The Cause of Most Lost Sales – Info Sales

June 21, 2018

Have you ever taken a serious look at your pipeline?

There are likely a few extremely valuable clues it’s trying to tell you!

Let’s take a deeper look at this.

Most pipelines have four stages:

1. The Prospecting Stage
2. The Qualification Stage
3. The Presentation Stage
4. The Closing Stage

I’ve noticed some interesting trends when reviewing pipelines. Specifically, that 90% of all sales start to fail in the qualification stage. Click To Tweet

In other words, something is usually going wrong during that stage when sales are being lost.

However, if we look at sales that are won, 75% of the time in the pipeline is being spent in that same qualification stage.

This isn’t a coincidence.

What this trend demonstrates is that when we win sales, we spend more time qualifying, and when we lose sales, we’re not spending enough time in the qualification stage.

Think about it, skimming through the qualification stage will basically ensure that you’re not doing as good a job as you could because you’re not taking a sufficient amount of time to truly pull out a compelling reason for the prospect to buy. How are you going to nail the presentation or the closing stage if you haven’t done your due diligence qualifying the prospect?

Take a look at your own pipeline. Where are you spending the most time? If you’re struggling to close sales on a consistent basis, sure, you may need help with your presentation skills or closing a sale, but you’re also likely not spending enough time qualifying the prospect!

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