Welcome to module six, lesson one, the elements of a qualified opportunity. In this module, you'll learn how to qualify that and analyze opportunities. So not only will you save time and be more efficient when you're working with your opportunity pipeline, but you'll also stop being unprepared for low sales months in your business. And that is huge. You'll learn how to assess your opportunity pipeline so you can shift into the driver seat in your business, be able to predict your revenue, know exactly when, why and how to step up, or pull back your efforts to best suit the needs of you and your company. So to start, what exactly is an opportunity?

We've gone over this before earlier, but the they have to meet these three criteria. The decision maker has been involved. They're aware of you they're aware that your you know product is being considered that a budget has been identified. You may not fully know or Understand what this budget is, but you know that there is one. That is what's important. And the timeline is known.

So there seems to be a sort of time horizon in terms of when they want to have something implemented by it. Either you've identified what the compelling event is, and you're working toward that, or, you know, when they need this, it's not a sort of nebulous, unknown future for when they might adopt at an opportunity absolutely have to meet these criteria before it makes it into your pipeline. And that's mainly for your forecasting reasons. The more stringent you are with your pipeline, the more accurate your forecasting and your planning will be and that will save you from so much heartache in your company and make it easier for you to plan common mistakes and pitfalls during the opportunity phase or we make a lot of assumptions. We assume that we're the only other person being considered or the only other company being considered For this product, we assume that we have a great relationship with them that they have no questions that they totally get it, we assume a lot of things that are not necessarily true.

And at the end of the day, it's often the assumptions that we made that come back to bite us when we find that we didn't win the opportunity. So don't make any assumptions, really about anything when you're in the opportunity stage. Getting too comfortable and candid with the prospect or anyone else on their team can also have the ability to derail an opportunity, you know, particularly if maybe it's a scenario where you might be out for drinks or something like that. And you may say something and you think that you've got this great rapport, but in fact, you don't really know them that well. This actually came up one time in my life when I was working for another company. And this company that I was working for.

The owner of the company was very interested in aviation, and he had his own plane. And we were out at a client lunch and having a discussion. And the owner of the company received a phone call at lunch and he answered it at the table. So for one, don't answer your cell phone at the table lunch, but definitely don't do that. But um, and then he started having conversation kind of loudly and a little bit of a showy way, about his plane and his weekend plans with the plane and he probably was a little too comfortable and became a little too candid with the prospects. He may have wrongly assumed that they might think that his plane was really cool, and he may have wrongly made the assumption that they would be be impressed with it and feel it was an upside to work.

With our company because, you know, we had access to a plane that oftentimes our clients or you know, things like that we get to benefit from. Those were incorrect assumptions. And he was too candid. And we ended up not winning that opportunity. And it went to a competitor, because they felt really turned off not only by the cell phone call being answered at lunch, but by the long drawn out discussion that was slightly showy and show offi about the plane. So those are two examples of the comfortable and candid assumptions making, you know, trifecta of loss that you can have when you have an opportunity.

That really I had found out later at that lunch that they were about ready to kind of award us the contract, and that made us lose it. So presenting pricing too early and without enough information is also something that can derail an opportunity. You don't want to give them the price. without enough information and you don't want to give it to them too early in the process, like we said before, drag the pricing part out until the last minute. your prospects need to earn the pricing they need to earn the proposals and you need as much information as you can to make sure that you can present that in the best and most accurate way possible. Another mistake that a lot of people make is only connecting to one point of contact in the company.

What happens when that point of contact gets reassigned, they move to a different role, they lose their job, they take on too much their priorities change and suddenly, the need that the company has may or may not have went away but you're no longer in contact with the right person to continue being considered. It's really important to try and start establishing relationships with the other people on the team, the other decision makers the other influencers as quickly as you can because One person will often leave and that's happened to me before. And it was really disappointing. And it's not really something that you can easily bounce back from, you almost have to start over again from square one, they may have never heard of you when who you are, if you have any, you have to reprocess that cold into that company and you don't want to do that.

Another mistake is letting the customer drive the process. This can be really hard sometimes, particularly if you have a customer who's really trying to drive the process. But a lot of times people will assume, especially if you have a client who's very experienced in their role that they really understand maybe how you work and and they know what they need. But sometimes you're you're maybe doing something a little bit differently or you're trying to not do things the same way as they have always been done. And when a customer drives the process, you can get yourself kind of put into place Is that you're trying to stay out of. So I would make sure that you keep control and leadership throughout the process.

