Sales Process / Sales Cycle

I will usually smoke them out with the timeline that I need to close business by.  That will usually bring up what timeline they are on.  Whether it's the customer is willing to wait until the end of the existing lease, they are still gathering proposals, you need to find a way to ask "why" a decision has not been made yet, or what's holding up the process.  I also hate when prospects are purchasing, and will wait for their existing system to drop dead.

I stress to everyone that I have a timeline and in turn most of the time that will smoke out where they are in the process.

Thanks Art

wish we had some more responses!

• Quarterly emails to all MPS prospects.  I don't prospect for hardware opportunities based on lease expiration dates, because there is little money in that.
• Email prospects based on trigger events discovered from weekly Google alerts.
• Schedule intro/discovery meeting.
• If there is a valid opportunity, I schedule an assessment which typically takes about a month to complete.
• Analyze existing costs, volumes, fleet configuration, etc.
• Schedule Consensus meeting to review existing data (volumes, device data, user-based printing data & costs) and proposed strategy excluding pricing.  The goal here is to collaborate with the prospective client to create the ideal proposal & get agreement on the strategy.
• Review proposal & gain commitment.
• Pre-implementation meeting with client contacts.
• Implementation.
• Quarterly Business reviews