Is Maybe stalling your Sales Funnel?
Posted by Mary Hendow on Wed, Oct 06, 2010 @ 09:05 AM
How many “Maybes” are in your sales funnel? Typically, Maybes are viewed as potential prospects, not part of the forecast (hopefully), but still prospects - after all, we reason, they haven’t said no. Skip Miller, in ProActive Sales Management has a great slogan, “Yeses are great, Nos are great, but Maybes will kill you!” His point is that Maybes sit in the sales funnel taking up valuable time and limited resources.
Aneke Seley, in sales 2.0 stresses that high velocity sales funnels are critical to success in the new Sales 2.0 world. I believe the Maybes deserve attention for slowing down the velocity of sales funnels. Maybes drag down sales conversions. Most Maybes who’ve been active for longer than 90 days when the average sales cycle is 60 need to be moved to a Yes or No. Review the percentage of Maybe's for each of your reps, find out what’s keeping Maybes in your sales funnels. Maybes are a great topic for individual or group sales meetings and a great training opportunity.
Training your team in best practices that minimize the percentage of Maybes in their funnels, empowers sales reps to focus time and effort on the deals most likely to close. Ultimately, peak sales performance is really about getting to Yes or No.