How you spend your sales time

Everyone knows that if you ...

Spend a high proportion of your sales cycle selling time with a decision influencer then you have higher chance of closing business.

... but they are probably wrong!

There are plenty of variables in selling, providing that you have a live pipeline with contacts at different stages of the buying cycle:

• the number of prospects
  
• the number which have been properly qualified
  
• the effort required to bring each to a close
  
• the prioritisation required to achieve sales targets
  

Decision influencers are usually middle-level managers. They act as a liaisons to the rest of the organisation. When you aren't around, they act as your advocate. Unless you are very confident about their sales skills then perhaps you should consider whether this will deliver the results you need.

The truth is that you need access to senior managers to talk about the Value Proposition of your offering in detail. Leaving this to your decision influencer - no matter how well meaning they are on your behalf - is likely to result in failure, or at best a slower outcome than you could deliver yourself. You can't expect them to handle your sales effort for you and expect it to transform your results. Without direct access to decision makers, your sales process is in peril.

Tags

• Sales
• BusinessDevelopment