5 Serious Sales Pipeline Mistakes That Cost You Revenue
I know, I know…
There are probably plenty more than just five mistakes that businesses can make. But the five mistakes I am talking about are the significant ones, the five that stick out like a sore thumb. What's more, they can all easily be fixed, and are just as easily avoided.
Believe me, it will help speed up your sales pipeline.
I am listing them in no particular order. Although, in my experience working with B2B services businesses across three continents, I find that Mistake Number 5 often makes the biggest difference to revenue attainment.
Have a look.
And, let us know if you'd like a downloadable PDF version of this article.
Mistake Number 1:
Value Propositions That Are Not Buyer-Focused
OK, this one may sound complicated, but it really isn't.
Think about how you would choose a product or services provider. What do you want to know first and foremost? Do you want to know how long ago the business was started? How many staff it has? Which customers it has serviced?
No.
You’ll want to know this:
WIIFM?
What's in it for me?
You want to know whether the product or service suits your needs, that it does for you what you want it to do, whether it is a good fit for you, or not.
You can't have a value proposition that is all about the product or service that you offer. It needs to be about what the customer gets out of buying it.
In a previous article I talked about “Selling the benefits of the benefits”. The example I cited was about a company selling graffiti removal services to schools. They used to lead their prospect engagements by talking about the efficacy of their chemicals and about how great they are at removing graffiti.
In other words: They sold a graffiti removal service.
I advised the business owner to switch from selling the service to selling the outcome.
He grasped that his business is selling much more than just the removal of graffiti. Consequently, they are now selling a cleaner image. One that will make parents want to send their kids to this school. A popular school will attract more teachers, which will make parents happy to send their kids there.
Happiness all around!
So, think about what your services achieve for your customers. Then create your value proposition from there. Let us know if you’d like our help with that.
Mistake Number 2: Undefined Buyer Personas
This is an easy one to fix, yet still a very common mistake.
Why is it a mistake?
Because not being crystal clear on who your ideal customer is will cause you two serious problems:
Your outbound prospecting will be inefficient because you’ll be spraying your messages to contacts who are unlikely to be interested in what you are selling.
Your inbound prospecting will also be inefficient because your ideal customers will not know that your products or services apply to them. In other words, you are making it difficult for your ideal customers to choose you as their vendor of choice.
So, you need to be very clear on who your ideal customers are. Here are four sample criteria you can use to define them:
Their industry (what industry are they in?)
Their business size (how big are they, by headcount or revenue?)
Their geography (where are they located?)
Their job title (what role and how senior is the person you want to reach out to?)
If you'd like to know more about discovering your ideal customers, I recommend you take a look at this recent article of mine. Or, just let us know if you’d like our help.
Mistake Number 3:
Unclear Service or Product Descriptions
This point is not the same as the one in my second point above. This is not about your value proposition. This is about how well your customers and prospects understand the services that you are selling.
As the saying goes:
"A confused mind says NO."
It may be blindingly obvious to you what services you are selling but if it is not equally clear to your customers, they will decide to buy from a competitor who is very clear about what they are selling.
Some criteria you should consider will include:
Duration (how long will the service take?)
Price (how much will it cost?)
Service Outline (what will you do?)
Targeted Outcome (what will your service achieve?)
It should be pretty straight forward, but do let us know if you’d like our help with that.
Mistake Number 4:
Unspecified Customer Experience
This is such a critical point that it is hard to understand why so many businesses overlook or under-invest in their customer experience strategy.
Imagine you are a prospect looking for the kind of products or services your business offers. Wouldn't you want to know what kind of experience you can expect from doing business with you?
It would really help someone who has never done business with you if you had a motto, a slogan, or a brand promise that describes clearly and succinctly what customer experience your business offers.
Let me give you two examples:
I helped a Managed IT Services business out with this slogan: "We've got your back."
With just this short sentence, a new customer or prospect can immediately imagine what their service experience will be like. Namely, there will be no finger-pointing, no delays, no feeble excuses. "We've got your back." means that this business will be there for you if and when things go wrong (as they often do in IT).
It's a good clear and easily understood brand promise.
The other example is of a Product Marketing Services Agency. They did not go for a whole sentence as their brand promise. Instead, we chose these three words for them:
"Expertise. Speed. Results."
Anyone who reads these three simple words will immediately have an image of what it's like to be a customer, namely that 1) they know what they're doing, 2) they will work fast, and 3) they will deliver the outcome I'm looking for.
Surely, that describes the kind of company anyone would want to do business with.
Let us know if you’d like our help with that.
Mistake Number 5: No Lean-Forward Moment
I have written in depth on what I mean when I talk about creating your "Lean-Forward Moment".
Here is a synopsis:
Buyers nowadays are notoriously time-poor and increasingly impatient with being pitched at and sold to. In fact, my colleagues who run outbound call centers tell me that, on average, their cold callers now only have 8 seconds (!) to capture a buyer's interest. If the buyer is not interested in what's being offered within 8 seconds into the call, then the opportunity is gone.
"Cold callers now only have 8 seconds (!) to capture a buyer's interest."
The mistake that most sellers make is that they lead the engagement with what they're selling. By doing that they are still introducing the product, the service, or the organization at the moment when the buyer reaches the end of their patience and ends the call.
Quite frankly, callers don't have enough time to introduce anything within 8 seconds. So, my strong advice to sellers is not to pitch on your first outreach to a buyer. My advice is to lead your prospect into a business conversation, not hit them up with a sales pitch. You want them to lean forward and ask you for more information.
To achieve that, aim to capture their imagination and make them curious. You need to say something compelling that captures their interest, makes them literally lean forward and say this:
"That sounds interesting. Tell me more about that."
So, how do you go about creating a lean-forward moment within 8 seconds?
My advice is to start your engagement with your Point 2, as described above. I.e. lead with your value proposition, or with a specific point of view.
If you don't have one of those, you are fighting a losing battle.
Let us know if you’d like our help with that.
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