Tracking opportunities adds visibility to what is coming down the pipeline – providing you with a leading indicator for your business.
If you are not practicing any kind of opportunity management, start by having your team simply document opportunities as they discover them in the field. (Think beyond just your outside sales team!) This is incredibly important. We call this reactive opportunity management. It includes tracking opportunities, the companies/contacts involved, products, estimated dollars, estimated quantities, expected close date, next action date and action item, stage of the opportunity, competition for that opportunity, and a journal to keep your information on that opportunity in one spot.
After your team has made a habit of documenting and tracking those opportunities, elevate their game by promoting and practicing proactive opportunity management. Being proactive and uncovering new opportunities will require more work and a much longer sales cycle in many cases, but it will pay off.
Start by profiling your accounts by current sales volume, potential sales volume, current products used, and potential products that could be purchased from you. Identify new opportunities for growth within those accounts. If there’s enough volume to justify it, put an action plan together on how you will get that product or service into that account, and monitor progress toward that goal. In your CRM, designate these opportunities as proactive, recognizing that it could take a year to get the product into a facility or location.
Training is a critical component of effective opportunity management. Learn more about best practices in training in this blog: Don’t Make Training a One-Time Event.
Selltis helps you better manage the front end of the sales process, including managing opportunities from lead to close. Learn more here.