Okay, okay, maybe your pipeline doesn’t suck. But that would put you in a very small minority of salespeople. Having worked with thousands of salespeople, I have consistently found that 90% of what’s in most sales people’s pipelines is pure junk. What’s amazing is that this is totally avoidable. And in this chapter, I’m going to show you why most sales people’s pipelines suck, and more importantly, how to fix this simple problem. Check it out.
Number one, they’re not disqualifying. It’s time to stop trying to sell to everyone. Great salespeople recognize that most prospects are not good prospects, and they’re willing to disqualify those that are not a good fit, be willing to trim the fat off of your pipeline. If someone’s not a good fit. This is going to free up your time to actually focus on the best prospects that’s going to improve the quality of your pipeline.
Number two, they haven’t asked enough questions. Most salespeople are so focused on pitching their own product or service that they don’t really fully understand what’s going on in their prospect’s world. It’s time to learn as much as we can about our prospects by asking about their challenges about their objectives, their budgets, their decision-making processes, and all of those other key steps that we need to understand in order to determine whether a prospect is qualified. By doing this when we actually add someone to our pipeline, and we say this person is a 50% likelihood of closing, we really know what we’re talking about. Number three, not getting feedback throughout the sales process. You want to get constant feedback from the prospect on how they feel about your discussions, little questions like, and does this make sense in your world? Or do you agree with what I just said, will actually let you know you’re truly on track? Because if the prospect says, yes, this does make sense, you know that you’re on the right track. But if they say now, actually not so much, you also going to understand that now we have to change direction in order to get back on track. This is going to improve the quality of your pipeline manifold. So there is why most sales people’s pipelines suck, and how to avoid it.