Wednesday Weekly Oct 7

Progress —

In the middle of the process on several opportunities. How do you think about your sales process? A funnel? A pipeline? How about something like this:

I learned about this via the book “Customer Centric Selling.” If you think about your sales process in terms of time (how long does each step in the process take on average), your “pipeline” looks more like a pear. Furthermore, if you probability weight each step, it becomes clear where your team should be investing their time. A lot of companies make the mistake of placing their most highly compensated individuals on the least valuable tasks. For example, if your stage 1 deals (goal) have a probability of 5% to close, and your average deals size is $1,000, then each deal at that stage is worth only $50. Whereas a stage 5 deal (SOE) is worth $500 and takes two months, you want your best sales people on these deals and let a lesser experienced team work on stages 1-4.

I have a draft post which details this information and how I’ve adopted it for different deal sizes and sales cycles.

Please, keep in mind that you can browse the archives of these posts here: edsull.substack.com

Random —

www.slack.com I’m now using it for 3 separate projects. I used to love it, but now I hate it.

It Must Be Wednesday—

I’m getting excited by Chris Stapleton’s new release.

This early single is pretty damn good: Starting Over

Elton John turned me onto Chris Stapleton…he was being interviewed a few years ago and was asked if he had a favorite new song…he said “Tennessee Whiskey.”

PS: stumbled across this duet with Sheryl Crow.

Please give me feedback on Twitter. Which section above is your favorite? What do you want more or less of? Other suggestions? Let me know! Just send a tweet to @edsull

Happy Hump Day!

Ed