Converting your pipeline into actual sales seems to be a common problem in today’s uncertain business environment.
How often do you do loads of work to create a proposal and the client doesn’t get back to you? Then you have the demoralizing task of chasing for a response…!
We have had great success with many clients using a different approach to this problem, which can be put simply as stop sending proposals (unless it’s a formal response to a tender or RFP). The alternative is to do all the decision-making live (or virtual) and achieve an emotional close during the meeting. Then, rather than sending a long proposal, you just send a short confirmation.
The benefits of this approach are:
- You ask for their decision at the point when the person is emotionally engaged with you, instead of when they happen to find your proposal in their inbox.
- You deal with any objections or adjustments in real time, rather than them going straight to the price line on your proposal and getting cold feet.
- You only need to write a short confirmation covering the points that are important to them, which is much better than having to write a complex proposal covering everything that you think they might want to know about – which just makes it complicated for them to make a decision!
- You get a yes or a no very quickly; there is no limbo, there is no ‘maybe’ – a good client would never not give a direct answer.
If this sounds attractive, then there is some training and systems required to achieve an emotional close during the sales meeting. There is certainly a defined process that leads clients to be comfortable making a decision on a sales meeting, which is too much detail for this post, but we would be really happy to share if you are interested. This approach also requires you to be able to give prices and terms live on the sales call so a decision can be made. This also requires the sales team to have quick access to this information rather than going away and producing a proposal in their own time.
We have seen some dramatic improvements in conversion rates using this simple mindset shift in how to convert inquiries into sales. So, if you don’t already do it this way, I encourage you to give it a try.
