Sales Prospecting Perspectives

Managing the Process of Opportunity Generation

  

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Anything "successful" is directed by a process.  Look at the human body and the process of blood circulation or look at installing an underground sprinkler system.  These are two things that work very efficiently and successfully when every step in the process is connected and working together for the end goal they are aimed at achieving.

Creating opportunities that generate forecastable revenue is no different.

An organization must not only have a process for creating opportunities in place that creates a framework for success but they must manage that process.  I do understand that each organization is different (product/service sold, target markets, sales team structure, marketing spend, etc) and this is something that must be recognized first and foremost.  That said, although each organization is different, there are "best practice" approaches that can be learned from studying other organizations both similar to yours and vastly different.  The critical piece is the creation of a process that is sustainable and measurable and then managing the pieces of that process.

In my experience I have found that the most successful organizations that I work with are ones that take a look at the entire process and evaluate each piece of the puzzle.  Below are a few of the steps in the process of creating opportunities that generate forecastable revenue.

• Messaging
• Marketplace Awareness
• Lists of Prospects
• Marketing to the lists
• Tracking and Nurturing of MQL's (marketing qualified leads)
• Following-up on MQL's (teleprospecting)
• Determining when the MQL is ready for transition to sales
• Transitioning MQL's to sales as SQL's (sales qualified leads)
• Feedback on SQL's
• Conversion %'s of SQL's to forecastable revenue
• Sales Process/Cycle

This is a list of items off the top of my head, each one of these has a number of moving pieces that need to be planned for and evaluated as well.

I believe the bottom line is this, if you want to employ a successful process around opportunity generation you need to look at every piece of the puzzle and make sure they are all lined up to support and drive the success of the process.

In this case, producing forecastable revenue!