Fortune is in follow up, but "Funnel Flushing" is critical

Do you sometimes feel that your sales forecasts and sales funnel provided by your sales team are not reliable? Your sales team is doing lots of activity, but they are not able to close the sales?

The root cause of the problem might be much more profound than you are thinking.?

I am sure you will find the answers to these questions in this article.

Fortune is in the follow-up.

In Sales, everyone agrees that Fortune is in follow-up. Timely and proper follow-up is the key to success in the B2B sales process.?

Now, here are two components of follow up:

Timely:?

• If you don't connect with your prospects at the promised time or when they are expecting you to connect, then you might lose the business.?
• Always keep the promise when you make it.?

Proper:

• Many times rookie sales persons misunderstand the meaning and purpose of follow-up. Just calling up the client and asking when Purchase-order will be finalized will not get the order.?
• Always make a point that whenever you call or contact the client, you add one or another value to them.?
• It's not about giving them more and more discounts or freebies. It may be more helpful information about the solution or the challenges they face about the decision-making process and how to help them.?

That is the exact reason why we have kept the Next Follow-up date in the leads and opportunities module in the Sangam CRM platform.?

But….

But there is a substantial practical problem in following the above rule blindly.?

What's that??

Problem with follow-up.

You might ask because the above arguments are so logical and time-tested, no one would find any flaw with them.

One of the critical purposes of the follow-up is to move one step ahead in every meeting and every call.?

Before that, you always need to be sure that the opportunity is still alive. Otherwise, your funnel report is not accurate.?

In the last 12 years, I have seen many sales teams keep very old opportunities alive and then they complain that they are not able to meet their targets. But to me, it seems like a logical result because they are making a serious mistake.

Understanding Funnel Flushing

Funnel flushing is the process of evaluating every opportunity in hand and evaluating whether it is still worth following or not?

But why does this happen?

1. Generally, there is pressure on the salesperson to have a fat funnel to explain to their manager that they will close more business in the coming days.?
2. When someone loses an opportunity, many questions need to be answered in many organizations. This can be very uncomfortable for the salesperson.
3. Sometimes the inflow of new opportunities is so small that if the salesperson does not keep dead opportunities alive, they might not have any funnel to show to the managers.?
4. When you don't have a set process to make decisions, salespeople are not appropriately trained. Salespeople do not know what to do when the client is not responding.?
5. The salesperson has not precisely understood the opportunity correctly in the first place. So they keep the opportunity open, whereas there is actually no opportunity.
6. The most common reason is that the sales manager or the owner is never interested in knowing the details of the funnel; they just look at the graph of the funnel. This is the curse of colorful charts.?

As a result, they knowingly or unknowingly do not mark opportunities as lost.?

This is a huge problem and makes the entire sales team ineffective.?

Regularly flushing the funnel is the best way to keep your Sales funnel relevant and predictable. If you don't remove bad opportunities, your sales team will lose focus and be ineffective.?

Benefits of funnel Flushing

Although it seems that we are reducing the funnel size, we are actually enriching the funnel and making it much more effective.?

Time, effort, and cost-saving

Generally, more than 40% of the opportunities might not be relevant, but the sales team is still running behind them due to the reasons cited above.?

If Sales managers can help them clear Fogg, then the organization will save lots of time, effort, and costs.?

Pre-mortem is the word where we discuss why these opportunities may fail and then avoid them.

Focus on more relevant fields

With bad opportunities removed, the sales team can give more effort and focus on the promising opportunities in hand, which are more likely to close.?

Eventually, the sales team will close more opportunities.?

Boosts Morale of the sales team

This process invariably involves the sales managers getting engaged with their sales team members and discussing every opportunity with them.?

This adds lots of value in terms of experience to the young sales team members. We have a complete article (with video) regarding the same. Sales management is all about the exchange of experience and information (Video)

Sharper picture for the bosses and Sales Managers

Since sales managers and executives are engaging with each other regularly and discussing the opportunities at hand, the funnel is much more reliable.

Now the sales managers don't have to rely on sales executives' numbers.?

Now they know for sure that what they see as a Sales forecast is much more reliable.

What is the process of Funnel Flushing

While there is no prescribed formula for handling this kind of process, I can share the process we have been following in Enjay for a very long time.?

• First, this is a team activity and should never be done alone.
• The biggest mistake can be to assign it to some third person.?
• Ideally, it should be done with the whole team, But if your team size is considerable, then atleast the salesperson and their immediate manager or boss should do it.??

What should be the frequency of this exercise?

Ideally, this should be done before the weekly or monthly review meeting. This should not be part of your regular sales review meetings.?

Here are the actual steps of Funnel Flushing:

• Take each deal in hand, one by one.?
• Discuss where it is stuck and what we need to do to take it ahead.?
• Is it still moving forward, or should you mark it as lost? Are we communicating with the right and responsible person?
• There may be a scenario when the requirement is on Hold, and you need to follow up after a long interval (maybe a few weeks or a few months) - in that case, but the status as Hold and put the Next follow-up date properly.?

Funnel Flushing important points

Here are some mistakes which people make and some misconceptions that they have.?

They might buy it someday.

This is a common scenario. The salesperson already knows that the customer has already bought the solution from somewhere else, but still, they refuse to close the deal as lost. They argue that the current opportunity is dead, but the prospect might buy something someday.?

The actual problem is here wrong training of the Sales/CRM process. We have to create a new opportunity every time a unique opportunity comes, even from the same person.?

Who should do Funnel Flushing?

I am sure a few sales managers and business owners will read this article and then forward it to their sales team to "do the needful."?

• First, this is a team activity and should never be done alone.
• The biggest mistake can be to assign it to some third person.?
• Ideally, it should be done with the whole team, But if your team size is considerable, then atleast the salesperson and their immediate manager or boss should do it.??

According to me there are two most infamous phrases in Western Management. The first is “Please do the needful” and the second one is “I will get back to you”. The whole world is stuck and busy between these two phrases and people are not able to get things done.?

Please don't ask your salespersons to do it themselves, do it with them for at least 30% of the cases and ask them to do the rest of 70%.

Lack of response from the prospect

Let's say you have done the demo of the product, discussions, and even submitted the quotations. But after that, the prospect has stopped responding to your calls and emails.?

Yes, they might have some genuine reasons to do that. But that might not always be the case.

Maybe they have bought the solution from somewhere else.

Maybe they don't need the solution anymore.?

Maybe it was a fake inquiry, just to understand your product and strategy, who knows?

Not the right person.?

When you are not in touch with the decision-makers or the main influencer.

You lose focus from the more important and hot opportunities.