And also under or over communicating. This is something that can definitely derail. You definitely don't want to email them or call them too often. If they say, I'm out of the office, I'm not gonna be around or you know, we're out of we're conferences, we're busy. Like, really, they're busy. Leave them alone.

Don't continue emailing or calling. If they say let's touch base on this next week, touch base on it next week, but do not under communicate. So if they say, let's touch base on this next week, make sure you get back to them in the early part of the following week. Do not let that slide because there's a likelihood that you're probably not the only person being considered. So any sort of slip up or ball drops could result in maybe you not getting the crack at taking the next step. So make sure that you're really on the ball in terms of your communications.

And that's where you're scheduling a task in your CRM or in your calendar will really help you stay on top of it. And also including that in your morning, emails, or in your routine, as we talked about in the scheduling and cadence lesson, make sure that you've got that time blocked out in your day to make sure any critical communications or touches such as this get taken care of, and that there's a time scheduled for them so you don't forget. So while you're building your pipeline in your CRM, in addition to just filling out the basic information asked like their contacts and their role and company and all of that other stuff, you want to make sure that you enter the following in and you want to do it in sort of this way. So name the opportunity. You don't want to just name the opportunity the company, particularly because some companies have a A lot of divisions and each division or department may make their own decisions.

And so let's say you're working with, you know, Columbia Sportswear and their apparel team. But then you would have a whole separate opportunity and a whole separate process to prospect into their footwear, you know, team and that's different. Make sure you name it. So it doesn't get confusing for you later down the road in terms of what opportunity within that company is being discussed. You want to include the total total dollar amount that you estimate that specific opportunity or project or whatever you're going to call it is close for and you want to be realistic and conservative. So if the opportunity could be as much as 175,000 on the high end and maybe 120,000 on the lower end, entered into your CRM for 120,000 or even less In 410 15, you always want to be really conservative, because this is how you're going to eventually build your forecasting out.

You want to include the timeline that you expect that it will close. And again, also be realistic if it could close as early as May. But it's looking more like probably end of June or July, put it in for July. And I like to always choose the end of the month of July 30 or 31st, that I feel the opportunity might close by over time as your pipeline starts to build. And you start having a lot of opportunities in here when they're vetted this tightly. And when they're entered in this conservatively, you can actually start to estimate and budget your growth based off of these these things.

So you'll run reports in your CRM to see what's estimated to close you know, this quarter, next quarter this year, next year, things like that, and you'll be able to start saying, Oh, it looks like we've got about eight amount of revenue pipelined for, you know, the last quarter of this year. And historically, it's shown that we can close about 50% of the opportunities that are in our pipeline. So let's safely say, our revenue for that quarter is going to be x, you'll sleep so much better at night. Now, knowing that your opportunity pipeline is not inflated, it doesn't include things that aren't legitimately opportunities. Everything is entered. And conservatively, you're quoting it as very conservative, and not best case scenarios so that at the end of the day, you can always be surprised.

You can always over over, over perform. And especially if you have to report earnings maybe to investors or to somebody like that. It's always nice to do better than what you're projecting. And it's always nice also to have numbers that you can protect. So if you can see Say to your investors, for example, you know, we're expecting to close $100,000 in revenue in q4, both from new and existing clients. That is something that a lot of newer businesses and startups and things like that cannot speak to, and you just put a lot more people at ease including yourself.

So much easier to plan that way. It's a good idea again to anchor and establish with multiple points of contact. So we discussed how a way to shoot yourself in the foot with an opportunity is to only have one point of contact. In addition to just the one person at the company, you want to connect with people in different ways, so connect with them on LinkedIn, Twitter, Instagram, you know, wherever is appropriate, the various people that you're involved with in the process, connect with them on social comment on what they post, like, engage with them. It's just helping you sort of stay top of mind, it's helping you kind of I mean, they're seeing that you're posting or commenting. So that's just one more way to have you and, you know, your subsequent proposal, your opportunity pop up in their mind, you know, they're on the, at the gym or something, they see that you maybe made a comment on something they wrote, and they're like, Oh, yeah, that person's, you know, quote, I've been meaning to get back to them on that, let me do that.

