Talent, training and tenacity: the forces that turn good leads into great sales are many and varied. Sales performance is measurable, but results come from a fine balance of ingredients.
Put in too much or too little of a vital component, or don’t follow the recipe, and your revenue, like a badly cooked soufflé, may simply fail to rise.
Following leads is the only route to sales success. Period.
The sales pipeline is a structured framework that shows where you are with each lead. Leads should either be moving forward or dropping off the board.
The 10 lead fails
- Quantity over quality: Generating leads can give you a real buzz. Some say sales is a numbers game, but it's often less about filling your calendar with random suitors than finding suitable matches.
- Creating blockages: If your pipeline is bulging in places, leads are not flowing. Too many first-contact leads and you may struggle to give each attention. A backlog at closing? Look at what's causing the block.
- Not listening: Good leads are wasted if you don’t respond well. Understand what customers want, or you won’t be able to offer it.
- Being positive instead of proactive: Feel-good conversations suggest you're on the right track, but they're not enough. At each stage, pin down what happens next and when.
- Lack of effort: Some salespeople are naturals. You still need to make the most of each lead and put in the work.
- Negativity: Low motivation, self-doubt and under-confidence are lead killers.
- Ineffective action: Following up but never getting anywhere? Effort alone isn’t enough. As the saying goes, insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. Change something.
- Not letting go: Honesty is the best policy. If a lead is going nowhere, don’t hold on to it.
- Letting go too early: Leads move at different speeds for different reasons. Don’t trim your pipeline so hard that you throw away quality leads.
- Sales training dips: Like any skill, selling needs a top-up now and then to iron out bad habits. Good leads drop when the basics are forgotten.
Originally published on LinkedIn on October 20, 2015.