It seems that as each day passes there are more and more distractions competing for our time and attention. Our focus and attention are robbed from us at home and at work and often, the things we should pay the most attention to are neglected.
The idea of minimalism is becoming more popular as people start to realize the impact that our fast paced, loud lives have on our enjoyment of our time on this planet. Minimalists in their personal lives are seeking ways to reduce the amount of physical and emotional clutter that they are exposed to daily. The idea of minimalism is that clutter requires maintenance, attention and time and the minimalist would rather spend on other priorities in their lives.
Those individuals who seek a more calm and focused existence may go through a process of de-cluttering to reduce the things that they own to the minimum they feel they need to live a happy and peaceful life.
The question then becomes, how can we, as salespeople, apply a minimalist philosophy in our daily work lives and particularly in our sales funnels. Would reducing the number of opportunities that we are working on provide us with a feeling of calm, focus and control? We believe it will.
We can learn from the minimalist code be applying similar principles to our sales funnel—focus on the best opportunities that are most likely to close and apply important “must do” actions to develop and manage these sales.
The impact of using a minimalist approach to funnel management is that you will be intensely focused on the actions that will produce the most important results:
1. Creating a buying process resulting in new opportunities in the funnel
2. Consistently moving sales in forward resulting in increased deal velocity
3. Eliminating stalled sales where do nothing seems to be the customers’ approach
What then, are the “must do” actions to produce the results stated above?
1. Responding to or creating Trigger Events
2. Identifying the next most critical action the customer must take to move the sale forward—and helping the customer to take that action, and
3. De-cluttering deals that have been in the same position for an extended period to enable you to focus on the best opportunities
A cluttered, unhealthy funnel is avoidable and our job as salespeople becomes more fun when we are able to measure our funnel progress based on some very simple metrics. The result is that we will focus on the right deal, with the right action, for the right buying influence at the right time.
Is your team struggling with funnel accuracy? Are you pulling numbers out of the air when it is time for your monthly numbers review?
We can help!
If you would like to discuss how we can help de-clutter your teams funnel and help you achieve better forecasting accuracy, then let’s book a call! If you don’t see any times that work, send me a note and I will be happy to work around your schedule.
