3.5 Ways To Plug Sales Funnel Holes Your Inside Sales Team Is Missing

Do you have a leaky sales funnel? Are you losing leads?

If you fail to pay consistent attention to prospects at all points in the sales journey, eventually your closers will have nothing on deck. By continually qualifying targeted, sales-ready leads, an outsourced lead nurturing service plugs holes in your sales funnel that your inside sales team may not even recognize.

You can maximize the effectiveness of your sales funnel in 3.5 ways:

#1: By Continually Adding Prospects At The Top Of The Funnel

An inside sales team working on a long sales cycle can be so focused on a few active leads that it doesn’t recognize no new prospects are entering the funnel.

For instance, if you have an eight- to 12-month sales cycle, your sales staff may be putting all its time and energy into nurturing the four or five leads that have shown interest. Say your staff closes on three of those leads – terrific! Except there are no leads above them in the funnel, which is going to leave you with a significant revenue gap in eight to 12 months.

You need to be refilling the funnel with new leads each and every month. An outsourced sales partner can regulate the flow of prospects for you. While your in-house team focuses on closing on those five prospects, your partner ensures you have five prospects that are 25% to 75% of the way through the funnel. Then, your reps can start working with these warm introductions and educated leads while your outsourced partner fills the funnel again.

#2: By Evaluating The Sales Process In The Middle Of The Funnel

Many companies experience problems during the sales process but lack the larger perspective that enables them to identify and solve those problems before they get out of hand. An outsourced sales partner patches up your sales funnel so it doesn’t leak – or even replaces it with a new, stronger, less leaky funnel.

For instance, your outside partner can evaluate your sales process if you’re having problems. Since your partner likely is working in several different industries – including numerous other companies working in your industry – it’ll know what techniques have proven effective. Your outsourced partner has a robust sales force infrastructure, including experienced managers who know what to look for. This type of tribal knowledge is rarely available in the limited scope of a single in-house sales team.

Thus, rather than figuring out a solution on your own by trial and error, or hiring a consultant to come in and troubleshoot this single issue, you can rely on the extensive knowledge base represented not just by the outside manager you usually work with but by all of his or her colleagues as well.

#3: By Accelerating The Close At The Bottom Of The Funnel

The bottom of the funnel – the close – is another area where you can benefit from your outsourced sales partner’s breadth and depth of experience. Different industries and different client personas call for different closing methods, and since your partner is likely familiar with many of them, it can train your in-house staff on proven methods that may be new to you.

For instance, are you familiar with the technique of using a trial close to accelerate the sales process? Early in the sales process, ask a prospect, “If this made sense financially, would you go for it?” If the answer is “yes,” you’ll be able to move quickly through the other steps of the close, such as systems integration for a software sale or switching providers for telecom.

If you’re not successfully closing on your sales, you have a significant gap in understanding, and an experienced partner can help your inside team with this problem.

#3.5: By Diversifying Throughout Your Funnel

Just as you diversify your stock portfolio to make sure you’re not too reliant on any single stock, you should be diversifying your sales channels. This ensures that opportunities don’t fall between the different channels. Add an outsourcer to the mix, and you add another way to be successful, and another way to mitigate the risk of excessive reliance on your other programs.

Ready to let an expert sales partner plug the holes in your sales funnel?

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