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Etelos, Inc.

In today’s marketplace, companies are facing a common problem: Sales opportunities are lostbecause there is no one available to pay attention to them.

For most companies, it’s not a question of whether you are losing sales every week; it’s a question of how many sales you are losing. Whether you’ve got Web leads in your inbox, messages in your voicemail, or a stack of business cards from a tradeshow or the last chamber of commerce meeting, you probably haven’t followed up effectively with the opportunities already identified in your sales funnel. And I’m sorry to say that the odds are stacked against you ever catching up.

As our lives become more integrated with technology, not only is it increasingly difficult to find customers who have free time; it is more difficult for businesses to properly follow up with every opportunity. Given a limiting resource such as time, when choosing to work one opportunity, others are naturally discarded – investing in one relationship at another’s expense. Although not every contact may be a legitimate sales opportunity, most opportunities never get the chance to mature.

Customers Demand Quality Communication

Unfortunately, prospects’ and customers’ expectations for quality communication are increasing exponentially, and the capacity to meet their expectations is near impossible without help. How many times have you walked away from a business because of poor followup? How many times have you been willing to pay more for a product because of better service? You’re not alone.

Poor communication or lack of responsiveness is a leading reason customers leave businesses for a competitor. The most disconcerting issue is that there is no intent to deliver bad communication, and most businesses pride themselves on great service. Poor communication is often the result of the impossibility to follow up properly with every opportunity.

Where Are You Losing Them?

I’ve been a part of many sales organizations that have all strived to provide a healthy experience for prospects and customers alike. But for whatever reason, there is only so much that can be done without help. There is never intent to not follow up in a timely manner (see Figure 1). As a result, most companies have no idea how much business they are losing because opportunities that are lost at the front door are usually not calculated. It’s sobering to think that there could be another 20 to 40 percent growth in potential opportunities if someone had the time to follow up with current activities and existing sales funnels.

Another problem that confronts sales organizations is the quality of their follow-up. Successful salespeople are so busy working with the top 20 percent of their client base that they don’t have enough time to nurture relationships with every opportunity, while unseasoned salespeople may have more time to follow up but lack the know-how and ability to effectively nurture every opportunity that comes along. The result is a certain percentage of opportunities that are discarded or lost in the business process.

For most customers, it takes time to build the relationship to the point at which people buy, and during the evaluation period, the expectation for quality experience is increasing as well. It’s not enough to simply make phone calls and expect the rapport to come through voicemail messages. In fact, frequent calling can do more to create distrust than endear a prospect to your business. What value do you leave in a voicemail message? Does it help you become the expert with whom they trust their money?

Identifying The Holes In Your Communication

Do you discard opportunities in your business process intentionally as well as unintentionally?

1. Do you eliminate early so as not to waste valuable time on opportunities that aren’t mature enough?

2. Do you have opportunities that are never followed up on?

3. Do you have inquiries that are ignored because of other priorities?

4. Have you ever come back to opportunities only to find yourself too late because they have purchased from a competitor?

5. Do you ever choose between servicing customers and not following up on new opportunities?

6. Do you have opportunities that are stuck in a rut or an evaluation period that seems to last forever?

Most sales opportunities are lost at the initial contact (see Figure 2). Although most opportunities are not ready at the time of initial contact to investigate a solution, the needs that create opportunities change over time. While the patience (or the ability) of salespeople to follow up may last only a few weeks, the majority of buyers will require more time than that. Legitimate prospect relationships, if nurtured properly, grow into legitimate sales opportunities over time.

It’s important to note that calling a prospect every two weeks does not classify as “nurturing a relationship.” Also, for many sales organizations to succeed, they need their representatives to focus on the hunt for new opportunities, not farming opportunities that may take months or even years to develop. Although understanding that the number of sales lost in the near term may be small and even insignificant, long-term mature opportunities increase exponentially if the quality of the business relationship has matured over the length of the relationship.

But What If You Could …

What if you could follow up on every opportunity? What if you could create a “virtual net” that captures the opportunity and slowly nurtures that relationship over time? What if you could leverage personal communication from your sales representatives to make them look like more effective communicators than they have time to be? The average sales organization loses opportunities with 20 to 40 percent of leads in their sales cycle that are never followed up on properly. What percentage do you discard on the front lines? And once you have that hole plugged, what are you doing to mature those relationships? What are you doing to become the expert they trust? What could you do if you captured one more sale that would normally just be lost?

Next Steps

If you are eager to dive in and start capturing more opportunities in your business process, it’s easy to get started. Here are a few ideas you can begin implementing right away.

Automatically capture every opportunity. Are you capturing every new opportunity? Although many companies have embraced salesforce automation and CRM solutions, the reality for most companies is that the majority of opportunities don’t make it into the system. It is unfortunate because there is little that can be done without knowing who you are missing. You don’t necessarily need an expensive solution to capture every opportunity, but you definitely need a system in place to do so.

