Bust Loose Your Sales Pipeline: Get Deals Going Now

If you’re like most sales professionals, you have customers who have decided to buy, but haven’t yet placed the order.

It’s likely that your boss keeps bugging you about when the deal will close. You don’t want to keep “bothering” your customer about it, but you also want to get the deal going.

Read on to learn three ways to bust loose those deals in your sales pipeline.

1) Should This Deal Really Be on Your Forecast?

When I coach sales teams to improve their performance and efficiency, I often see deals on the forecast that shouldn’t be there. Remember: no deadline, no deal. Unless the customer has a budget that meets the purchase requirements and a deadline to begin the project, it shouldn’t be on the forecast. It’s not a deal sheet, it’s a wish list.

Uncover your customer’s deadline with questions like:

• “What’s your deadline for launch?”
• “When does this need to be in place?”
• “When do your people need to be trained on this?”

Now you can accurately update your forecast.

2) Can You Help Unstick This Deal?

Often, a deal is dependent on another event happening first. For example: in real estate, a home buyer must sell their house before purchasing a new one. In technology, equipment have to be decommissioned to free up power and cooling before a new units can be purchased and installed.

Explore if you can help speed the deal with questions such as:

• “Is there something needed other than someone’s approval to get your project going?”
• “What has to happen before you can place this order?”
• “Can I take care of that for you?”

It may be well worth it to include needed services in your deal to get the project started sooner.

3) What’s it Cost to Wait?

Sometimes your customers don’t know how much money they’re wasting by waiting to buy. Show them the value of moving forward sooner instead of later. Avoid this by making the time value of their purchase part of your sales discussion.

Ask time value questions like these:

• “What would it be worth for you to move forward?”
• “What will it cost if you wait?”
• “What’s your unnecessary risk if you continue as you are now?”

I’ll to show you how to calculate hard numbers on the cost of waiting, along with more on this topic in this playback of my on-line event, Bust Loose Your Sales Pipeline: Getting Deals Going Now. 

This week, bust a deal loose!

Mark S A Smith

P.S. If you’d like 15 minutes to talk about how to build your customer acquisition system, contact me and we’ll set up time to meet.

And you’re welcome to publish and share this with others; just include my contact information.