As a salesperson selling to executives, would you like to close more business without doing any more work? Most salespeople would jump at the chance to do that; however, they don't seem to want to take the time early in sales campaigns to determine where not to spend their time. The most successful sales professionals win more business not just by working hard or by making more sales calls, but by carefully assessing the viability of each opportunity.

One thing that the most proficient salespeople instinctively and intuitively do on a consistent basis is to focus on the right deals.   This is true in any sales situation, but particularly so in selling to executives, where the stakes are higher, and mistakes more costly.  These salespeople seem to have their own built-in or hard-wired qualification system for accurately and effectively assessing their sales opportunities. They clearly don't chase every deal that's placed in front of them. It's like they have a sixth sense about working on the deals they have the best chances of winning. They can quickly examine 10 deals and determine which ones they should focus on immediately and which ones to disengage.

Objectively qualifying sales opportunities can be a difficult task, particularly if the approach to qualification is inconsistent or unstructured.

Using a Common Language and Structured Process

Today's sales organizations, when selling to executives, are involved in high value, complex sales, and they must coordinate resources from a wide range of functions, both inside the company and externally, through business partners. These resources can include people from sales support, manufacturing, engineering, product marketing and, perhaps most importantly, external partners and alliances. Every person on the virtual sales team might be having discussions with a variety of people in the customer organization. Each may have crucial roles to play at critical points in the sales campaign.

Sales managers often serve as the final arbiters for the use of the scarce resources available to their salespeople. They have to make some critical decisions regarding the application of those resources, often deciding which opportunity should receive the most valuable, and often most expensive, resources. These decisions have a significant impact on the outcome of complex sales opportunities. Therefore, it is essential that sales managers understand the status of key deals currently in their pipeline.

One way to ensure that a team leader can assign the right resources to a specific opportunity is to have a common language. A common sales language makes it easier for the sales team to discuss the customer, the details of the sales opportunity and the customer's long-term needs. Many problems associated with resource allocation dissipate if an organization has a common language, a common approach and a common reference point that provides everyone who ‘touches' the customer the ability to understand the significant business issues. If there is a common way to describe a business problem and talk about the pain in the customer's organization, it will help the sales organization's move more quickly to solve the customer's problems. In addition, a consistent way of communicating and tracking value with each customer gives the salesperson and account team the ability to manage a customer's requirements as well as their expectations.

Assessing Each Sales Opportunity - Three Compelling Questions

Every salesperson believes that his deal is one they can win, provided they have the right resources at their disposal. But how can a sales manager evaluate all of the deals currently being pursued within their sales team without being present on every sales call that's made in the client organization?

Resource deployment can be very expensive, yet it's critical to place the right expert or resource in the right place at the right time. Without some consistency and common understanding of the sales opportunity and the long-term relationship with the customer, it's difficult to assess when and where the appropriate resources should be applied. With an effective opportunity assessment process, the management of the sales organization can agree that specific sales opportunities are worth the investment of resources. Using a common language and a structured, repeatable process for analyzing each sales opportunity makes it easier to allocate its limited resources.

There are three compelling questions that should be used throughout each sales campaign to qualify the opportunity. These questions, and the corresponding underlying criteria, should be asked at multiple times during a sales campaign. They should certainly be asked near the beginning of a campaign to determine if a real sales opportunity exists and should be pursued by the salesperson. They should be asked again if there's a significant change to the customer's business profile or to the competitive landscape during a sales campaign. It might also be appropriate to pose the questions again if there is a major change to the profile of the sales organization (i.e., the introduction of new solutions).

The three compelling questions are:

• Is This an Opportunity We Should Pursue?
• Can We Effectively Compete for This Opportunity?
• Can We Reasonably Expect to Win This Opportunity?

Part 2 of this article will expand on these three questions.

About the Author

Steve Bistritz is a published author and lecturer in the field of sales, sales management and selling at the executive level. He also provides workshops on selling at the executive level.