Microwave your sales

BING! Microwaves, magical 80’s technology, a futuristic box that saved time and made jacket potatoes fast.

The Air Fryer of their day, with endless cookbooks and gadgets. Like many innovations, things calmed down and now they are handy for just a few tasks. The main one being re-heating leftovers. In todays hybrid working world I bet most of us have enjoyed some leftovers microwaved as a quick lunch option.

But have you tried Microwaving your sales?

Too often in the search for growth and new pipeline we work on attracting new customers and that is valid but every sales organisation I have ever worked in has had sales they have lost, leads that weren’t followed up, proposals that foundered and deals that stalled when personnel either left on the customer side or on the sales side.

For a really quick way to drive pipeline growth, re-heat your lost and forgotten opportunities – just like grating some cheese on some leftovers and banging it in the Microwave it is amazing what happens.

Here are some initiatives you could kick off –

·      Go back through your CRM and look at all the leads that have come in over the last 2 years. I guarantee some of those foundered on the handover to sales (or worse, that sales didn’t pick up the lead fast enough).

·      Look over your lost deals over the past 3 years – that is enough time for any initial contract term to near its end so in theory the deal could be back in play again.

·      If you have the records (and finance usually will) take a look at some of the forecast pipeline from way back. There will be deals there that were ‘best case’ or ‘committed’ that just didn’t happen. If you don’t have the corporate memory because of personnel changes, go back and find out why.

·      Ask departments other than sales what deals stick in their minds as things that should have progressed. Try Marketing, Legal, technical pre-sales and especially bid management.

·      Check with Marketing – they will have lists of contacts who came to virtual events & webinars that are well worth following up with. Just cast your eyes down the list and ideas will generate.

·      Once you have all these names take some time to check out LinkedIn – personnel move roles and it is incredible how networks work. You will find new prospect customers and new ways that people connect. This is a terrific exercise done with a team in a room or on a teams call. Your sales team should be curious detectives helping each other find new angles.

Now it’s important when doing this that CRM’s and personnel are consulted to ensure you don’t duplicate existing effort. This of course won’t happen if your CRM is up to date (which of course it is right?). You don’t want wasted effort here. I have even run this exercise as a cross functional collaboration event with rewards. Getting new perspective in the room can really help – just be sure to give everyone time to speak to avoid group think.

New starters & new leaders always try a new start or a quick start but there is often no need to re-invent the sales approach, the business was likely around 5, 10 or even 40 years ago and plenty of successful salespeople have worked there. Take the time to re-heat some of the things that might have slipped them by.

Just like Microwaving leftovers, reheating old leads, contacts and opportunities can be a great time saver.

I wish you every success.

Smooth Sales is a collective of Sales experts able to transform your commercial organisation. Specialising in 3–24-month contracts we become part of your team to drive real change.

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