Transcript

[0:00] As sales leaders, we've seen those theoretical stages. They're at 10% or 25% or 50% or even 90%. Ooh, 90%.
We should be getting at that across the finish line shortly, right?
Usually not.
This is the Full Funnel Freedom Podcast, supporting sales leaders and managers to improve their sales funnels from people to prospects. I'm Hamish Knox.
In this show, you'll learn how you can improve your results, lead a great team and hit more targets with full funnel freedom.
Welcome to the full funnel freedom podcast. I'm your host Hamish Knox.
Today, I'll be sharing with you ideas and insights around why percentages in your sales funnel and your CRM deserve to die.
But first let's hear from one of our affiliate partners, the perfect CRM system, streamlined business processes, and happier customers.
Allegio CRM Inc can make it happen for your business. Go to www.fullfunnelfreedom.com slash Allegio for more details. That's www.fullfunnelfreedom.com slash E-L-I-G-E-O.

[1:21] Before we get into today's episode, I want to say thank you to a listener, uh, reg underscore Hartner 13, who left a very kind review that, uh, to use a little coquillism, I've just plum forgot to share on the podcast.
So reg, thank you for your kind words.
Uh, what the review says is so many sales podcasts treat their listeners as robots.
What you should have said was, or they repeat the same closing and challenger garbage that give true sales professional is a bad name.
I appreciate that Hamish talks about the salesperson, their behaviors and their attitudes for success.
Yes, there is great technique in there as well, but he really focuses on the overall success of the salesperson.
And I appreciate him for that.
Great guests as well.
He really gives well-rounded coverage of topics and industries.
I highly recommend this for anyone in sales or even just needs motivation and coaching in general.
So thank you for that wonderful review.
If you have for future episodes, if you leave me a review, I'd love to read it and share it.
On to today's topic, percentages in sales funnels. As sales leaders, we've seen those theoretical stages, they're at 10% or 25% or 50% or even 90%, ooh, 90%.

[2:44] We should be getting at that across the finish line shortly, right?

[2:48] Usually not. Percentages in sales funnels suck. They really do.
They don't actually give us any meaningful information.
But, because our brains are not really wired for numbers and to process numerical information, they can be kind of like a drug for sales leaders.
And also for sellers, right? Our sellers look at their funnel and go, ooh, I've got this much in 50% close, So 50% of that is gonna come across the finish line and therefore my commission for the month or the quarter is gonna look like this.
And having been one of those sellers in the past, I can tell you that that's actually not usually the case.
So the percentages are a false number. And I believe by now most of us understand this conceptually, but there's a difference between understanding conceptually and actually taking action.
Now this is often seen in data with individuals who get news from their physicians that they need to change their diet or they need to stop smoking or drinking or they need to exercise more.
And that person says yada, yada, yada, here you doc, and they don't actually do something and then they end up in a significantly worse position.

[4:07] Same thing for percentages in the CRM or in the sales funnel.
They don't actually give us meaningful data and unfortunately when we do get real data, it says you've missed your target by a lot.

[4:19] Now, sales funnel percentages in sales funnels do actually create a couple of things.
They create demotivation and turnover, neither of which I want as a sales leader, but if there's someone out there who wants to create demotivation and turnover in their teams absolutely continue using percentages to stage your funnel.
It's a great way of causing your team to start looking for jobs after every sales funnel review meeting.
Now, there is some good news. We can change this. It's simple, not easy, because we are also committed to that idea of percentages and they pretend to give us real meaningful insight.
There's three steps that I recommend. Take each of these in turn.
So I don't recommend doing all of them at once, but build up, and because as we build up momentum, our sellers are gonna be less resistant to this change.
Now, human beings fear death, taxes, and change. Talked about in my second book, called Change the Sandler Way, which we'll link to in the show notes.
The challenge with moving from percentages to the system that I'm gonna suggest is that it's gonna take our sellers and us well outside of our comfort zones, and we're all creatures of our comfort zones.
First thing to do, define our sales stages and the non-negotiable boxes to be checked at each stage.

[5:44] So, whatever we call those stages, so when I share a generic version of this, when I do a speaking engagement or a sales kickoff, it might look like first contact, discovery, proposal slash presentation, implementation, and customer success.
And those are very generic stages. You would certainly create your own, but those stages can contain multiple meetings.
You know, that discovery stage, it's called discovery, not discovery meeting, because, especially in enterprise, we're not walking in and walking out with a PO or a check or an AFE.
We're probably having four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 12 meetings over a period of time.
But if our sellers know that that's all in the discovery stage, they understand what they need to do in order to advance that stage forward.
Second thing with the non-negotiables.
What are truly the non-negotiables? If this information is not gathered in this stage, that opportunity can't advance.

