Missed & lost sales opportunities

Not enough new business coming? Sales drying up? Not making a satisfactory impact when in front of prospective clients? Here’s your solution. If this is happening to you, consider your sales effectiveness and your sales efforts from these two angles:

1. Missed sales opportunities.
2. Lost sales opportunities.

If market conditions are right, and you have good products or services, then you may want to take a look at your own efforts. Your poor sales efforts may be due to:

Missed sales opportunities: Put simply, missed sales opportunities are all about a lack of prospecting activity. If there is little or no prospecting for new business in new and/or existing accounts you will not get sales. You cannot lose sales if you’re not there to get them in the first place.

Remedy: Develop a prospecting plan and get out and see and/or speak to more people in your target market on a regular and consistent basis. Prospecting requires sales people to establish contact with people who might buy your products or services. Whether it’s phone prospecting, face-to-face prospecting or group prospecting, inbound or outbound, nothing gets sold until salespeople get in front of and/or talk to potential buyers. Prospecting is… The identification of new business opportunities in new or existing accounts!

Lost sales opportunities: You can only lose a sale when you are engaged in a sales conversation with a prospective viable client. (A viable client is someone who has the willingness and ability to buy from you, the authority to make a decision and a genuine need for your product or service offering).

If the client is viable and you lose a sale, it is most likely due to your lack of capacity to convert a sales opportunity into a sale – and sales revenue. This is usually due to poor selling skills and techniques such as having no logical sales process to follow, poor questioning skills, inability to relate to and empathise with your customer’s situation, making poor recommendations, etc.

Remedy: Get trained in a proper evidenced-based sales process that teaches you how to sell well. More than 90% of sales people follow no logical process when selling. They fly by the seat of their pants. Sales people need clear sales communication models, questioning skills, a process to match client needs with their products and make effective recommendations, and skills to secure client commitment and close a sale.

I hope this helps. Happy selling.

Sue Barrett is Managing Director of BARRETT Pty Ltd. Sue is an experienced consultant and trained coach and facilitator. Sue and her team are best known for their work in creating High Performing Sales Teams. Key to their success is working with the whole person and integrating emotional intelligence, skill, knowledge, behaviour, process and strategy via effective training and coaching programs. For more information please go to www.barrett.com.au

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