Conduct an opportunity assessment. Do you know what the gap is in your process? How about what your customers and prospects expect and what they are receiving? Where are they dissatisfied in the relationship or experience? What solutions are they interested in most, and are they aware of the various solutions that may be most appropriate for their issues? Do you understand their issues? Do they feel that you understand their issues?

Start plugging the holes. Once you begin to understand the potential areas for improving the relationship, it’s time to implement some strategies to improve your communication. Whether you need to personalize automated correspondence from your sales staff to help them communicate better or you need to conduct relationship surveys prior to sales calls, make sure you don’t overpresent on issues that are unimportant. There are typically dozens of campaigns that can be built and strategically placed to fill the gaps. Start simple and address each campaign one at a time. Resist the temptation to take on more than you can handle.

Become the expert they trust. Owning the role of expert in their decision process is invaluable. With technology today, this is becoming easier to do. Most companies, however, do not have a “content” strategy to target the appropriate issues their customers are really dealing with. It’s more than having a newsletter, and it’s more than drip marketing. Personalize your education and deliver it over time to complement your existing relationships. Make sure it’s relevant to each circumstance and it’s a personal connection between sales rep and prospect. These simple principles will distinguish you from your competition and provide additional value to the relationships you are building.

Evolution, not revolution. The ongoing pursuit of excellence in these areas of your business should be more about evolution – not revolution. Gradual progress can yield enormous opportunities, so don’t feel overwhelmed and pressured to move too fast. Manage your risk and exposure, and monitor the success of your results. If you implement regular surveys in your business processes, you should be able to see positive results quickly.

Get help. There is so much more to offer on this topic than what can be addressed in this simple article. Get help from a consulting organization that is willing to help you tackle these issues and implement solutions to address the problem. Look for best practices from companies that are pursuing solutions to these challenges, and learn from their efforts. Find out what their other clients have done that works and also what isn’t working. Keep in mind that every customer is different, and the individual preferences of one profile may not transfer well to your business process.

Automating Personal Communication

According to a 2003 Etelos survey, 71 percent of businesses today are focusing on improving sales personnel effectiveness. Businesses today are moving toward automating personalized communication as a means to improve their business processes. The problem they are facing is very common in today’s marketplace: Sales opportunities are being lost because there is no one available to pay attention to them.

The effect on the marketplace is that businesses are looking for solutions to the following problems:

• 71 percent of businesses surveyed are interested in increasing sales personnel’s consistency, effectiveness and productivity;
• Half of the businesses surveyed are currently investigating opportunities in which they can do a better job of supporting the relationships of prospective customers;
• More than half are looking to automate campaigns to help their personnel improve their ability to support the prospect relationship; and
• Few businesses have in place automated correspondence to help their personnel.

Businesses are feeling the competitive pressure to do more to communicate effectively and personally. Automation isn’t the answer by itself, and most customers aren’t interested in marketing offers. Customers are interested in being educated about their options and choices, and they would prefer to buy from companies that will support their needs long-term and help them become informed buyers.

Additional Findings

To summarize additional highlights of the survey: Customers tend to be disappointed with the “whole business” when a representative does a poor job at followup correspondence, and few businesses regularly survey customers in the process of their business operations. When it comes to solutions to their initiatives, companies are more interested in purchasing software solutions to help their processes as opposed to developing their own applications as they may have done in the past.

Sample Responses

When asked a number of questions concerning current initiatives and areas in which they are looking to improve, participants responded with the following results:

Current Initiatives

• 71 percent – Increase sales personnel’s consistency, effectiveness and productivity;
• 50 percent – Support prospects as they evaluate our business;
• 47 percent – Improve client and prospect feedback;
• 47 percent – Increase the value of each customer or prospect relationship;
• 44 percent – Support customers after they make a purchasing decision;
• 42 percent – Support customers who may have support issues that need resolution;
• 36 percent – Create nurturing client and prospect correspondence;
• 36 percent – Cross-sell product and solution offerings through education; and
• 26 percent – Educate programs for prospects to boost awareness of business core competencies.

About The Etelos Survey Project

The Etelos survey project is an ongoing research project that began in March 2003. To date, more than 2,800 businesspeople have participated in this survey. Etelos continues to conduct surveys on a frequent basis in an effort to learn and improve product direction and understanding. While it is important to understand that Etelos is attempting to remain neutral in the process, Etelos is a software company whose products meet the needs of the marketplace surveyed. Participants in the survey are not Etelos customers and have not participated in any product demonstration. The survey is positioned as exploratory research to determine the potential “solution fit” to the business’ current issues if the software reseller were to represent Etelos.