Where deals stick

The funnel on the show has four stages, unchanged since the hosts' first sales jobs. Awareness: someone becomes aware of who you are and what you do, and is not a prospect yet. Interest: they become a prospect and want to know more. Decision: they decide to work with you or not. Close: you deliver and collect the revenue.

Four stages is not the interesting part. The interesting part is that a sales manager watching deals flow through them can see exactly where they get stuck, and after years of watching, the answer does not move. Deals stick most between interest and decision. Stage two to stage three.

That is worth knowing before it happens to you, because the stall does not feel like a stall from inside. Interest is pleasant. The prospect takes the call, asks good questions, says the thing sounds useful. Nothing about that conversation announces that it is where deals go to die.

Deals stick most between interest and decision, and interest feels like progress.

Source: The Sales Funnel and How it Relates to Marketing Strategy, episode 14 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.

The same episode names what actually decides a deal once it does move past that stall, and it is not what most reps assume. Most salespeople think a new customer came in because of price. The show puts a number on how often that is true: maybe 15 or 20 percent of the time at the most. The other 85 percent of the time it is something else, such as the options you showcased or your after-hours support.

Source: The Sales Funnel and How it Relates to Marketing Strategy, episode 14 of the Oil & Gas Sales & Marketing Podcast.

Which is an argument for having more than one deal in flight.