Think About It… the e-book version

by Todd Youngblood

The “funnel” is probably the most common metaphor used by sales people. How well do you actually use it to focus your efforts and manage your time?

The “funnel” is one of the first concepts that a new sales rep learns. The idea of starting the sell cycle with a large pool of suspects, steadily paring down the number by qualifying some of them as prospects, paring further to get the still smaller number of strong prospects and eventually transforming the remaining few into customers, has great intuitive appeal.

Given the simplicity and power of the concept, it’s puzzling that so few use it as the primary way to focus sales effort and manage time. Now… before you decide to stop reading because you already understand the funnel, answer two simple questions… …and no guessing allowed…

• What is the average number of days required to move a prospect through each stage of your funnel?
• What is the average % yield for each stage? (e.g., what % of suspects do you turn into legitimate prospects)

If you don’t have the answers immediately at hand, your understanding of the funnel concept isn’t doing you any practical good. If you do have those answers, here are a few more questions…

• For each funnel stage, which of your reps has the shortest cycle time and highest % yield?
• What is the schedule for those reps to present their best practices for that stage to the rest of the team?
• For each funnel stage, which of your reps have a below average ranking for cycle time? For % yield?
• When will each submit a written plan for improvement to an average level of performance?
• What funnel stage represents your key constraint? (an incremental performance improvement in this stage would have the greatest impact on overall sales production)
• What is your plan to remove the constraint, when will it be implemented and who is responsible to make it happen?
• Exactly how many suspects must you pour into the top end of your funnel to make this year’s quota?

Oliver Wendall Holmes often cited the value of “the simplicity on the other side of complexity.” Some ideas are simple because there’s not much to them. Others – like the sales funnel – are simple because some smart individual made the effort to take a complex subject (selling in this case), break it into component pieces and make it easy to understand.

Are you using this “simple” concept to focus effort and manage time?