sales funnel

Sales Support Techniques for Sales Success

by Tom Gray | on Jul 31, 2012 |  Comments

Revenue from successful sales is the lifeblood of your business, so what can you do to make sure it flows smoothly? Our last few articles have addressed distributors, the sales compensation plan, and the “insight sales” technique, but these cannot guarantee successful sales. They are only part of the mosaic.

Even when you have attractive products, competitive pricing, good market communications and promotions, and well-designed sales compensation, your mosaic is incomplete without effective sales support. Too often, sales support is the last consideration, when it should be one of the first.

Just as a building needs a frame for support, and a craftsman needs the proper tools, your sales channels – distributors and salespeople – depend on sales support to reach their potential. They know this better than anyone, and the best will join your business only if you provide the proper tools. This means sales support is a condition for hiring a high quality sales force or distributor.

Two Types of Sales Support: Helpers and Tools.

Helpers are work groups or functions that enable sales success. These include:

-        Lead Generation: Finding qualified potential customers for the salesperson to contact. The company can buy lists, hire lead qualifiers and appointment setting services, gather leads at trade shows, use email campaigns, social media, or executive networks, and other methods. The whole company should consider it their job to find leads for sales.

  • The best leads are those who bought from you before, so your customer database must be able to identify prior customers and those without recent purchases.

-        Training on both products and sales techniques by skilled practitioners.

-        Readily-available technical support, from product specialists to experts on applications for particular industries.

-        Customer service that the salesperson can count on to be accessible, helpful, and effective.

-        Active market communications opens doors for the salesperson. Techniques include advertising, promotions, and public relations. If the prospect is aware of the company, the sales contact has a much greater chance for success.

Tools are documents and software that make the salesperson efficient, knowledgeable, and confident. Some examples include:

-        Videos and presentations

-        Statements of benefits

-        Answers to common objections

-        Software calculators to show cost/benefit using the customer’s own information

-        Computer-aided design (CAD) on the salesperson’s laptop, to define the customized application, develop a quote, and communicate requirements clearly to the production department

-        Paper and/or electronic leave-behinds: brochures or collateral materials for customer reference after meeting with the salesperson

-        Standard proposals and contracts

-        Contact management software, often with an email generation feature, to help the salesperson with timely follow-up, and keep management informed of progress through the sales funnel (see Sales Funnel | Thomas H. Gray – Consultant, CEO, Director).

-        A portal where the salesperson can see order status, check on his or her own progress toward sales and commission goals, download materials (tools), and request technical or customer service support.

Sales Support Is a Great Investment!

With the right helpers and tools, salespeople close more sales, waste less time on administration, and stay with the company because they feel valued and supported. The top salespeople look for this type of support before joining a company. Thus sales support is the foundation for an effective sales force.

Leave a comment to describe the sales support tools that have been successful for you, or that you would like to have!

Tom Gray helps owners save and grow their companies. He is a management consultant focused on small business and telecom, a Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP), a Certified Business Development Advisor, and a Certified SCORE Mentor. He can be reached at 630-512-0406 or tgray@tom-gray.com. See www.tom-gray.com

 

Sales Funnel: A Realistic View of the Time and Effort in the Sales Process

by Tom Gray | on Feb 20, 2012 |  Comments

The “Sales Funnel” is a classic technique to understand the time and effort involved in making a sale. It’s a technique to do a “reality test” on your sales forecast, your estimate of revenue timing for the cash flow forecast, and your estimate of the number of salespeople required.

The sales funnel is a ladder of the steps involved in making a sale, from lead generation through the contact, the proposal, negotiation, and closing the sale. Like a funnel, its shape is an upside-down pyramid with the widest layer at the top.

The basic idea is that for each step you have a success rate less than 100% in moving the prospect on to the next step, so by the end of the funnel your sales are only a fraction of the number of leads you started out to qualify and contact.

For a good graphic of the funnel, see http://marketingartfully.com/2011/03/15/small-business-lead-generating-sales-funnel/

  • Leads are opportunities (100%)
    • Sales calls make contact (10% of above)
      • Follow-Up with Proposal (20% of sales calls)
        • Conversion overcomes obstacles (75% of proposals)
          • Sale contract (67% of conversions)

1. Using the Sales Funnel to Forecast Sales

Start by estimating the “success rate” from step to step. You can fine-tune using experience once you have some! For example,

  • 10% of leads are qualified and contacted;
  • 20% of those contacts receive a proposal (“follow-up”);
  • 50% of the proposals become closed sales.
  • The other 50% fall out during the conversion or negotiation step.

Second, estimate how many leads you expect in the time period. Then work the funnel percentages, and decide if the outcome is reasonable. If not, modify the leads or the percentages.

