In the foreign trade industry, salesmen often invest a lot of energy in developing customers, but ignore the subsequent tracking and management. This situation has led to many orders that could have been closed slipping away quietly, making the hard work of development go to waste. Therefore, the management and tracking of sales opportunities is particularly critical. This article will focus on pyramid sales opportunity management and deeply explore how to effectively manage and convert sales opportunities to improve the salesmen’s order conversion rate and return rate.
1. The importance of managing sales opportunities
As the saying goes, “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”, foreign trade salesmen need to learn to manage sales opportunities and focus on those orders that are about to be obtained. Excessive attention to development, while ignoring tracking and management, will lead to the loss of order opportunities and a decline in performance.
2. Learn to “kick the ball” and “catch the ball”
Comparing customer communication to a football game, salesmen must not only be able to kick the “ball” kicked by the customer back, but more importantly, they must be able to let the customer kick the “ball” back again. This requires salesmen to maintain initiative and enthusiasm in busy work, follow up and reply to customers in a timely manner, and not let important sales opportunities slip away.
3. Application of Covey’s time management theory in sales
Covey divides tasks into two dimensions: urgent and important, and proposes a four-quadrant time management method. Salesmen tend to focus on urgent but unimportant matters, while ignoring the management of important but not urgent sales opportunities. Therefore, it is necessary to adjust the focus of work and put more energy on tracking important but not urgent sales opportunities.
4. Pyramid-style foreign trade sales opportunity management
According to the different stages of customers, customers are divided into potential customers, inquiry customers, opportunity customers, PI customers and transaction customers, and managed using Excel tables. This pyramid management structure helps salesmen to clearly understand the situation of customers at the same stage and carry out tracking and management work in a targeted manner.
5. Optimize working methods
Through the pyramid management structure, salesmen can manage sales opportunities more effectively and improve work efficiency. Sorting and managing customer information can not only improve work efficiency, but also better maintain customer relationships and increase the success rate and return rate of orders.
Sixth, continuous improvement and summary
Always remind yourself to carry out orderly management, timely summary, and continue to work hard to maintain a positive attitude. This is the key to the continuous growth and improvement of work efficiency of salesmen. Through continuous improvement and summary, salesmen can manage sales opportunities more effectively and achieve personal and team success.
Pyramid sales opportunity management is one of the important skills that foreign trade salesmen must master. Through reasonable time management and sales opportunity management, salesmen can more effectively develop and convert sales opportunities, improve the success rate and return rate of orders, and achieve personal and corporate success.