Sales Progression and Closed Loop Best Practices 2015

If you Google “Sales Progression Definition” it’s a bit nebulous and you won’t find a specific definition in the initial search. We have been intensely reviewing each client’s appointments occurring here in early 2015 and closing the loop to understand for ourselves and for our clients if our leads are progressing or getting stuck with no opportunity to progress. As a sales outsourcing organization focused on outsourced lead generation solutions that focus on delivering very tangible and defined ROI, this is critical for us to accurately determine ROI. What was interesting in our initial findings is how engaged our clients have been and proactive on providing feedback. We thought it would be great to share a few areas that may improve your own leads to sales progression internally.

Here is our summary so far from this year.

1. Asking four simple questions and conducting that via email and twice within 48 hours of the lead occurring is working well. Try implementing a simple process that gets results!
2. Contacting sales after receiving feedback is providing more ”meat on the bone” than reported and helping to progress future lead quality and progression.
3. Please note, the feedback received is very indicative of how sophisticated sales and marketing are within each client organization when it comes to outbound lead generation and also how they are collaborating or not internally. Look for this within your own organization is sales involved, are they engaged in the program, willing to help?
4. The type of sales organization has really been differentiated in the channel versus direct. A majority of the channel lead feedback has been less informative (i.e. YES to a question versus an explanation of actionable next steps for their organization) Direct sales teams have been providing much more useful feedback and are in general more engaged. Ask yourself do you have this challenge at your organization with channel reps, channel partner reps in general not providing feedback?
5. Making changes to the actual sales process has allowed one customer in particular to move prospects within a 30 minute qualified call to a demonstration of their software. This is proving to be a solid jumping off point for their next sales progression goal. Ask yourself this are you providing strategy or guidance on the initial conversation goal after you have received the lead from a 3^rd party outsourced lead generation firm or internal inside sales team? Practice makes perfect so we are seeing progression as customers get comfortable with the excellent lead quality and volume of appointments they are receiving.