Many Business Owners and Sales Managers place a highly disproportionate emphasis on the importance of sending plenty of proposals.  The (incorrect) assumption here is:

More Proposals  =  More Sales  =  More Profit

Nothing can be further from the truth.  In fact, the equation should read:

Better Qualification  =  Fewer Proposals  =  More Profit

Many years ago, I was recruited to run a sales organization with 7 salespeople.  The company CEO was a brilliant PhD nuclear scientist and a very analytical guy.  He was beaming as he handed me a huge 3-ring binder stuffed with over two hundred quotations the company had delivered over the last several months.   These proposals were complex.  The cost to the company to create each one was huge.  The CEO excitedly proclaimed and believed that these quotes were “just dying to be closed”.  

It took about two weeks to thoroughly follow up on every proposal.   You can probably guess what we discovered.  Not ONE of these “hot sales prospects” had any intention of buying.   In fact, nearly half of them couldn’t even recall receiving a proposal.  Every “prospect” had other priorities that had nothing to do with purchasing this company’s product.

We were soon able to turn things around by simply focusing the attention of the sales team on some real business opportunities, but I’ll never forget the lunacy of this company wasting all of those resources chasing ghosts.

How much money and energy is your company wasting with unqualified sales prospects?

For the majority of salespeople, their “hot prospect pipeline” and the volume of profit they return to their company’s bottom line are inversely proportional.   Many simply don’t have a clue about time management or the value of an hour of their own (or your company’s) time.

A high level of sales activity is crucial, but never confuse activity with productivity.  Generating and launching unqualified proposals is a costly example of a rampant and unfortunate dysfunction known as Premature Satisfaction™ (aka:  The Destroyer of Profit).  There is a simple cure for this organizational disorder.  It only requires some tools, some rules and a little discipline.

For starters, every opportunity should be thoroughly qualified before company resources are invested in creating proposals.  A Qualifier Checklist is a great way to begin this process.

Secondly, all sales activities should be singularly focused upon either moving the sales process forward or to closing the file.   Anything in between is pure wheel-spinning — useless activity disguised as “work”.

A “yes” is fine.  So is a “no”.  It is the “maybes” that tear into both your revenue and profit lines.

Some other popular and dysfunctional wheel-spinning activities include:

• Excessive internet research (and other busywork) to avoid making phone calls
• Sending literature, letters, and emails to avoid making prospecting calls.  
• Allowing the buyer to control the sales process.
• Accepting prospect meetings without a clear, mutually acceptable agenda.
• Talking & presenting when you should be listening & understanding.

If you are looking to build more predictability, consistency, visibility, scalability and profitability into your sales effort, take a hard look at your Sales Pipeline and begin eliminating Premature Satisfaction™ today.

Copyright © Joe Zente 2012. All Rights Reserved.