[6:44] Now, even early on, there is some non-negotiable information that we wanna find out.
For example, does our buyer have any money set aside at all to solve the problem they want us to solve?
And that's a no or a yes answer.
I'm not really interested at this point what sort of money they do have set aside.
I'm really curious about what if they have anything.
Even if they don't, it doesn't mean I'm gonna encourage my seller to disqualify that prospect.
But what it does mean is my seller's gonna have to ask some much more direct and specific questions very early on in order to figure out even if this buyer came to believe that our solution or our competitor's solution was the right one for them, how are they gonna pay for it?
Because if there's no money set aside for it, then it's gotta be found or it's gotta be taken from somewhere else.
This also gives our sellers.
A checklist. And checklists are way better than scripts because checklists give our sellers the freedom to uncover those non-negotiables in their own way, in their own conversational manner.

[7:52] Certainly, we can give them ideas, tips, insights. We'll role-play with them to, make those questions come out more naturally or get to the point in a more specific manner.
Because if our sellers are asking very meandering questions, that will actually reduce the credibility with their buyer because it will tell the buyer at a psychological level that our seller isn't really comfortable asking the question or doesn't really know what they're talking about.

[8:19] So that's step one. Define what are the stages of your process.
Some people might call those the gates.

[8:25] Name them so everybody knows what they are. Create that common language.
And then what are the non-negotiable boxes, which is information that we have to gather from our buyer at each stage.
Now, those non-negotiables later on will change to what do we need to do internally to create a successful buying experience in a long-term client.
But early on, it's about getting our sellers to gather information from our buyers.
And then at some point, usually in the proposal presentation or implementation stage to use the generic labels I shared a few seconds ago, that's when we'll have non-negotiables on our side like warm handoff between seller and delivery.
And that's something that I screwed up when I sold Software as a Service, is I didn't do those warm handoffs on a consistent basis. And some of my buyers didn't have a very good experience, and that was my fault.
That wasn't the fault of my delivery team. I was the one who was managing that relationship.
It was on me to do a warm handoff and then let them run with it.
Step two, track how long each opportunity stays in each stage.

[9:41] And how many days it takes from one of our sellers to go from hello or hi, nice to meet you buyer to closed and then publish those numbers.
Some of you may have this data already. There's several organizations that I work with that already know where each opportunity should be, in relation to how many days it's been in that stage based on historical data.
They also know what their overall average sales cycle is, again, from hello to closed, and we've done a previous episode on what the actual sales cycle is.
It's called Is Your Sales Year Already Over?
If you'd like to go back and look in our archives, we're on fullfunnelfreedom.com for that episode to learn a bit more about what it actually means to close a sale.
I said publish those numbers, and that might make you feel slightly uncomfortable, and it's gonna make your sellers feel slightly uncomfortable, But if our sellers understand how long each opportunity.

[10:41] Should stay in a certain stage and how long a typical sales cycle is, it gives them a chance to analyze their own funnels and create plans to clean them up.
And also to refill them. And if there are some dead opportunities in the funnel or zombie opportunities in the funnel, the ones that are kind of shuffling along but are really not getting any closer to closing, best practice is to have your seller reach out, could be by email or could be by phone, and say, it seems like this priorities have changed, opportunity, this doesn't seem to be moving forward right now, I'm gonna take it out of my funnel, but you're welcome to re-engage the conversation when this becomes a priority for you.
What's fascinating is, based on some data from our own clients, about 25% of those buyers who receive the, hey, I'm taking you out of our funnel, closing off your opportunity, actually convert into deals, because they go, oh, wait, I'm so sorry, things got busy, I forgot about you.
The other reason why we want to publish those numbers is we can also support our new hires with what success looks like and get them up to speed faster.

[11:56] So if we have more data for our new hires based on what our average sales cycle is, how long opportunities tend to stay at each stage, we can actually support them in keeping their funnels consistently reliably full.
Now, if you don't have this data and you're thinking, oh man, how could I do that?
I don't know, really know. Here's the best practice.
Track it for 30 days. So from the time you listen, and 30 days doesn't have to necessarily mean the start of a month. The way our brains are wired, we like to go with the first of a month or the 15th of a month.
But really, if you're listening to this on the 26th of a month.
Awesome start from today and go to the 26th of the following month. It's it's not important that it be a contained month It's that you have data for 30 days.

