Missed Opportunities Are Everywhere!

Missed opportunities are everywhere! I say this to myself as much as I say it to everyone else. One of my favorite quotes by Thomas Edison states, "When you have exhausted all possibilities, remember this. You haven't." That statement always speaks to me. It serves as a reminder that there is always one more thing I can try if only I’m willing to go a little further, step outside the box, be creative or work just a little bit smarter.

It’s all too easy to blame the economy for poor sales or blame someone else for a bad day. The bottom line here is though that, “If it is to be it is up to me” ~ William Johnsen.

I was reading the Sales Lead Management Association Blog yesterday and came across a post that I found very interesting. It was titled, Don’t Blame the Economy: Don’t Be A Victim! http://blog.salesleadmgmtassn.com/ It provided some interesting statistics that immediately caused me to run to our CRM and begin pouring through our lead files.

It stated:

…from 1979 to 2009 several figures remain constants in business annals…

•More than 50% of qualified leads are never worked by sales
•Less than 50% of a sales persons time is spent selling
•80% of trade show leads are never followed up

As I read these numbers I had difficulty wrapping my brain around how this could possibly happen. After giving it some thought, however, I would have to guess that many things have contributed to these sad statistics.

Small business owners are constantly busy multitasking and may simply let a perfectly good lead fall by the wayside in their mad dash to “get it all done”. We all know that some leads simply take longer than others to close and as time goes on it’s easy to get sidetracked and miss valuable follow up. Many business owners also aren’t using the right tools to track their leads and simply don’t have the time to follow up with a sales team to ensure it is being done correctly. In this economy we’re seeing many small business owners who are the only sales person their business has.

Unfortunately that same small business owner is usually the sales person, marketing department, operations team and secretarial staff all on their own. When this is the case, it becomes easy to see why everything doesn’t get done. Unfortunately this means missed sales, missed referrals and many missed opportunities to advance a potentially profitable business.

Fortunately for our sales team, I found that our leads are being followed up on! They are taking notes, following up, adding services and I'm pleased to say doing a great job at what they were hired to do. But missed opportunities are everywhere. This week I had a fabulous opportunity to scrutinize a potentially missed opportunity for our business and found that in at least this one instance we aren’t lacking. But I’m going to keep looking! I love finding areas in which we can improve! I thrive on finding opportunities that we’re missing because once I know where we need to improve; we get to work finding ways to make that improvement! Where are the missed opportunities in your business?