It sure helps in sales to have great products, skilled sales people, eager prospects and an abundance of warm leads. Sounds like heaven, right? But a powerful SALES PROCESS will also lead to good sales results, sometimes trumping the other factors mentioned above.

And an important part of the sales process is PRIORITIZATION.

All business opportunities (leads) are important so how can we distinguish among them? Let’s look at some criteria:

1) Who you are selling to?

The fact is that certain clients are more attractive to you because of their size, reputation, industry, growth trajectory, location and so on. This is partly a matter of client classification which you can read more about  HERE.

2) Probability of closure

This can be quite subjective but estimating the likelihood of a deal closing is important. The fact is that some are ‘long shots’ while others are a ‘sure thing’. We want to ensure we are properly resourcing and prioritizing the latter over the former.

3) What you are selling?

Most of our businesses offer multiple products or services. A typical scenario is that we start out offering, say, accounting services and become known for that. We’re pretty good at executing these accounting assignments but later start offering some higher margin products, e.g. asset protection, estate planning etc. We want to increase the proportion of advisory or high-margin services offered through our business so we ‘value’ selling these products more highly.

4) Timing to closure

Selling costs money so we want to get deals closed fast. Logically, therefore a deal which can close tomorrow is a higher priority than a deal which will close in six weeks.

5) Deal size

You would think the larger the deal, the better. More revenue means more profit and increased use of your team and other resources leading to greater efficiency. But certain deals may be too big for your business at this time and you may prefer to chase smaller deals. In any event, you should consider and prioritize certain deal sizes over others.

Now, imagine you could easily evaluate ALL OPPORTUNITIES based on the above criteria. That’s exactly what you can do with Panalitix’s SalesPipeline!

The ratings for items (3), (4) and (5) above can be pre-set by management so you no longer have to think about those. And scores for (1) and (2) can quickly be identified and entered to provide an easy representation of your high priority deals.

What do you do with this information? Start by spending your time wisely on the deals which matter most to you firm. Ensure these are properly discussed and the next steps are crystal clear.

Note that priorities can change over time as probability of closure changes, for example. So this needs to be monitored closely.

Get in touch with Panalitix to ensure you are benefitting from this unique functionality which can improve sales process and drive increased sales success.