Sales opportunity management involves a lot of hard work and requires data churning to understand which is a potential lead and which is not. From calculating the conversion ratio to following up on potential opportunities, the sales team requires vital insights.
Jump Directly to
1 . Opportunity Management and its uses to businesses
2. How to find new sales opportunities?
3. Top 15 Best practices for sales opportunity management
However, no matter how hardworking the team is, there will be some errors and missed opportunities. Therefore, it is crucial to follow the best practices for sales opportunity management.
Opportunity Management and its uses to businesses
Managing and organizing potential sales can be a tedious job and involves tracking of sales/ sales pipeline. It is essential to prioritize the high-value deals that have more potential to convert than the others.
A slight error can lead to missing out on a potential opportunity to convert. Sales opportunity management improves the sales team’s efficiency and avoids those key misses that would have otherwise happened. Prioritizing interactions through a better understanding of customers is made possible through sales opportunity management.
A good automation tool helps the team streamline the sales process, create quotes, and enable the team to make a data-driven decision.
Research suggests that 72% of the companies failed to achieve their revenue goals with less than fifty new leads.
How to find new sales opportunities?
Identifying sales opportunities requires a lot of research. And it is also beneficial to identify those leads that may or may not convert into a customer. However, a sales opportunity is a potential customer that has established interest in your brand and requires convincing to make the final decision.
Interesting Read: 10 Must-have Skills Every Sales Development Rep Needs in 2021
Therefore, a CRM tool plays a vital role in the initial stages. Learning about the lead, qualifying them to the next step, and considering the fitment to the company criteria to ensure conversion are a few things that a CRM can be helpful. In contrast, the lead enters the sales funnel.
Top 15 Best practices for sales opportunity management
The sales opportunity stage varies from a few days to a few months, depending on each industry. Therefore, it is essential to create a separate process for each step to ensure there are no slip-ups at any stage and you do not lose out on any potential qualified leads.
1 . The Qualifying Stage
Ensuring whether the lead qualifies to the next stage is very important before proceeding because much time and efforts go into converting them. However, once the team understands the interest level, calculating the fitment of the lead becomes easy, and the process can move them into the next stage.
2. Identification stage
Every product/ service helps a customer to address an issue/ pain point they have. It is up to the sales team to build a relationship of trust with them, identify those pain points, and project the product/ service to help them solve them. A good relationship with the client helps to address the pain points and progress towards closing the deal.
Interesting Read : Top 5 Attributes of Good Sales Development Reps
3. Key Decision-makers stage
Investing in building a relationship with the wrong contact in a company can prove very pricey. Therefore, it is vital to identify the critical decision-maker of any organization and make a good relationship with them. It helps you to convince them better and move the lead towards the final stage of sale closure.
4 . Quotation stage
This stage is the closest to the sales cycle. By now, the team has already covered all the other steps. The team/ sales rep should identify the specific needs and issues of the customer by now and ensure the quote is as per the requisition of the lead so that it can move to closure.
5. Closure
Whether the deal moved to closure or not, it offers tons of learnings. The lead will be closed after careful consideration of all the factors. Either way, it is essential to learn from the process and work on any issues you would have faced.
Opportunity management plays a vital role in the conversion of a lead. Let us look at some of the best practices that help to manage sales opportunity management efficiently.
6. Research
Thorough research about the lead, key decision-makers, responsiveness, budget, and the purchase process in their organization are a few essential factors that should consider before pursuing a lead.
All this information offers a perspective with helpful insights so that the sales team can use the proper sales techniques. In addition, segregation of the lead into the various stages as per the detailed information enables the chances of conversion.
7. Focus on the most qualified leads
The research stage offers a humongous amount of data about the potential leads. While that is an excellent database for the sales reps to start with, it may not be a great idea to pursue all of them.
However, identifying the most qualified leads and investing time and effort in them may be fruitful. The highest -revenue, closest to the closure stage, and the most engaged decision-makers are a few factors to be considered while focusing.
8. Relationship building
The study suggests that the chances of a potential lead entering the sales process are twenty-one times higher if they are in contact within thirty minutes of their interest. The time to get in touch with the potential leads has to be perfect.
Interesting Read: How to Succeed as a Sales Development Representative as a Fresher?
Not too early and not too soon, or you may miss out. Getting in touch with the prospective lead promptly and ensuring a regular follow-up at every stage through phone, email, and other product-specific demo helps move them to the next step quicker.
9. Quotations
It is vital to design a quotation after considering the customer’s specifications. However, delaying the estimate and not specifying all the terms indicates a lack of proper process. A CRM tool can help organize the entire process effortlessly.
10. Evaluation of the opportunity management process
Identifying any areas of improvement in the sales opportunity process and reviewing them helps track the progress; consider the analytics to make well-informed decisions when you automate the process. Deep-dive into valuable metrics, follow-ups, and sales cycles are a few other factors that require evaluation.
11. Focus on the most qualified leads
While the research offers tons of leads, it is vital to consider only the most qualified ones. It not only helps in better conversion, but it also saves a lot of time and effort.
12. Keep a tab on metrics
Metrics offer some precious insights about the prospective leads. For example, identifying the key decision-makers, their challenges, the ratio of the lost opportunities, deal revenue, and many other details can be easily created.
13. Sales pipeline review
With many potential leads in the pipeline and each one of them entering different stages, errors, slip-ups, and confusion are a part of the process. Chances of missing out on a qualified lead and not moving them to closure are a few possibilities.
Interesting Read: 5 Secrets to Successful Sales Team Management
14. CRM
CRM is an excellent solution for all the sales process challenges. From the research stage to sending quotes and closure of the sales deal, CRM helps manage every step of the process effortlessly.
Churning out a massive amount of data is very time and cost-consuming. However, using a CRM generating valuable metrics can be done in just a few clicks. CRM helps to research, qualify leads, move them towards the further stages, utilize the metrics to make data-driven decisions, send quotes, and close deals effortlessly and efficiently.
15. Relatable content
Using product demo and other relevant materials will help the potential leads to make the right decision. In addition, a product demo helps the potential leads understand the small details involved in the usage of the product and create a more informed decision.
Conclusion
If identifying, following, engaging, and closing the sales deal with a potential lead feels overwhelming and feels like you are missing out on many important ones, then considering a CRM tool would be a great idea.
Streamlining the opportunity management process, offering valuable insights, and sending a valid quote to the potential lead are a few challenges that a CRM can effortlessly manage.
[button url=”https://aritic.com/request-a-demo/” target=”blank” style=”default” background=”#2D89EF” color=”#FFFFFF” size=”5″ wide=”yes” center=”yes” radius=”auto” icon_color=”#FFFFFF” text_shadow=”none”]Schedule Demo[/button]