Finally, you estimate average revenue per sale. Now you can make a reasonable sales forecast – not just dollars, but a forecast based on behavior, so it is more realistic.

2. Using the Sales Funnel to Forecast Revenue Timing for Cash Flow

Cash flow is the life of a small business:  “Cash is King.” For many businesses, cash is not received until weeks after the sale is closed. In the meantime, you need extra cash, called “working capital,” to buy supplies, pay people, and otherwise run the business. If you lack this cash, your business can go under. So every business must make it a priority to understand its cash flow.

To figure revenue timing, a critical part of cash flow, you need to estimate the duration of the sales process from lead to close, and then the duration of the production/invoice/billing process.

For example, if it takes 2 months to make a sale, one month to produce, and 30 days to receive payment, you can expect cash to arrive 2 months after closing a sale, and 4 months after you start the selling process. See the next article for a sample.

3. Using the Sales Funnel to Estimate Sales Force Size

The third way to use the Sales Funnel is to forecast how much “people time” you need to actually make the sales you are forecasting.

Estimate  salesperson time required for each sales funnel activity:

  • time spent to qualify the average lead
  • time per contact attempt
  • number of contact attempts per lead
  • time spent in an actual contact (include travel)
  • time to create a proposal
  • time to negotiate terms
  • time to close the sale
  • follow-up time by salesperson to ensure customer is satisfied.

Then double this, because the literature shows that salespeople spend about half their time selling and half in administration.

Now you can see how much sales time you need to meet your sales target. Do you personally have that much time available for selling? If not, how many salespeople will be needed and what will they cost, or how can you change your estimates to match targets to resources? This is a crucial test of the realism in your business plan.

See the next article for some examples of using the Sales Funnel for sales and revenue forecasting, revenue timing for cash flow forecasting, and planning the size of your sales force.

Have you tried using the Sales Funnel? Was it helpful? Did you find other techniques to help our readers?


Tom Gray helps owners save and grow their companies. He is a management consultant focused on small business and telecom, a Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP), a Certified Business Development Advisor, and a Certified SCORE Mentor. He can be reached at 630-512-0406 or tgray@tom-gray.com. See www.tom-gray.com


 

 

 


 

 

 

 

Using the Sales Funnel

by Tom Gray | on Feb 20, 2012 |  Comments

In the previous article we defined the Sales Funnel as a tool for forecasting sales and revenue, cash flow forecasting, and planning the size of your sales force. See Sales Funnel. This article provides some examples for practice.

Example One: Going up the pyramid to see if market is big enough and number of leads needed

 

  Year 1 Year 2
Revenue (Cash) Goal $50,000 $150,000
Average Sale $2,000 $2,000
Sales Needed 25 75
Success Proposal to Sale (50%) 50 150
Success Contact to Proposal (20%) 250 750
Success Lead to Contact (10%) (7500 vs. market size?) 2500 7500

 

Example 2: Sales/Cash cycle for first 25 sales

Sales Cycle: 3 mo. to sell, 1 mo. to perform, 1 mo. to pay Mo.7 8 9 10 11 12
Sales 2 4 8 11 13 15
Revenue Booked After Job Completed/Invoiced (avg. sale is $2000)   4K 8K 16K 22K 26K
Cash Received 1 month after invoice; 2 months post-sale     4K 8K 16K 22K
Total Cash           50K

Note: you need enough start-up cash to support your business expenses until cash begins to come in.

Example 3: Salesperson Time Required in Year 2 of Example 1

Task Time for Each # to Do Total Hours
Attempt to Contact Lead 5 minutes 7500 37,500 mins / 60 = 625
Make Contact 1 hour 750 (10% of leads) 750
Write Proposal 2 hours 150 (20% of contacts) 300
Negotiate 4 hours 100 (67% of proposals) 400
Close Sale 4 hours 75 (50% of proposals) 300
Total Time     2375
Your time @ 20hrs/wk     1000Shortage = 1375

 

Example 3 shows that your sales forecast is unrealistic unless you add one or two salespeople, or you spend more than 20 hours per week selling. If you don’t, your revenue flow will be less than half your forecast, and you will run out of cash before the business can turn a profit. “Don’t be this guy!”

The Sales Funnel is a simple tool for forecasting revenue amount, revenue timing for cash flow, and the size of your sales force by analyzing each of the sales steps for your business. For a good graphic of the funnel, see http://marketingartfully.com.

Questions? Call or email Tom Gray.

Tom Gray helps owners save and grow their companies. He is a management consultant focused on small business and telecom, a Certified Turnaround Professional (CTP), a Certified Business Development Advisor, and a Certified SCORE Mentor. He can be reached at 630-512-0406 or tgray@tom-gray.com. See www.tom-gray.com