HOW TO DEVELOP A SALES PIPELINE IN A SERVICE BUSINESS

Small to medium-sized business (SMB) owners face a wide range of challenges that can make it difficult to succeed in today's business environment. A successful SMB can overcome these obstacles by developing strategies to address them and seeking out resources and support.

An important aspect for any business is ensuring you have a pipeline of potential work. Creating a pipeline for a service business involves identifying and outlining the different stages that a potential client goes through before they become an actual client.

The first thing you need is CRM software! It pains me to see businesses not knowing who their clients are, who their targets are, what leads they have, the contact details for all their clients and worst of all not communicating with clients because they don't have their data in one place. How can CRM software help you?

• It can help you store and organise customer data, such as contact information, purchase history, and preferences. This makes it easier to track customer interactions, provide personalised service, and target marketing campaigns.

• Increased opportunities and revenue: With a CRM, you can track leads, enquiries, meeting requests, meeting outcomes, follow ups and so on. It ultimately helps you build strong relationships by staying in touch and consistently 'educating' your potential clients on who you are and what you do.

• Increased Efficiency - Overall, a CRM can help you better understand your customers, improve your sales and marketing efforts, and increase your efficiency as a small business owner.

So what is the rest of the process in developing your pipeline and winning more work?

• Know your target audience - this should have been discussed and identified when you did your Business Development Plan!

• Know the stages you need to go through for your business e.g - identify the decision maker, meet the decision maker, find out what work the decision maker has coming up and when, follow up and continue to give them reasons why they should give you an opportunity.

• Branding......have a clear marketing strategy to ensure you are consistently pushing out messaging about your business, giving targets more reasons to contact you.

• When you find out about a project or opportunity that is coming up, find out as much as you can and determine if it is a good fit for your business. If it is go after it (make sure you have a strategy for how you will do this).

• Marketing Collateral - don't underestimate the power of a great written and visual document covering who you are, what you do, why someone should do business with you, what makes you different from the competition, your experience or expertise....regularly update, send out and post this doc.

• Proposals....I can hear you cringing now!! Yes these are so time consuming but remember you now have a warm lead...you either have a tender opportunity in front of you or someone wants to know more because they are considering your services. Don't drop the ball now after you have done all the hard work. Put in the time and effort that is required to get the win!

• Negotiate Terms - needs to be mutually beneficial and don't sell yourself short.

• Close the deal.....he who does not follow up will surely fail (my quote). Don't do all the hard work then not follow up and discuss your proposal etc.

Sounds like a lot of hard work? Yep it sure is, but it is the only way to have a sustainable business where you are not constantly stressed about what work you have coming in the door.

Don't know how to do all of this? Well you are not alone...that's where we come in. We help you get started, guide you, coach you, do what is required to help you STAY on the right track and help you bring in more leads and win more work.