When I was a salesperson, my monthly commissions were based upon order shipments. As a result, my daily Opportunity Pipeline analysis always began with a quick review of Booked orders, with the question in mind, “Is there anything that I can do today that will help one of my Booked orders ship sooner?” Then I would look at each Open opportunity line item to review the Next Action Item, Owner, and Due Date. Regardless of whether the action item belonged to me, I would consider whether there was anything that I could do that day to push the opportunity closer to closure. If the action item was owned by a prospect or customer, I would consider whether there was any way that I could take the action item off their desk. After all, they had many other priorities, but my priority was accelerating sales cycles!
Once I had made a list of the pipeline-related tasks that I needed to perform that day, I would determine whether each task warranted the use of “selling time” (from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.), or whether it could be performed during non-selling hours. When I completed all of my “during selling time” tasks, I would spend the rest of selling time prospecting for new opportunities.
I found this approach to be extremely effective. Daily attention applied to each opportunity helped me push sales cycles along at the fastest possible rate. Some days all of my selling time was consumed by activities that advanced existing opportunities. Other days it was spent solely on prospecting activities. Most days fell somewhere in between.
As a sales manager, I reviewed my sales branch’s opportunity pipeline report with many of the same thoughts in mind. The major change was the handling of Next Action Items. On the day of or day following a Next Action Item Due Date, I would touch base with the appropriate salesperson to learn whether the Next Action Item had been completed as anticipated. If the answer was “no”, then I would ask the salesperson to update the Due Date. If the answer was “yes”, I would ask the salesperson to update the Next Action Item, Owner, and Due Date. I was very diligent with this inspection, and it trained my salespeople to pay close attention to Next Action Items and Due Dates. This discipline helped our entire sales team accelerate every sales cycle to the maximum extent possible.