Creating opportunities that generate forcastable revenue is no different.

An organization must have a process for creating opportunities in place that creates a framework for success.

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 forcastable 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 forcastable revenue
• Sales Process/Cycle

Again 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 forcastable revenue!

“My 2 Cents”

That being said, a critical piece of my job is training a new employee on what my clients are looking for in a qualified sales opportunity and what we need to do to achieve this deliverable, while at the same time, make the opportunity extremely appealing to the client’s sales rep.  A concept  I have deleveloped, perhaps concept is not the right word, but approach that I take and find extremely valuable is to relate the process of uncovering that opportunity to the creation of a painting.

What do I mean?

Well frame it like this – my clients look for us to deliver qualified sales opportunities – what is a qualified sales opportunity?  This includes all the information that we think about that is relevant to any sales process – pain/need, current environment, budget, decision making process, and timeframe.

When I describe to a rep what I would like them to uncover while qualifying a prospect, I use my “painting” analogy:  imagine if I showed you a painting of a beach, a nice white sandy beach, with rolling waves, a bright clear blue sky, and warm sunshine – this is probably pretty appealing !  But I then ask the question – what if I showed you that same painting of the beach with a chair and umbrella, perhaps a cooler next to the chair, a surfboard, and a seagull flying.  How much more appealing is this painting – the answer is “much more.”

How does this tie to opportunity generation – the more details around an opportunity the more appealing it is to a client’s sales rep, the more excited they are to follow-up on it, and most importantly, the more likely that opportunity is going to become a piece of forcastable revenue.

“My 2 Cents”

Where am I going with this one?  Well I have been thinking about how to motivate a few of my team members as they struggle with the day to day hurdles of teleprospecting.  

As a manager I believe it is one of my jobs to remove as many of the hurdles they face day to day as I can.  Some examples of these hurdles that I can remove either on my own or with the help of a client, are the lack of a targeted list, or perhaps the absence of a targeted message to overcome a specific objection they face, or if they are not comfortable with a technology they are representing.

In attempting to remove these hurdles I have discovered that there are a number of hurdles that people face that they put in front of themselves. 

What do I mean?

Well in the world of teleprospecting we can be bogged down by a wide range of things, from discouragement to the feeling of frustration at lack of success.

From my perspective as a manager I must work to get them to focus on the fundamentals of teleprospecting.  For example, it is critical for them to understand that not every call is going to develop into an opportunity (or success in terms of a qualified opportunity).   But if they focus on gathering a piece of information regarding an account or prospect with every attempt and view these as a “success” then the self-imposed hurdle of discouragment/frustration will quickly go away.   And most importantly the fundamental of  gathering information is one of the quickest paths to uncovering the targeted “tiger with no stripes” – the sales qualified leads!

“My 2 Cents”

I have found that when we remove the “peel” and take a look at the process that a marketing organization uses as it approaches opportunity generation, we find very good content with a number of things that work well, but a finished product that does not appeal to the sales organization and ultimately feed the success goals of the organization as a whole. 

Sorry for the analogy, but I find it easier to put it into this framework.

A number of my clients find that they are very adept at creating messaging, product awareness, interest levels, Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL), etc. (the potassium/fiber/taste of the banana) but the process that these are transitioned to sales (further qualification to a Sales Qualified Lead (SQL)) or the timing of that transition is something that causes a breakdown. (Lack of a peel to hold it all together into a nice appealing form) – does the analogy make sense now?

What I have discussed and worked closely with my clients on in a number of these cases, which has proven critical, is not only a clear definition of what Sales is looking for in a Sales Qualified Lead from Marketing but a feedback process that allows for the continued improvement of the quality of that MQL and transition of an MQL to SQL.

Feel free to contact me if you want to discuss specific examples of different feedback processes that I have found effective.

 “My Two Cents”