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Yesterday I did a workshop for Business Link on ‘How to win more sales’ and there were businesses with turnover ranging from £1m to £8m. I asked around the room who had heard of terms like the ‘sales funnel’ and ‘pipeline report’. None of them kept statistics and knew what their conversion rates were.
This is basic sales management and doing it not only makes sales more predictable but it also provides all the answers to where in the sales pipeline you can work on to increase sales. For example, lets say a sales person had statistics as follows:
50 Leads Generated
Understanding sales process is critically important if you want to be in control of your sales. There seems to be a lot of mistique that surrounds sales process and yet it is all very simple when you strip it back to its basics.
This is a professional recording of me being interviewed by Chantal Cooke of Passion for the Planet radio. During this interview I am explaining to Chantal how to start thinking about sales as a process and how the sales process works.
The sales funnel is a term often used in sales but what does it really mean? This article explains why the sales funnel is an important aspect of sales management.
Imagine a funnel used to pour liquid into a bottle. It has a wide top tapering down to a narrow ending which fits into a bottle. You pour the liquid into the funnel top and then the liquid flows down through the funnel and into the bottle.
A healthy sales pipeline is critical for having a smooth flow of sales into your business. This article explains sales pipeline and how it is best managed.
Think of a real pipeline supplying water to a fountain. Unless the pipeline is full of water at all times there will be no fountain display. In the same way, if you want a constant flow of sales into your business then your sales pipeline will need to be filled with sales opportunities.
Sales process is a term used to describe the steps required to win a sale. Many businesses talk freely about sales process without actually having a clearly defined process that can be measured.
In this article I will help you get your head around what sales process really means and why it is so important.
If I was to ask you how to make a perfect cup of tea you might start giving me a list of steps to be done. The order in which I do them may be important too. For example, it will probably be important to boil the water before putting the tea bag into the water!
Many people tend to think about consultative selling in terms of questioning skills. There is no doubt that questioning is a key part of consultative selling but there is a bit more to consultative selling than that.
In this article I am going to take a step back, get back to basics, and answer the fundamental question – What is consultative selling?
To truely understand consultative selling we need to contrast it with another style of selling which often gets confused with it.
