Filling the Funnel: It's Important

Among the best ways to keep a steady flow of customers and sales revenues is to make sure that you always have opportunities in your sales funnel. What's a sales funnel? A sales funnel is the group of potential accounts you are working on.

Everyone you call on - suspects, prospects , current customers - gets dumped into the funnel together. However, they will move through the funnel at varying rates.

• Some will just disapperar. 
• Some suspects will remain just that and not progress any futher. Remember, prospects are those suspects who have a viable need, budget for and want your products. 
• You will have customers that may continue to come back to you to service their needs. 

All will have varying places in the funnel.

But here's the problem: we can get so caught up in closing certain accounts that we forget to push additional suspects and prospects through the funnel. This eventually will cause your sales rate to slow down or stop.

Keep Your Eyes on the Prize

No matter how big that potentials sale is, make sure it does not consume you. Continue your prospecting efforts and take time every week to make sure that you are continuing to add potential accounts in to your funnel. 

Create a Calling Plan

• Regardless of where you get your names/contacts from, you must have a plan for implementing your calling efforts. In some firms, this will be done for you. In others, you are on your own to decide how you wish to spend your calling time.

• There are 4 types of calls
• Prospect: People/Organizations you haven't done business with before
• Customers/Clients: People/Organizations that either are currently doing business with you or have done so in the immediate past
• Lapsed Customers: People/Organizations that did business with your some time ago
• Call backs: People who are currently part of your calling cycle.  They may be prospects, customers or lasped customers. In each case you have not yet concluded your sales cycle. 

Make sure you have all 4 represented in your funnel. Without taking the time to manage your funnel, you will not get the results you want. To a certain extent, this is about time management, but it's time management focused on the best ways to acheive your sales goals. You can make all the calls you want, but if you aren't filling and then managing your sales funnel, you are just spinning your wheels in the mud.