Where is your revenue?

What groups make up your revenue funnel?

Not only is revenue important, but it can be tracked as well. Many of you will have heard of the sales funnel, thanks Salesforce for the picture below.

So you get a bunch of leads at the top and those turn into a couple of sales at the bottom. How do you get to the sales?

Leads

First you have to have some leads. Someone that is maybe interested, maybe not. But something that you should be engaging with. You can get these from a lot of different places. Could be a lead generator like an e-mail list that you create, think of those websites you go to that ask for your e-mail in exchange for a discount. Assuming you give your e-mail address now that customer knows you are at least somewhat interested. You could also buy and e-mail list, could be pretty risky, since you do not know if those folks are even remotely interested in your product or service. Other places to find leads could be through referrals. It is always great when your current customers will recommend you to future customers. Finally there is always the good old friends and family, including your extended Facebook “friends”. Once you have these leads what next?

Prospects

As you filter through the leads you will find prospects. Those future customers that are interested. They just need some additional information or pricing to move to the next stage. In the prospecting phase you are really spending time in front of these customers. These are your leads that agree to a meeting. That could be a virtual meeting, coffee, lunch, happy hour. They are willing to commit time to listening to your pitch. They may also just need a compelling event. A missed call from your competition, or just some new pricing from you. That compelling event could also some from a request for pricing or quotation (RFP or RFQ). As the funnel picture recommends not all leads will become prospects, so do not hesitate to prioritize. Also feel free to follow-up with the leads that did not become prospects down the road, you never know when they will have a compelling event as well.

Quoting

Once your prospect has the information that they are looking for the final thing they need is a quote. They need to know how much your product or service costs. Maybe there are tiers to your offering, maybe you have a discount for a longer commitment. When you are exiting the prospecting stage you will make sure that most of the prospects have pricing. I do say most of the prospects because you will identify a few prospects that are just not good fits. Maybe they really do not have a need for you product or service, they may also not be a good fit for you. It’s ok to say know. Remember the funnel is continuing to get smaller. At this point the customer will have pricing and the ball will be in their court.

Follow-up

Although the ball is currently in the customers court, you do need to follow-up. Your customers are busy and without follow-up they may just stay with the current vendor, or they may forget to add a new product or service. This is also a great opportunity to ask for feedback.

How did your pricing look?

How was the process?

Did I get you all the information you need in a timely manner?

This are great ways to continue to improve the process for the future. Win or lose every quote is an opportunity to learn about the market and grow. The final thing that you need from the follow-up is a timeline. When is your customer making a decision? Do they need any additional information?

Closed

Now you know. They customer is either buying from you or they are not. Another great time to ask for any additional feedback. Again win or lose you will learn from their decisions.

If this is a win, what is next? How do they start getting product or services? Is there anyone else in the organization that now needs to be engaging with the customer. Assuming it’s a service, who will be providing the service? Now is a great time for an introduction. With products, now is when you let them know when to expect the product.

Repeat

Once the sale is closed you need to know if they could be a repeat customer. Are you offering a seasonal service or product? Will they be coming back next year? Can you give them a discount to commit now? Do you need to schedule a follow-up?

Now is also a good time to ask for referrals. What discount or benefit can you give them for referring friends and family? Never underestimate the gift card or a nice bottle of bourbon or wine.

Again remember all these stages will have fewer and fewer customers. It is a funnel after all. But you have to keep the funnel full. So knowing how you are going to get the leads is the first step. Once you have the leads you need to understand how long it will take your customers to get through the process. This will tell you how many customers you need in each stage to meet your revenue goals for next month and next quarter. It’s a process after all. Predictable revenue leads to business success and more opportunities. Know how many customers you have in each stage and the timeline for those stages tells you if you have predictable revenue or not.

Do you have a customer stage tracking process?

Do you know how many leads you need to get to a sale?

If you need any advice or help with either feel free to reach out, or post in the comments. That’s what this newsletter and community are for.