Climbing out of a dive.

How to refill the sales Pipeline

Have you come across a similar tale as the one below?

You hear of a successful company that suddenly seems to run out of steam. The sales pipeline dries up and the management and or owners cannot seem to work out why. Their immediate response is denial. They argue that there is nothing intrinsically wrong; it is the time of year, part of the business cycle, normal business churn they say.

However, things get worse and the typical gushing from the sales pipeline has dropped to a trickle and even those leads are not good quality.

Eventually they take action. But note that the typical actions are passive.

They gear up their on line marketing effort sending our newsletters, updates, white papers and so on with the hope that it will encourage sales.

They reason that they need to increase their Search Engine Optimisation ratings to capture the millions of potential leads that they know are out there and work diligently to determine the optimum search terms. They then rewrite their web pages with all the new content crafted around the SEO terms.

But it doesn’t work so they then turn to sales professionals either in telesales or in real time sales to turn the sales around.

But the response rates are pitiful. They spend hours fruitlessly tracking down new names and addresses that don’t seem to develop into sales opportunities. And cash is running out and fast. Pressure on the sales teams seems to be having the opposite effect. They are doing less and less and seem to be costing more to achieve less.

Cash is now at crisis levels.

No new sales initiatives can be started because there is no cash. The focus is now on survival. Cuts are made but they are not enough. Huge amounts of management time are spent determining the extent of what and where to cut but it seems to have no effect and cash is now gone.

The staff seem to notice that the senior team seem intent on working on the minutiae of the business. They have developed that “thousand yard stare” that is typical of those undergoing shock or serious trauma. They seem to have lost their objectivity and leap at any and every passing fad in the hope that it will turn things around.

In the worst cases the company sells out as a fire sale or ceases trading.

Does this sound familiar? It does if you have been in the consultancy field for any length of time.

The answer as to why they experience a dive lies in their new business process. For many companies the new business programme is:

• Passive
• Generic
• Hesitant
• Short term

A passive programme relies on using the media to encourage their target audience to make the first move. A generic programme promotes the agency’s entire range or describes it in terms that lack specificity. Hesitant programmes stop and start according to the prevailing emotional or cash flow conditions at the time, missing the buying cycle and therefore freezing themselves out for 12 months or more from re-pitching. And short term programmes falter because they fail to build the relationship with the potential client. Finally, if this was not bad enough they hand over the responsibility of new business to a third party.

Some do survive because they take action. What action do they take, find out in the next gripping instalment of Climbing out of a dive!

If you cant wait, call me on 07956 532963 or email me on robh@credence-uk.com. Or wait until the next blog where the answers will be revealed!