You might be familiar with the concept of the “sales funnel”. It says that you have a large pool of leads, of which some become prospects, and these prospects lead to a smaller number of customers through various processes such as proposals, presentations, qualifications and others. Getting the most out of your sales funnel means getting the most out of your business. Here are some of the things you can tweak to make sure you get the best conversion rates and sales numbers.

Balance Lead Generation and Lead Management

Many sales departments choose to focus their efforts on lead generation. The basic concept of “more leads = more sales” might be fundamentally flawed. Instead, focus your energies on managing your leads by ranking, sorting and nurturing them, and remember to follow up on them more. In most cases, squeezing the most of your existing sales leads will bring better results, than just throwing more leads into the funnel. This of course has a snowball effect, because a policy of getting the most out of existing leads will spread to future leads.

More Focus on Sales Process, Less on CRM Technology

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software is great, don’t get us wrong, but it is hardly used to its full potential when there isn’t a solid sales strategy behind it. Our advice is to set a strong sales strategy and have an efficient sales process. You should be aware and have fine tuned every step of the process from generating appointments with new sales leads to the actual sale itself. Once you have these down, a CRM is ten times as useful.

Train, Train, Train

Training should not just be for newcomers to your sales staff. Sales team training should be an ongoing process, with debriefs, coaching and meetings being a regular part of their everyday activities. This way, you’ll have a sales team that is adjusted to the ever-changing needs of your customers.

Measure Each Stage of Your Sales Funnel

Don’t focus solely on your deal closing ratios. You should know the ins and outs of every step of the sales process in terms of numbers, because when you have such quantifiable results, you can adjust and see where there is a bottleneck. A sale is not just the signing of the contract, it’s the entire process of building the relationship that leads up to it.