Do you have difficulty qualifying enough sales opportunities that turn into revenue? Stop qualifying them, and start disqualifying them instead!

It is a change of mindset, but this vision follows the logic and shape of the sales funnel.

This may seem strange, but when you start from the negative, you have a positive attitude right away. We often talk about the qualification stage, when in reality, we should talk about the stage of disqualifying potential customers.

I see many sales leaders struggling to establish reliable sales forecasts for the coming year. This is a very difficult exercise that leaves all managers and sales leaders with headaches.

However, you can improve the quality of your forecasts and avoid some very common mistakes.

1. Consider unusual gains as reproducible

There is one thing that Sales and Marketing departments agree on: referrals are the best lead source for a business, whether in a B2B or B2C context. The good things about referrals are that they have a positive impact on the closing ratio, the length of the sales cycle, and the average customer lifetime value.

Although most of us know how powerful referrals are, only very few sales teams incorporate an “asking for referral” stage in their sales process. What’s the problem with that? There are several actually! Some salespeople will waste a considerable amount of time prospecting only to add a few new opportunities in their sales pipeline, others will not prospect at all and will act as farmers or account managers when in fact they should hunt. In both cases, this is a sure way to fall short of expectations and miss the numbers! According to Edelman Trust Barometer, 84% of B2B decision makers start the buying process with a referral. Knowing that, you may want to reconsider how you want to leverage referrals.