A common mistake for new founders and business owners is to assume that your proposals and sales opportunities, pitched well will sell themselves.
We mistakenly think the same level of enthusiasm that a customer felt during our presentation will continue throughout the sales process.
Your sales pipeline should be reviewed at least daily.
You need to coldly and clinically assess where your customers are; and drop the ones that are no longer progressing.
Asking the following questions of the ones you continue to work with:
- what is the customer’s decision process? Has it changed?
- what is the next step that the customer needs to make? How do you help them achieve that?
- are there any obstacles that need to be addressed? How will you remove them?
It is up to you to help the customer work through their decision process. If you don’t help them the sale just won’t happen.
