Predictable Revenue: Turn Your Business Into A Sales Machine With The $100 Million Best Practices Of Salesforce.com

by Aaron Ross

The objectives of this process are to qualify or disqualify early, gain access to the multiple people in a deal that have power, and begin creating a common vision with the prospect.

Lay out your process for the prospect in the best way to mutually figure out the fit, and position it in a way that benefits them.

You are qualifying or disqualifying them as well—remember, if it’s not a good fit, you should move on! Your goal, if there is a fit, is to create a plan with the prospect to organize a working or whiteboarding session that brings in their key people and decision makers, to meet with and create a vision with your key people.

Do they really want you bugging them for months about whether there’s a fit? Why not just figure it out now?

In this session, you want to create a joint vision together. Walk them through a design process on how they can and will become successful with your product. Coach the vision out of them rather than telling it to them.

prospects usually don’t know what their underlying problems are, and you must help them determine what they are.

Prospects Should Earn Proposals

There is a cost to giving out proposals or paperwork too soon—the prospect doesn’t value it or your time, and you lose the chance to set up a specific next step that would help them earn the proposal.

If you’re not winning at least 50% of the proposals you’re giving out, you’re too easy.

Tell them you’d be happy to, and to do that, you’d need to set up a scoping call with them and the key people, to ensure the proposal is accurate and meets their needs.

If the prospect declines—then either they aren’t a great prospect, or you didn’t prove your value to them in your prior calls or demos.

Seeds take a lot of time to cultivate and to ramp up, but once they get going, they are unbeatable with the highest conversion and close rates.

Nets: Nets are classic marketing programs, in which you’re trying to cast a wide net and see what you get, whether through email marketing, conferences, advertising, and some forms of internet marketing (PPC).

Spears involve targeted outbound efforts (such your classic “hunting”) that require some individual human efforts (such as business development, “Top 10 Targets” programs, and Cold Calling 2.0).

Prospects (or Names) A database of names or a list that you are marketing to, in which people have not responded positively yet.

A lead is a prospect that has responded positively in some way to show their interest in what you have to offer, such as registering for a white paper or attending a webinar.

After someone has qualified a lead through email or the phone, and the lead meets your set of qualification criteria, it becomes an opportunity. A common abbreviation is “oppty.”

Clients They have given you money.

Champions A champion can be a client or non-client that has referred you business, offered a testimonial, or has active...

Give up trying to control how long someone takes to move forward.

many of these as you can in your sales