The 4 Guiding Principles of a Sales Opportunity Pursuit Strategy

Improve Your Team's Ability to Pursue Sales Opportunities with an Intentional Strategy

Sales professionals need an opportunity pursuit strategy that keeps them ahead of every curve in the road to the sale. They need to execute the skills to be buyer-centric, strategic and differentiated to work within the buyer’s changing world. Sales professionals must pull customers through the process by helping them:

• Gain clarity
• Evaluate options
• Increase confidence in the economic value of the solution
• Increase confidence in the ease of acquisition
• Alleviate fears

Sales professionals can advance the sale by adhering to a set of guiding principles that generate and maintain momentum toward the sale. They are explicit action items that form an intentional pursuit process. Next we look at these principles in greater detail.

The 4 Guiding Principles of a Sales Opportunity Pursuit Strategy

1. Set a tone for Mutual Partnership: Transactions end. Partnerships last. The key to building a relationship is focusing on mutually beneficial outcomes. This sense of shared goals must emerge from the sales professional’s words and actions from the first conversation through the negotiation.
2. Drive Momentum and Consensus: Competing priorities distract customers and cause them to lose focus. Risk-averse behaviour compounds as more stakeholders, each with their own concerns, enter the picture. Therefore, sales professionals must take the lead and create momentum. Doing so means driving consensus. This process requires sales professionals to align and realign decision makers.
3. Continually Qualify: The customer’s needs change throughout the buying process. As a result, the scope of the sale also changes. Stakeholders enter and exit. This shifting sphere of influence can cause the deal to drift or die. Effective sales professionals identify red flags and reevaluate the deal to determine if it’s still real. They need the insight and resolve to let opportunities go when necessary.
4. Consider the Emotions in Play: Customers often appear analytic. With money at stake, they feel obligated to present each decision that they make as one driven by logic and research. In truth, emotions wield equal, if not greater, influence. Sales professionals must watch for emotions like fear, which can prevent the sale. They must motivate action that combats the status quo without appearing pushy.

Learn more about what it takes to be intentional in your pursuit of opportunities by downloading the complimentary white paper: Pursuing Opportunities with an Intentional Strategy.