How to develop and use a sales funnel

Understand your sales funnel to make it work for you.

You don’t have to be working around sales people for very long before you start hearing about “Sales Funnels” or “Sales Pipelines”.  But what are they and how do they affect you? Or rather, why should you care about them and do you need one? If you don’t understand yours, you’re missing several tricks and [...]

How Does Your Market Work?

What's in YOUR Sales Funnel?

Would you be able to describe how your market functions to someone else? A friend? A colleague? Could you tell that person how you learn of opportunties to sell your stuff and how you convert it into a sale for your company? Could you describe the stages in your particular market’s sales funnel? See if [...]

Business Development – When trust breaks down

Trust

Let me tell you a story. Every now and then I have real life experiences which prove to me that what I teach here on this site holds good. I consult as a bid manager and am often asked to return for repeat work. Relationships. I help out by leading bid teams or by providing coaching and [...]

Proposal Management Plan

Business Proposal Writing - Plan

Everybody involved directly in the production of the bid documents needs to understand how it is to be managed. An obvious statement, maybe. But the form in which they can receive this information can vary depending on the size (and geographical spread) of the team and the size of the opportunity. The workload of the bid and [...]

Proposal Writing: 7 Assessment Questions You Need Answering

Outstanding Evaluation

Proposal Writing: If your prospective customer has mature processes it is very likely they will have already decided how the proposals they receive will be assessed. This is important information for you and will greatly impact how you write the proposal. Here are 7 Questions you need answers to before writing your Proposal: 

Business development targets are for the whole team

Typical Strategy Map: All departments know how they fit in! (Click to enlarge)

  All serious companies, public and privately owned, set key company financial performance targets. The Business Development or Capture Manager is one of the front line team charged with delivering the targets. However, business development is more than marketing or opportunity capture and it is essential that the business development manager understands the context within [...]

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