Sales people do one thing today. Requalify every pipeline opportunity.

Sometimes in the summer, you get a bit of downtime in the office. The phone isn’t ringing as much. The emails aren’t blasting through at quite the same pace as they usually do. Many of your clients are on holiday. You could be forgiven for thinking it’s time to relax a bit. Take it easy.

As a sales rep this is not the time to take your foot off the pedal though, tempting as it may be. If you want to stand apart from the herd, you must maintain your sales discipline while all around are losing theirs. Summer is the time when the serious salespeople show how good they are.

So what can you do when the phone isn’t ringing? How about this for an idea? You could requalify your pipeline. No. Don’t go. Stick with me here. It’s actually a really good idea. It will take a bit of work, but you’ll find it’s well worth it. Let me explain.

What is requalifying?

If you’ve been following my articles, you may have seen the one where I go in-depth about qualifying, specifically qualifying in and out. Requalifying in sales is essentially a spring clean of your client or prospect lists.

You probably have quite a large list of clients that you contact regularly, that you’ve built up over a long period of time. However, how many of those clients are actually worth staying in contact with, and how many are wasting your time?

Putting valuable time and effort into servicing clients that have stopped buying from you, or will never buy from you, is a waste. You could spend your time a lot better.

To requalify your list, you need to be methodical and just a little bit ruthless. Draw up measurable criteria that a client has to fulfil to stay on your list, then go through your list and decide whether they can stay or go.

The criteria you could choose could be some or all of:

• Are they regularly buying from me?
• Have they agreed to a timeline regarding when they are going to buy from me?
• Do they pick up the phone when I call?
• Are you dealing with the decision maker, and do they have control of the budget?

With some clients, you’ll know whether they can stay on your list without too much analysis. Others, however, may require a call to gauge the state of your relationship. Put sentiment to one side, don’t keep clients on your list that will never buy from you, just because they’re nice people. After this process, you should end up with a client list of regular buyers and red hot prospects.

What will it do for your business?

Cleaning up your client list will have an enhancing effect on your business, and the way you do sales. As a sales person it will give you and your teams more time to close more, bigger deals and faster. You won’t be wasting time contacting clients that aren’t going to buy anymore. What will you use that time for? Take action. You can spend it finding new clients, ones that will bring deals to the table on a regular basis. Remember to qualify them properly this time!

Requalifying your list will also give you confidence in the figures that you forecast. Your forecasts will be full of ‘definites’ rather than ‘maybes’ and ‘hopefullys’.

Requalifying will also help you move some wavering clients through your pipeline. Some will see this as an opportunity to make a decision. They’ll finally do the deal, or they’ll finally say no thanks. This will give you a sense of closure. You’ll stop wondering what might've been. It also allows you to be brutally honest with yourself and will help you make better qualifying decisions in the future.

What will requalifying do for you and your teams?

Sprucing up your client list will make you feel good. You’ll feel like you’ve got a big chore out of the way. It will ease the pressure on you to talk to clients who really don’t want to buy from you. It will end that sinking feeling when they give you the fob-off for another month.

You’ll get a good feeling knowing you’re putting the summer to good use while your competitors  are wasting time on social media.

Some quick Sales Tips

1. Requalify your whole pipeline at least once a month.
2. Add a reminder to do this in your diary.
3. Go through your requalifying list with a colleague so you can bounce ideas off each other and bring you back to earth if you're being too optimistic.
4. Manage your expectations with your CEO or line manager.
5. Test your GUT instinct.

Now’s the time to make the difference, to pull your pipeline out of its rut. Why not give it a try? Let me know how it goes.

Now it’s your turn. Do you have any ideas about how you can spend the summer lull in the office proactively? Leave me a comment down below.

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About the Author

James works for Linkedin and advises companies on recruitment, employer branding and how to achieve scalable, predictable sales growth.

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