When you think of ramping up sales to hit the second half of the year hard, many think it’s a time to go get more leads. And, that is certainly one way you can eventually increase sales and I’ll be sharing some of those strategies in future blog posts. However, if you want to increase sales in your more immediate future, take a look at your current funnel. See this diagram for a what a sales funnel generically looks like—it’s simply the deals you are currently pursuing and their progression from lead to customer.

Start from the bottom of the funnel to move your sales needle now. If you have proposals that have been with the prospect for more than a month, there is a problem. An effective tactic you can take with those is to re-invigorate the process by removing your proposal from their consideration (nicely). Sounds counter-intuitive, right? But it can be the thing that lights a fire in the prospect to make the decision they may have been sitting on.

After addressing those that are closest to a sale take a look at the rest of your funnel and see where the slow-downs and stops are occurring. Sometimes by evaluating your funnel as a whole you can see trends of a certain stage where deals get stalled, then you can create a strategy to help your sales team get the job done.

If everything is moving smoothly and predictably throughout your funnel, then it’s time for some more leads. Stay tuned for my future blogs on integrated marketing and lead generation.