From Impossible To Inevitable: How Hyper-Growth Companies Create Predictable Revenue by Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin

Author:Aaron Ross & Jason Lemkin
Language: eng
Format: mobi
ISBN: 9781119166733
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2016-01-21T07:00:00+00:00

Being uncomfortably honest with yourself and your team helps you spot and deal with weaknesses before they trip you up. It promotes trust in your team and with customers, and the softest pillow is a clear conscience.

Pipeline Deficit Disorder

If you're in sales or run a team, how do you improve your forecasting? It's always going to be off as long as you or your teams are sliding on maintaining a sparkling clean list of opportunities. There's a reason it's a universal problem.

Okay, you can easily put together a big list or report of all your sales, business, or partner opportunities. Active ones, old ones, possible ones, dream ones.

What's great about having lots of opportunities? When you have a big list of opportunities, it can be exciting! “Yes! I have a lot going on—look at the potential!”

It can help you build momentum and feel progress, which in turn can build your confidence and help you close. Finally, having a bunch of opportunities gives you more shots on goal.

The Problem With Lots of Opportunities

The ugly side of having a lot of opportunities is that being busy working your list can feel productive without actually generating any concrete results.

Also, fighting clutter is an ongoing battle; it's hard for most people to step back and clean out all the opportunities that have gone dead.

Having a long list of opportunities can help you avoid reality, to dream instead of do. “I've got all these possible sales, something is going to have to come through.” Well, not necessarily …

Finally, having too long a list makes it harder to give great service to the people who need it—to prioritize where you spend your time, rather than to scatter it evenly or randomly across the list.

The Challenge: Brutal Honesty

It's impossible to maintain a 100% honest and accurate list of opportunities, because (a) people may not respond to your questions, (b) they can be afraid or may not want to be open and honest, and (c) it's easy for you to have happy ears and hear only what you want to hear, not what was said.

How often do you hear a clear “no”? When a prospect does get back to you, often they'll say things like “later” or “send me more information” or “let me get back to you.”

Sometimes these are honest answers, but more often they are versions of not interested; the person is too nice, or too embarrassed, to say no. Being honest can be hard, and this has nothing to do with whether people are senior or junior, at small companies or big ones.

And “I'm just being polite” or “I don't want to hurt their feelings” can be an excuse for not being honest. If you're polite, you would tell them the truth in a polite way and not hold it back.

This comes from fear of rejection. People want approval from others, and hate being rejected. This means that they don't like rejecting others, either. Yet we confuse rejection with being honest in telling us it's not a fit.

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