It's Important to Allocate the Right Resources

Michele Warg
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Sales organizations try to cast wide nets to get as many fish as possible when attempting to land large deals. Your net might pick up thousands of small fish, but can your fishing gear handle the one huge fish that gets caught every once in a while? Is your boat big enough to take on a huge marlin? When you land a major client, you need a strategy to allocate resources.

How to Prioritize

The simple alternative to more staff, sales time and money toward large deals is to recognize qualified leads for huge clients. The details occur when you decide which fish are worth trying to haul into your boat. If you struggle with the mighty fish, even if everyone in the company tries to wrestle it on board, you might have to let it go before it sinks the entire ship. On the other hand, if your tools and talent can rein the client in with your firm's unique problem-solving skills, then you might want to hold onto that lead as much as possible.

How to Plan

Prioritizing for large deals means having a written plan in place. Start with qualified leads. What metrics and criteria does your company follow when pursuing qualified leads? Does your analysis software produce consistent results? How well does your organization evaluate deals?

World-class companies have top-notch sales teams that know how to evaluate large deals. They use criteria such as how much volume of work the deal could produce, the longevity of a contract, the uniqueness of the company's product and whether the deal is in a new market. It's up to each business to create evaluation procedures that determine how to allocate resources toward greater deals.

These metrics stem from the company's business strategy. Does the firm want to focus on growing established markets closer to home, or would the company prefer to try to get into new territory where the competition is fierce but the rewards are great? Each sales team must examine risks before proceeding with adding resources to a potential sale.

Holistic Approach

Three main factors go into pursuing large deals. The first involves the kind of money the firm brings in versus the resources put toward the customer. Businesses take into account sales volume, prices, revenue, profits, market share and closing dates versus the amount of resources needed to reach these goals.

Secondly, firms must determine if they are better off after hauling in these big catches. When the customer agrees that the sales team can solve a problem, then it becomes a matter of how many products or services the customer needs and for how long.

Thirdly, sales teams should always maintain open lines of communication with potential customers. Sales staffers must know if potential clients are a part of the future by knowing where customers stand in the sales funnel. How close are they to signing a contract? If anything falls through in the process, it might be time to move to another qualified lead.

Large deals can be a boom to any company trying to catch the big fish in a vast ocean. Knowing how to go after these huge morsels of revenue with the right resources and staffing numbers is a methodical process using the best information available.


Photo courtesy of jscreationzs at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

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