The Story of Sales Person and Sales Pipeline

Before we understand what a sales pipe line its always important to understand what is a sales lead file.

Sales lead file is the list of leads or prospects given to sales person for doing sales. From this sales lead the leads which are forecasted for closures are called as sales pipelines

Game of Priorities

You (Sales Person) might have always observed that client meets you properly and listens to you and also shows interest in buying product or services from you but then never buys product/services from. He never replies to your mails, phone calls etc. you may think what went wrong, you contacted the correct person and he showed lots of interest in buying your product & services then why is he behaving like this? Then you will be questioned by your higher authorities as this lead is being forecasted by you only. This will forces you to give some excuses to the authorities as you don’t know what went wrong, as such clients will always listen to you and will also respect you but will never buy product and services from you. This is called as “Full Plate Syndrome”.

Such a client once shows interest to you & without identifying you explain him everything in proper way like any other sales call, the client backs out as he thinks that he doesn’t have space in his plate to put the thing in his plate and will say he has a full plate. Now, once you got to know that your client is suffering from full plate syndrome, prepare a Secondary Plate for him at which you put your product and services based on his priorities and show this plate to him. Now its obvious that once primary plate is full new things can’t be added to it but there are always chances that certain things can be replaced from client’s full plate and your products from secondary plate can be adjusted there.

Now let’s take an example which will explain you the concept.  You have a tight schedule tomorrow and you have prepared an scheduled meetings with you clients & your 1^st meeting is at 9.30 Am Sharp. But before you go to bed you boss calls you ask you meet him at conference room as he wants to discuss about your performance appraisal and salary increment at 9.30 Am. For sure you will attend this meeting as at that time your priority is your promotion and sales hike, so you will cancel your meetings. So it’s all the game of identifying your client’s priority.

Saying that client is not interested and not picking up calls etc. try to understand what is his most prior things are in his business and then present your product and services accordingly, if you will do this there are very less chances of sales failure. All you have to be “Stay in the game” just keep following your client and even if he didn’t take services from you keep providing them the solutions. Keep a track on their business and their business problems& keep sending them the new paper clippings, sites , video clippings and  problem solution related presentations which could actually help them to come out of the business crises, this is give an positive impression of yours to them and whenever they will buy services they will buy it from you only.

S.W.O.T. Analysis

When a sales lead file is given to a sales person, it’s always advised that a detailed SWOT analysis of the lead file must be done so that a sales person can identify the hot leads and prospects out of it.

It’s well known that a sales person is always assigned with a Sales Territories and will get lead of these sales regions only. A demographic study of the sales territory must be done and then find out the target audiences and this can be done by identifying

1.     Strengths: Try to understand the business of your clients. Try to find out their strengths and positive points like their financial status, their annual turnover, etc. but this is if you are targeting the companies of these territories. But if your product requires common people then you need to do the demographic study & based on that you need to segment your sales territory and understand in which your segment your product falls and out which who all can afford to buy your product & there after target them.

2.     Weakness: After studying your territory try to understand why sales are failing in your region. Try find out the problems faced by your target audiences. once you understood what the problem is try to bring out solutions in such a way which differentiates you from your competitors i.e. don’t do what other sales people are doing or had been doing, do something different which should draw attention of your target audiences towards you and once you have done this then you have almost won the half battle. As now you know what their problems are and what unique and different solutions.

3.     Opportunity: Once you have identified your clients Strengths & Weakness you can easily create opportunities for yourself i.e. you can sell your products to them. Even if currently they are not interested in buying as of now you can keep in track to them, so that you can keep yourself updated regarding the sales opportunities with them. Once opportunity comes you can grab it as you already ready with the problems and solutions for them, it will be easy for you to sell your product to them in comparison to your competitors.

4.     Threats: Make your target audiences aware of problems which they can face by not buying the product from them. Also tell the ease of problem solving by buying your products and services.

Note:” Once correct SWOT analysis for your lead-file is done you can start your sales clock.”