It goes without saying that your first meeting (or appointment) with a prospect is important. This isn’t just some lead you’ve cold called. This is someone who has made it through that all-important first step in the sales motion, and who has at least a fair chance of becoming a client or paying customer.

During the course of that first conversation, you’ve concluded that they could be a great fit for your product or service. Not only does it seem that they have a bona fide need for what you’re offering, but you believe they also have the ability to buy. They’re a truly qualified prospect. Now it’s time to meet with them to confirm your suspicions. Continue reading →

In my previous post, I sketched in the basic steps that make up the sales process. Turning those steps into a repeatable process that can scale with your business needs isn’t as complicated as you might think. It’s a linear, straightforward system, often fittingly called a sales pipeline.

Much like the sales process itself, a sales pipeline is best looked at as a series of individual stages, each with a specific purpose. You can also think of it as a series of filters, each of which is designed to ensure that only the best-fitting prospects make it to the next stage. To accomplish this, each stage is defined by a series of rules and criteria. These rules define what a legitimate sales opportunity looks like. Continue reading →

Every company, large and small, needs to understand the sales business. Sales can be intimidating, and it’s no surprise that it’s often given the lowest priority when a business is just starting out. From my perspective, however, sales is also an absolute must-have skill for every entrepreneur.

Too many folks miss the opportunity to apply the same level of professionalism and structure to sales that they do to the other functional areas of their business. It should be at least as important to your business as areas like HR, finance and accounting, product development or production. As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, the lack of a strong sales structure can be a huge roadblock when it comes to things like attracting investors. Continue reading →