Don’t Wait Until Its Too Late To Fix Your Sales Process

During the historic rains in Georgia last week I was putting out buckets to catch water leaking from the ceiling around my family room fireplace. At the same time leaking water was ruining the carpet and drywall in two rooms of my basement.

I was reminded of an old story I heard as a kid about the man with a hole in his roof. When the sun was shining, it didn’t need fixing. When it was raining, of course, you couldn’t fix it.

Unlike the man in that story, my neighbors and I didn’t know our roofs and basements leaked until it was too late.

Of course, being a sales process geek, it also reminded me of the way most B2B sales processes are:

When the market is growing companies are too busy to fix them.

When the market stinks (like in the last year) crappy numbers and other problems are happening so fast they don’t know what to do.

Just as my neighbors and I didn’t know how to tell if our houses would leak, most executives don’t know the characteristics of a good sales process.

I’ve written about that several times before, for example: Six Easy Ways to Boost Your Company’s Sales Results

One of the biggest factors in an effective sales process is the ability to keep unqualified prospects from coming in contact with your salespeople. That requires lead nurturing, something most people don’t have a clue how to do.

We’ll remedy that situation next Thursday, Oct 8, when Ardath Albee, founder of www.marketinginteractions.com and author of the upcoming book “eMarketing Strategies for the Complex Sale” (McGraw Hill, October 2009) conduct a facilitating webinar:

How to Design Lead-Nurturing Programs

A Marketing Expert Reveals Secrets to
Help Salespeople Sell More Now

I hope you’ll be on the webinar next week. I look forward to chatting with you.

(Of course, the Webianar is free for all members of SPIF!)

Michael Webb

September 29, 2009