In Part 1 of this article, we determined that there are three compelling questions that salespeople should pose at multiple times during a sales campaign.

The three compelling questions are:

• Is This an Opportunity We Should Pursue? Is there a project or application, a corresponding budget and has the budget been approved? Do we understand the customer's business drivers, business initiatives and compelling reasons for the customer to make a decision or is the customer simply gathering information?

Developing an in-depth understanding of the customer's business, their key customers and competitors is an important facet of this question.

Since time and resources are limited, it's important to determine that the opportunity being assessed is a real and worthwhile investment in time and resources.

• Can We Effectively Compete for This Opportunity? Solution fit is but one component of whether you can be competitive in a sales campaign. Are there enough internal or external resources available to compete successfully for the business? Are there existing business relationships established with the customer? Do we understand the formal decision-making process? Does our solution offer specific business value that enables you to differentiate yourself from your competitor(s)?

Knowing how your company, as well as your solution, relates to the specific sales opportunity can be a key ingredient to winning the deal. Being able to realistically contrast that information with that of your competitor(s) is an important factor of assessing this compelling question.

• Can We Reasonably Expect to Win This Opportunity? This question is the one most overlooked in sales campaigns. Many opportunities are lost even if the salesperson has the best solution, the best delivery and even the best terms and conditions. This question deals with how well the salesperson understands the customer's organizational structure that reveals the inside support necessary to win the deal.

Do the most powerful people in the customer's organization want you to win? Do you have credibility with the customer's key players? Most importantly, is there alignment with the key players in the customer organization who either affect or are affected by the buying decision? Finally, what facts support these assessments of your customer relationships?

Contrasting these factors with that of your competitor(s) can have a significant impact on your decision to continue to pursue a sales opportunity.

Examining each of these three compelling questions at multiple times during a sales campaign can be compared to an airline pilot examining his pre-flight checklist. No matter how many times a pilot has flown a certain plane, she meticulously examines that checklist prior to each and every flight, probing each question, using a structured and methodical approach. She clearly doesn't want to be surprised in the midst of a flight and does not want to leave anything to chance.

Although it may only take a few minutes for a salesperson to examine those three compelling questions and some of their underlying criteria, you will find that by doing so you'll be much more in tune with your chances of winning each sales campaign.

And, by the way, if you want to get bad news about a sales campaign, where would you rather learn that news? At the beginning of a campaign before you've expended any time, effort or resources, or at the end, after you've invested lots of time and resources? Clearly, you'd want to know as early in the sales campaign as possible. That's the whole idea of assessing your opportunity at multiple times during a sales campaign, beginning with an assessment early in the process.

Disengaging from a sales campaign can be an important step in the overall process of managing a series of sales opportunities. While that step can also be difficult, sometimes it is the important decision a salesperson can make; in other words, deciding where not to spend your time. Disengaging also means that you probably don't have a chance of winning the deal, and by implementing that step it allows you to focus on the opportunities you have the best chance of winning. By disengaging from one deal you have substantially increased your odds of winning other opportunities.

Call to Action

What are three things you can do right now to improve your approach to analyzing your top 10 sales opportunities?

• First, assess those opportunities using the three compelling questions and the criteria outlined above.

• Second, review proven sales methodologies that are available in the marketplace today to determine the specific process that is best suited to your company's needs.

• Third, develop a plan to infuse and implement a sales process in your company within a realistic time frame.

Summary

Only by using a structured approach and a common language for each sales opportunity can you make informed decisions about the application of resources, as well as the amount of time you should be spending on the opportunity. When you consider how important time is to a salesperson, you realize the importance of analyzing opportunities early and frequently.

Typically, the allocation of resources cannot be done at the sales team or salesperson level, but rather by sales managers or sales executives, who can consider all of the key opportunities in the pipeline or about to enter the pipeline. Using a common language, a common terminology and a common set of criteria for assessing sales opportunities is a requirement for success in this venture.