One of the biggest problems sales people face is their deals slipping. We forecast a certain close date, then it slips, and slips, and slips, and …….. Things keep coming up, we push the close date out, then more things come up and we get into this seemingly endless cycle until the deal closes.
Sometimes these slips in close date can’t be avoided. The customer keeps deferring the decision, we have little control over it. But too often, I think these slips are the result of bad deal strategies — and the sales person is responsible for managing the deal strategy.
Here’s what happens. We tend to look at our deal strategies in terms of “what’s next.” Based on where we are in the sales process and the customer is in their buying process, we identify the next steps or critical activities. As we progress through these processes, things come up, requiring more work, more activities–and the deal slips. We execute those, more stuff comes...