COMMENTS
One thing that we have found to work effectively is to improve communication with partners as they can be a very valuable source of near term opportunities. Partners may be able to identify any low hanging fruit with a high probability of closing in the near term.
Orion
@Orion, excellent addition to the list!
1. Diagnose the gap;
2. if it's a short term problem, see Dave's list;(Networking's probably the strongest approach). 3. If it's about longer term
issue(s), Recognize that your ability to recover is heavily dependent on the time left in your sales year.
No matter what,
A. change something.(Doing the same things and expecting a different result makes no sense.
B. There are only four basic strategies that will impact your sales capacity:
- Increase your consideration rate (The # of deals you get to see);
- Increase the quality of deals ( "in the box", selling from strength = more likely to close)
- Increase the Average deal size; (Targeting & Cross-selling)
- Increase your conversion ratio; (better targeting = higher quality)
- Find ways to shorten your sales cycle. Clean out the pipeline, eliminate the walking wounded to focus more time on deals that will close. (Networking still the strongest candidate)
No matter which one(s) you pick, you still need to change your tactics. Example:
- Revisit/refine target market focus and basic sales strategy. (Calling on the right targets with appropriate frequency?)
- Use every tool at your disposal: mail, email, phone to raise your liklihood of finding targets who are in a buy cycle.
C. Put your head down and crank up the effort.
@Tom - excellent contribution! Not sure I agree with networking as the strongest approach. Networking yields referrals and introductions which generate opportunities and eventually, revenue. Important, but not the strongest, most direct or controllable avenue to revenue... Your other suggestions hit the nail on the head, especially, change something and crank up the effort. As for B, increasing/improving effectiveness, those four strategies require additional tactics and core strengths. Sales Managers usually need to look to an outside expert for help in those areas.
Take the highest ranked probability of closing opportunities in your pipeline and see if anything has changed in your prospect's business that will enable them to bring the business/decision forward. An extra follow-up has worked for me on many occasion. Maybe add an extra something to the deal as a carrot, but that's not often necessary - sometimes circumstances just change and an extra call can tip the scales.
Dave,I a gree that generic "networking" can be a slow road. I guess I owe some clarification concerning my use of the term networking. Most industries have a subset of networking that focuses on "Centers of Influence" or "referral sources", the people who because of thier position in the industry can help identify deals that are either early in the buying process or about to be. For instance, bankers rely heavily on Accountants and Lawyers as referral sources. These are the folks who not only can help identify deals, but can bring instant credibility through a direct referral. That credibility is what often shortcuts the trust building process and therefor the sales cycle. Sorry about the confusion.
As to the issue of increasing sales capacity, I concur that the four mentioned strategies are "top" level. They usually require lower level strategies along with the tactics to make it happen. In mid sized and larger companies, one would hope that their Marketing departments would be capable of suggesting and enabling both the lower level strategies and help in executing the tactics required to execute. Marketing data base development, segmentation and Lead generation/nurturing come to mind.
Unfortunately, as many sales managers tell me, their marketing departments are out of sync with sales, particularly as to what makes up a qualified lead. That, of course provides the proximate occasion to look to an outside expertise.
@Suzanne - good suggestion - of course you're making the assumption that there are some closable opportunities that aren't in the current forecast...
@Tom - thanks for the clarification and additional comments.