Here are some facts. Especially in a B2B sales environment, the sales closure ratio is very small. Either in an enterprise deal or in a SaaS deal another fact is that sales cycles are long and conversion in each step of the opportunity process takes time. Clients are well educated before sales people contact them, most likely they heard about your solution before you cold call them and most likely they also know most of your competitors. Another fact is that the minute a potential client accepts to talk to you doesn’t mean necessarily they are in the market looking for a solution, as their status quo might work well at the moment.
As you are building up your pipeline, some of the opportunities are moving down towards closure, some unfortunately are lost and the majority is there sitting in the middle.
Although we anticipate opportunities moving, some of them are stuck in the same stage for ages. They don’t qualify to move into another stage and you cannot also say for sure that they are a lost case.
On the contrary to others saying that once an opportunity is not moving it must be moved to the closed lost bucket, I believe we need to give them more time. Taking into account what I noted in the beginning of this article and assuming that things take their time, we shouldn’t expect things to move that fast all the time.
What one can do though with these opportunities that are not moving? Before giving an idea of what can be done with them, let’s note again that these are not yet dead. Maybe one can help these clients move from their undecided zone.
One effective way to do so, is to educate and consult them. Stay close to them and show them in multiple ways with collateral and content you create how their life would change if they buy your product or service. Show them what competitors have done with you and how their business has changed as a result. Give them tangible results they should expect if they select you. Alternatively, give them enough evidence to help them decide they do the right thing to come to you. Become they trusted partners to support their business even before they become your client.
The above doesn’t guarantee obviously that all of those “problematic” prospects would lean on your favour. Let’s not forget that sales at the end of the day is a numbers game.
Happy selling!