As we help our clients analyze how they can improve their close rate…
Actually, let's stop a moment to ask, "Do you know your close rate?" If you are answering "no," don't feel foolish…neither do most of your peers. And it is perhaps the most telling metric to more accurately forecasting your sales performance! SO, if you don't already have a strong indication of your close rate, get busy. Take a period in time (last month, last quarter, year-to-date, whatever can be easily reconstructed) and count how many bids/proposals you have won. Then divide that total by the number of proposals you've submitted in that timeframe and multiply by 100. And, VOILÀ...there's your close rate. And, once you have your close rate, evaluate if it is where it needs to be.
SO, that brings us back to the topic of this tip...analyzing how to improve your close rate. The biggest factor we find contributing to low close rates is the actual readiness for the proposal stage itself. We're so anxious for the win, we often miss an important question, "are we ready to propose?" Rushing through the sales process to a proposal too quickly, without properly engaging, qualifying, and assessing your opportunity is the quickest way to lose more deals.
So, how do we make sure we are READY to propose:
- Ask The Tough Questions. Take the time to truly evaluate where you are in the sales process and determine if you truly know the information elements necessary for a strong proposal. Many times we avoid important proposal questions (i.e. budget, evaluation criteria, etc.) for fear of rejection or being perceived as too pushy. And, if asked the wrong way, some of the tough assessment questions CAN come off too aggressively...but they don't have to. If your prospect has been properly qualified as ready to shop or buy what you have to sell, then you should have no problem getting the key pieces of information you need to prepare a powerful proposal!
- Validate what you THINK you KNOW. Check, double check, and triple check each information element as you move the opportunity/prospect through the sales process. Many times we think we have the answer to a critical piece of information (i.e. the decision maker) only to find out later we were wrong, or the landscape has changed.
- Use a Checklist. Doing the first two steps in principle is the easy part. Following-through on EVERY deal with discipline is quite a bit harder. Develop a tool to help assess, measure, and validate your proposal readiness for every deal you consider writing a bid or proposal for. This tool should rank the thoroughness of the assessment (have you answered all the important qualifying/assessment questions), the strength of the assessment (how strongly are those answers pointing to you as THE choice), and which areas pose the most risk for a loss. After these three areas are considered and measured, you will have the best picture as to whether you're ready to build a proposal, need to work on the assessment phase more, or need to disqualify the opportunity all together.
If you are new to sales, this more formalized "readiness assessment" is CRITICAL to your success. But, even if you're a sales veteran, you will find this tool helpful as well. It will force you to strategically analyze where you are with each proposal candidate before you waste precious time pushing paperwork to a prospect that is not ready for you to propose!
For additional help, download our Bid/Proposal Checklist Template.
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