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Prospecting is a Numbers Game—
Winners Know How to Count (and Forecast)
Tracking your deals in the pipeline using this very, easy-to-use tool. Unlike other CRM tools that require users to be online, this cost-effective tool tightly links with Microsoft Outlook, using the Outlook contact records. Rolling up all of your forcasts is a snap.
Strategy
It’s one thing to have a pipeline of opportunities. It’s quite another to be able to easily track opportunities without turning your sales team into overpaid secretaries. There’s a lot of technology out there that promises to keep it simple, but I found one is effective, easy and cheap. To me, it’s a sales gadget.
Assignments
Sales and Marketing Teams:Get a copy of Desktop Sales Manager from SoftwareOnSailboats (that’s really the name of the company. Complain to them, not me). After you install the application on each of your sales rep’s PC’s, all they have to enter is the minimum necessary information: the name of the deal and the pipeline stage. In fact, entering your deals is the easiest I’ve seen because it can grab all of your contacts out of Outlook. You also can set it up so Outlook and Desktop Sales Manager permanently link. Sales Managers can easily merge all of their team’s individual pipelines in one click.
It’s easy to customize the program so your close probability for each sales stage can be reflected in the pipeline reports. If you haven’t done this before, it works like this. Each sales stage is defined. For each stage, a probability of close is assigned. For example, when you’ve made your second presentation, your close rate probability may be 30 percent. Then, for each opportunity, you multiply this close rate probability by the deal size. This will give you a weighted average for the deal. When you merge all opportunities across your organization and do this simple math exercise, you end up with a pretty fair sales projection.
You:Insist that your team get a tool like this, or at the very least, enter their pipeline into an Excel spreadsheet each week. It’s been shown that just the exercise of keeping track will keep you on-track.
Coaching Points
- There are many bigger solutions out there, such as SalesForce.com and Siebel, but make sure they’re going to help to get your team get out of the office or on the phone and in front of clients.
- Simple sales gadgets, like Desktop Sales Manager, should require about 30 minutes of training.
Costs
Entry-level, do-it-yourself solutions like Desktop Sales Manager, cost $60–$90 per PC. If you are looking for an internet/intranet solution budget $10/mo per person.
