So, you have identified your potential customers – well, now it’s time to contact and turn them into paying customers. If you don’t do this, you will be greeted by a high Missed Sales Opportunities percentage the next time you open the KPI dashboard of your business.
When it comes to Sales Opportunities, there are two variables that can make a sale NOT happen – namely, the Missed and Lost Sales Opportunities. A missed opportunity occurs when a potential customer is not contacted – therefore, you’ve just lost some profit.
On the other hand, a lost opportunity is when your business has contacted a potential customer, but they decided to not buy your product or your service. While the lost opportunity depends more on how you inform your potential customer about your business, the missed opportunity refers strictly to whether they were contacted or not.
The Basics of Missed Sales Opportunities
If you miss a sale opportunity, it means that your business has failed to accordingly prospect the market for potential customers and identify them, as well. As soon as a potential customer is found, the staff, manager, or director must give him or her the information they need to know in order to buy the product.
For example, a missed sale opportunity can happen in a store, at the register, when a customer asks if a certain product is on stock and one of your employees says that it is not, even though if the employee does not know exactly if the product is or is not on stock.
If the product was actually on the stock, then your business just missed a sale opportunity. Moreover, even if the product is not on stock, the staff should always be ready to direct customers towards similar products your business has to offer – or, even better, tell them to leave their number with you so that you can contact them when that product is on the stock.
These were merely examples, to show you how easy a business can miss its sales opportunities – after all, it’s everything about trying to provide your customer/ potential customers with what he or she needs.
Making-Up for the Missed Sales Opportunities
Fortunately, you can decrease the percentage of Missed Sales Opportunities even if you have failed to contact any potential customers. First of all, the team responsible for your sales, maybe the one including you as well, must come up with a prospecting plan.
Basically, the prospecting plan will urge those in charge of Sales Opportunities to go out and speak with the people that are in your target market – naturally, this has to be done on a consistent and regular basis.
One of the reasons you have a high Missed Sales Opportunities percentage is that your business was not consistent and regular enough when advertising/ marketing its products/ services.
Whether it’s face-to-face or in a written form, prospecting for potential customers is a process that has no end. More potential customers also mean more paying customers – as more of the first will eventually convert into the latter.
The Bottom Line
In the end, there’s only one thing that can be said – if you want to convert as many people as possible into paying customers, make sure that your KPI dashboard shows zero under the Uncontacted Sales Opportunities section.