Sales Pressure

Guest Post by John Holland, Co-Founder & Co-Author, CustomerCentric Selling

Anyone willing to have compensation dependent upon delivering top line revenue better be able to withstand pressure. Not conveying that pressure to buyers can be difficult.

Most vendors apply pressure at the end rather than the beginning of the sales pipeline. Sellers have wide latitude in entering new opportunities into their sales funnels and are expected to enter a steady stream of new opportunities every month. Sales managers get a sense for the quantity of new activities, usually with little concern about quality. Their focus is further downstream on what they hope are closable opportunities to make the forecast.

According to CSO insights, over 90% of opportunities fail to close as forecast (they don't close or close for different amounts or different dates). That statistic points out a need for managers to spend more time as deals enter the pipeline. New entries should meet defined minimum qualification standards and progress should be quantifiable as sales cycles move ahead. Consider the implication on cost of sales if quality control at the beginning of the pipeline were enforced.

Expecting sellers to close unqualified transactions in a given month is a recipe for disaster. In pipeline management and forecasting, bad news early is good news. When was the last time you heard a sales manager refuse to allow a new opportunity into the funnel because it didn't meet muster? The CSO statistic will continue to be an issue for companies that fail to scrub pipelines early and on an ongoing basis.

One Response to "Sales Pressure"

1. Dave Stein Says:
   March 4th, 2008 at 3:21 pm

   I completely agree with you, John.

   We asked 125 sales executives and VPs of sales from different companies to list their companies' qualification criteria in order of importance (in addition to the upper and lower parameters for acceptance). Only 22 could complete the task. That number lines up pretty will with CSO's finding.

   You can be certain every one of those remaining 103 (83 percent of those surveyed) people have deals in their pipeline that are unqualified and therefore are either unwinnable or not worth winning.

   There's a double penalty which too many managers don't see. Not only won't these people win a large percentage of deals in that pipeline, causing them to miss their forecast, but the time spent trying to move those unqualified deals forward will reduce time and focus on deals that can be won.

   Dave Stein, CEO, ES Research Group, Inc.