C-Level Selling - Quality Sales Leads Will Come Once You Build Your Opportunity Matrix

In a previous article I discussed building your Opportunity Matrix of potential sales on an excel spread sheet.  Each box in that matrix is a prospect and is defined by a “who” (company, division, location, project) and a “what” (one specific product or service).   An account can have many “who’s” and many what’s which means many prospects. We will now prioritize all those boxes into marketing and selling categories. We will then assign energy actions based on their status which I’ll define later.  Since we have limited selling time we want the biggest bang (most sales) for what little time we have.  But we don’t want to ignore future opportunities.  Therefore we have to proportion our energies based on (1) most likely to win and (2) timing of the purchase.  Categorizing will help. 

The Marketing Categories

Marketing prospects are distant sales opportunities.  The clients exist and we sell what they could possibly use, but for any number of reasons we are a long shot away from a sale to them right now.  I use “M” to designate “marketing” and the numbers 1, 2, 3, and 4 to indicate the remoteness of the opportunity. 

M1 -“Way Out There” means this prospect based on demographics could use your products or service, but you don’t know anything about them and/or have never even made contact.

M2 – “Out There” means you’ve received some outside information that this prospect could need or use what you sell.  It could be a competitors’ customer or a self-op.  It could be a service for one of your existing account that they are just not interested in.

M3 – “Likely Prospect” means you’ve visited or talked with someone from the prospect and they have indicated a moderate / future interest.  It could also be a response from a trade show, or a promotion, or a referral, …

M4 – “Suggestion of a Fit” means someone has called you to come in because they really have a problem in your realm and want to learn more how you can help them. Selling Categories

These are opportunities with good potential to close in a relatively short time.  For some businesses short can mean a week and for others it can mean 6 months to a year.  Never put anything over a year in the selling category – no matter what your business.  Keep strong potentials over 12 months away with the M4s.

S1 – “Qualifying” means rating this prospect against your Ideal Customer and Ideal Opportunity Profiles.  In other words there are certain “who’s” that fit the way you do business better than others.  Likewise there are certain products and services you have that fit applications better than others.  The prospects you want to pursue are the ones that fit these profiles better/closer.  These prospects have indicated strong interest and have asked for a proposal/quote. 

S2 – “Interviewing and Presenting” This is where the prospect has passed the qualifying criteria and now you have to get beyond your initial contacts.  If you’re in B2B sales, there are many people involved and there is a C-Level or profit-center leader that will give final approval.  You will need to meet these decision-makers to learn and understand each person’s perspective and what it will take to win over each one.   

S3 - “Closing” means you’ve interviewed and presented your proposal and pricing.  Now is when you’re addressing any open issues and most importantly getting the top, C-Level or profit-center leader to commit to you.

These are the “prospect statuses” for each box in your matrix.  Now go to your Opportunity Matrix, excel spreadsheet, and fill in the boxes with M1, …, M4 and S1,…, S3. 

Prioritizing

The “who” ranking is (1) existing customers, (2) old and/or lost, (3) new.  An S1 for an existing has higher priority than an S1 for a new customer.  The ranking by categories is S3, then the M’s, then S1 and finally S2.  M’s are high because they are your future.

Energy and Time Utilization

Every prospect (a who and a what) has to have (1) an action and (2) a date of completion associated with it.  These should be updated daily by the sales person and reviewed with management monthly.  If senior sales management doesn’t enforce and participate in this, the selling team will never reach its potential.

S3 and the M’s require the least time.  Closing although extremely important is a few final meetings or phone calls.  The M’s can be done in bulk – mailings, invitations to trade shows, phone calls, advertising, and networking.  However, the M’s are your future and need to be attended to everyday for some finite amount of time. 

An example of how this might work would be: A sales person would start the day by immediately addressing any open issues on opportunities that are in the closing stages.  Then that sales person would spend 90 minutes on marketing activities.  Then s/he would set up or attend meetings with the S1s to determine how well the fit between companies and the application are.  Then set up or attend meetings with S2s or work on their proposals and prepare quotes.

As I mentioned M’s can be done in bulk and dated the same way.  For example all the M1 – M3s would get a mailing from the marketing department that will be completed by October 15th.  The M2’s and M3s will all get invitations by June 3 to the upcoming teleconference June 30th.

S2s take the most amount of time, and can overwhelm a sales person.  That’s why S1 precedes it in rank.  You want to qualify that you have a good customer and application fit before you decide to put forth all the energy needed to meet all the decision-makers and get to the leaders.  If you attempt to close sales via your main contacts only and don’t personally cover the other decision-makers, you’ll close at best 30% of these S2 pursuits.  S2’s should close at a 70% rate.

So set up your matrix, assign your categories, set actions and dates for completion and then implement.  Update regularly as prospects move down from the M’s to the S’s to the final sale.

And now I invite you to learn more.