about the company and its services at www.convergencecoaching.com.