Have you ever spent two wasted hours in a sales meeting? Mondays or Fridays are usually the day. Sales management sends the invite, 20 minutes before the meeting, and all hands get on the phone. Each sales person takes a turn going over the 3 top deals, or something to that effect.

Salespeople tell of shiny deals with high potential. Visions of dollars streaming into the company reflect off the sales manager's eyes. But what happens? The sales meeting horse is mounted again same time next week, and surprise, the deals which balanced on fine line to closing are gone. Not even mentioned. 

The sales pipeline is not real. Sales Opportunities are not defined with a standard sales qualification process. This means the make up of a qualified opportunity varies from sales guy to sales guy. And when data is reviewed bad forecasts pop up. Then sales guys are fired, new ones come in burdened by steep learning curve and no historical data.

A sales system solves the historical data problem. Good sales software grabs all notes, leads, deals, activity, etc. But the sales qualification issue needs to be trained. It is not hard. A one pager can be done with the companies sales process. Each step in this process has parameters. What does Qualified mean? Write it down. What prospect data pulls a quote? When is project to be deployed and trained? A few queries, to be prospect answered, fills out the step description. lead

At first look these questions seem basic. And this may be part of the problem. Assuming someone knows something can be a mistake. The great offensive lineman for the Raiders, Art Shell, practiced his stance each day. Art would have Sam, the 4 foot tall line coach, check if Art was tipping off pass or run. Art's statue sets in a place of honor in the NFL Hall of Fame. The lesson is, take care of the little things and the bigger things take care of themselves. A sales training session can fix some sales process pains and start to improve your sales process.