Business Opportunity Assessment

Before you embark on any opportunity, you must be sure of the potential sales volume and the reasonable probability of securing the sale. The first thing an Account Manager must do is to qualify the opportunity.
Answering the following questions early in the sales process will eliminate unnecessary risks before embarking on an expensive sales project with little or no return.
* Do you understand the customer's needs?
* Does your solution match the requirements?
* Is there sufficient funding available to finance the project?
* Are you going to be able to deliver in the time- frame requested?
* Is this project a high priority for the customer?
* Do you know your competition for the opportunity?
* Do you have a strong value proposition?
* Do you have the necessary know-how and resources to execute?
* Do you know the customer's decision criteria?
* Do you know who the decision makers are? When a sales opportunity presents itself, it is important to be able to build an intimate profile of the opportunity, including complete visibility of sales history, milestones, probability and account manager(s) responsible for the successful closing. Once this has been done, sales opportunities can be reviewed in powerful ways:
* Quickly forecast opportunities through pipeline visibility by sales stages.
* Review opportunities by Account Manager, Sales Groups, Product Lines, Time Periods, Probability and other custom fields.
* Analyze trends, cycle timelines and win/loss ratios.
* Management can review and compare performances by Account Managers and Sales Teams.
* Account Managers and Management can review quotas.
* Provide efficient collaboration between team members by providing a clear and consistent approach to sales methodologies and customer information tracking. Go Capture the Opportunities!!!