[12:44] Even if you're an enterprise you will see some movement over 30 days that will start to give you a bit of an indication as To what your days in each stage look like and what your typical sales, Cycle looks like and of course, you don't want to just track this for 30 days 30 days is to get the initial data set, and then we're gonna move on with a longer and an ongoing tracking so we can adjust this data over time and of course when we need to report to our investors or to the board, then we actually have real data that they can stick their teeth into and data that we can then leverage to improve because we will notice over time that our sales cycle is lengthening or we're getting a lot of opportunities get stuck in the proposal presentation stage for longer than our historical data says that it should.
That gives us an opportunity to assess the market.
Also, it gives us an opportunity to coach our sellers because there's likely a coaching opportunity when those sales stages and the sales cycle starts to lengthen.
Third tip, and this one might actually be the easiest to implement right away.
At your sales funnel review meetings, only discuss opportunities that are expected to close in the next 30, 60, or 90 days, that's it.

[14:00] 30, 60, or 90, what I recommend to all my clients is in a sales funnel review meeting, every seller has seven minutes maximum to speak.
Seven minutes.
I know that doesn't sound like a lot.
It's also gonna make your sales funnel review meetings a heck of a lot more efficient, and it's also going to reduce the amount of storytelling that your sellers do.
Because I know when I was a seller, I spent a lot of time in sales funnel review meetings telling my leader great stories that meant nothing in actual reasons why something was gonna come right across the finish line in 30, 60, or 90.
And in fact, we didn't even have a boundary.
I would sometimes talk about things that weren't gonna close for six months or 12 months, or longer, but it allowed me to sound good to my leader instead of actually giving them real data.
So opportunities closing 30, 60, 90, now that's going to be based on theoretically the sales stages. It's also going to be based on what are the non-negotiables that our seller has checked.

[15:01] But focusing on that 30, 60, 90 day window narrows down what we're focused on in the in the sales funnel review meeting to give us actual, actionable data.
And we certainly can look a little bit farther out. By the time this podcast is published, I will have published a piece of content on the idea of total immediate market, which is a counter to the total addressable market.

[15:28] Which is mostly nonsense.
But the total immediate market is a six-month window.
What are we looking at six months out? But when we're doing sales funnel review meetings, It's that 30, 60, 90, because we also, in our sales funnel review meetings, wanna have the other department heads in.
Because we wanna get our colleagues in other departments set up for success.
So we want the finance department to understand what cash flow is gonna look like in 30, 60, or 90.
And we want our delivery team, or operations, or implementation, whatever we might call them, we want them to know, hey, 30, 60, 90 days from now, we're gonna have these opportunities that we're gonna need to deliver on or implement, so we better resource appropriately.
So following those three steps, creating the sales stages and the non-negotiables, tracking how long each opportunity stays in each stage and the overall sales cycle, and only focusing on 30, 60, or 90 day opportunities that are gonna close in that time period in our sales funnel review meetings, will give our sellers more focus, focus equals freedom.
It'll give us more actionable data that we can use to coach our sellers to be more efficient and effective, as well as when we need to report to our investors or the board, they will have more real data that can give them a better sense that we are keeping our funnel consistently, reliably full.

[16:52] Another side benefit of putting those three steps in place is our coaching sessions end up getting more productive.
Because now we're gonna have some real data to discuss with our sellers individually, and we're gonna have clarity.
Here are the non-negotiables, how are you checking these? And if you haven't, when are you going back to get them?

[17:11] Otherwise, our coaching sessions sound more like my tummy thinks that you're not performing, and the tummy is not a very good indication of performance.
So as we are breaking our addiction to percentage in our sales funnel, keep checking those boxes on it slowly.
So start with number one, defining the sales stages, or number three, only 30, 60, 90-day opportunities in the funnel, you pick, and then build it out over time.
This may take a quarter to implement, but by stretching out the implementation, you're gonna reduce the resistance from your sellers, and you're gonna end up making them and you more productive.

[17:50] This has been the Full Funnel of Freedom podcast. I've been your host, Hamish Knox, today sharing with you ideas and insights around why we should kill percentages in our sales funnels and our CRMs, and offering a three-step process to break our addiction to percentages.
The Full Funnel of Freedom podcast is brought to you by Sandler Calgary.
Do you desire to dominate your niche and seek to scale your sales sustainably?
Sandler Calgary supports their clients in dominating their niche and scaling sales sustainably long-term.
Go to www.hamish.sandler.com forward slash howtosandler for additional details and to book a 15-minute initial call.
Thanks for listening, leave us a rating and a review. I'll read reviews on future podcasts and until we connect with you on the next episode, go create full funnel freedom.

[18:47] Thank you for listening to full funnel freedom with Amish Knox.
If you want to increase your sales with ease, Go to full funnel freedom.

[18:57] Music.