50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #6: Predicting the Future

December 22, 2014 Selling Comments Off on 50 Habits of Top Performing Sales People – Habit #6: Predicting the Future

By Bill Phillips, Strategen, Inc.

Continuing with the twelve Organizational Skills let’s look at Habit #6: Predicting the Future:

Know which opportunities are going to be funded, know when they are going to be funded and know this on a daily basis.

Up to this point, discussion has focused on D’s and the funding of D’s.  Well, how do you turn C’s into D’s?  This takes as much focus and sometimes more focus than closing D’s.  Knowing when opportunities are going to be approved for purchase by your customers’/prospects’ management, while not as exciting as developing an approved opportunity, is nevertheless crucial information and is necessary to controlling the sales cycle.

Let’s review some definitions. A, C opportunity is an opportunity that has been submitted to your customers’/prospects’ management for purchase approval by your prospect.  A, D opportunity is an opportunity that has received purchase approval by your customers’/prospects’ management.  It is important to know the difference these two types of opportunities and follow up on them accordingly.

Knowing the status of C opportunities on a daily basis is crucial to the success of conversions; that is, controlling the sales cycle and finally closing the order.  It’s the demand of knowing status on a daily basis that confuses most salespeople because they do not understand how they can know the status of these issues on a daily basis.

The truth of the matter is, what they really need to know is when the status is going to change from a C to a D.  Therefore the proper questions to be asking are questions that will determine whether the change in status will happen.  Specifically you’re speaking of when the C will change to a D.

Keeping the lines of communication open, at the proper levels, within your customers’/prospects’ companies and using these lines of communication to determine opportunity status is what will control the sales cycle and keep you informed of the opportunity status on a daily basis.

“A Habit” is not work but just a thing that is done every day and knowing which opportunities are going to be funded, knowing when they are going to be funded and knowing this on a daily basis can easily become a Habit.  Classify opportunities, plan time to work the right opportunities at the right time and close the sale.

TIME MANAGEMENT.  For Top Performers every task is planned and focused on the goals that earn the results.  Top performers have a methodology to classify their opportunities to focus their efforts and maximize the utilization of their time with and on their customers.  Top Performers plan and then engage.  They act on their plans, they work hard and they get results.

Coaching these skills is a critical part of what we do.  We are here to help you develop and implement your Strategic Plan and coach and develop the skills to implement the plan successfully.

We are having great success coaching and implementing these methods and skills and our clients love it.