It's, it's just kind of the way that our brains work, you know, especially nowadays, we have so much going on. It's always a good idea to keep an eye out for just things that are interesting and relevant to them, even at this stage. They still appreciate you showing your value coming to them with things that you've seen that are helpful and are interesting, and at this stage, you know so much more about them. You can really provide even more value than you might be before you know much about them. And sometimes even funny stuff is great and helpful and it's good to establish rapport, you know, funny articles, funny videos, something that might reference, you know, sort of a conversation that you might have, that's a joke. Don't be afraid of that stuff.

Connect and establish with others on the team who are even outside of the decision making circles. So that is something that a lot of people won't bother doing because they feel that it's only worth time to establish contact with the decision makers or the influencers. But especially if your company who you're prospecting into has any sort of tight knit culture or even if they don't, if they just like their co workers, you do not want to give anyone the brush off or treat anyone with any little or less respect that you would treat the decision maker. This is you know, this is particularly true if you visit in in the office are things but it's not that I think would think you would do this but I've heard at times of people who, you know, sort of completely ignored anybody who wasn't the decision maker or wasn't, you know, seated at the table, you know, in terms of maybe grabbing a coffee in the break room, and you know, having a nice chat with somebody in there or something like that, it just goes a long way.

And people see that sort of thing. And you just don't want to be that person who's rude to the receptionist. It's just not something that you you know, want to the kind of person that you want to be, but also not the reputation that you want to establish for yourself or for your business. So just make sure you treat everybody well, everybody's courteous, not just the decision makers, and offer to share with your clients any testimonials that you might have, as well as references. So if you have a client who you have a great relationship with who's willing to pry provide reference, by all means, share it. It's not that often that clients will call your references but it's a really good gesture to show that Have them and that you're willing to share it.

So sometimes you'll be going along great. Everything is fine. You know, you're like, this is cool. These people are awesome. We're totally on the same page we're driving, and then they'll go dark, and you'll never hear from them again. And it happens.

And it happens a lot more than I really wish that it did. It's really crappy when it does. There's not a whole lot that you can do if you've been ghosted, but here's a couple ideas for things like that, that you can do to sort of maybe get some sort of response or even just hear some sort of general acknowledgement that you didn't do something horribly wrong. More, most of the time you didn't, it's usually something on their side. It usually has nothing to do with you and unfortunately, sometimes people just don't really have the courtesy to send a quick email and say, Hey, I'm you know, I'm really sorry, you were great. We really enjoyed meeting you.

But we're going to go in a different direction, nothing to do with you. But, you know, thanks for your time. A lot of people won't even give you that. So just be ready and know that that will happen. But one thing you can do is make an Arab irresistible offer, you know, offer them some sort of insights on new product development, some sort of competitive insider information, if you might have it is always appreciated. A free trial and extended free trial, a FREE Mini audit or free analysis, offer interesting market intelligence that you might have access to any proprietary data, any new work, portfolio stuff, success stories, all those sorts of things are interesting.

You know, always send these emails tracks to see if they're opening them and to see if they are clicking the links or reading them. Are they still kind of engaged and they're just ignoring you or are they like, completely unengaged. And again, like throughout the process, just always bring value to every interaction that you have. Train your prospects to know that it's always worthwhile to engage because they're always going to gain something new and always gain something valuable. And worst case, it's always a good idea to be funny. Unless you're not funny.

If you're not a funny person, don't try to be funny. But sometimes a joke or something amusing can elicit a response to it can warm up an awkward situation. And if you have that skill set in your repertoire, this is a great time to use it. So I just want to end with this. The easiest decision for someone to make is to keep the status quo implementing anything new, doing anything new, trying anything new is scary. And oftentimes there are forces and things going on outside of your control that you have no idea about.

And so do not ever take anything personally. Do not take The fact that you didn't win an opportunity you didn't close an opportunity personally do if a client goes to, after, you know, multiple great calls, maybe you know, a couple nights out good dinners, all kinds of stuff all on your dime, of course, you know, and all of a sudden, you never hear from them again. It sucks, but don't take it personally. Just know that at the end of the day, this is kind of all part of it. And it's up to you. And it's your job to always bring your best always bring the most integrity and the most value that you possibly can to the table and that is all that you can do.

You cannot force somebody to become your customer, nor would you want to, because that's just not the way that things work. So just know at the end of the day, if you haven't heard anything, or if you didn't win or if you get ghosted, the easiest decision is to maintain the status quo and that's oftentimes what they ended. up doing. So that's it for this lesson. We will see you in the next lesson.