If you always ask for the right next steps, you will always have a more qualified pipeline and a more effective way of managing your time and sales activities.

What does it take to create and present a winning digital solution? What can you do to gain a competitive advantage over the “other guys”?

Why pipeline management? Whether you think you are going to reach your goals or miss your goals, how do you know? Can you identify the path that will, or won’t, lead you to success? To do build and maintain the right pipeline, we have to change. Change the way we prospect, the amount of time we prospect, the way we qualify, present, negotiate and close. One thing is for sure, your sales come from your pipeline. And your current pipeline represents the way you sell. To make your pipeline look better, you will have to change something: your sales tactics, strategies and/or sales habits. Your pipeline will guide you to know how much and how often you need to change.

An alter ego can be viewed as “a second self or different version of oneself” according to Merriam-Webster. In sales, many reps unconsciously craft a sales persona or “alter ego” around familiar tendencies instead of learning how to reinvent themselves to think differently about each new sales opportunity. This results in bad sales habits and misconceptions about the reality of your sales cycle and pipeline. I’ve spent a lot of time asking salespeople why they do what they do. Most sales professionals know what they should be doing and can justify how they spend their time and why they make the choices they do. This is a skill that is extremely valuable in a seller of your product or service, but ironically, it can also have a negative effect if it becomes a habit outside of the sales arena. Take a step back by asking yourself: Am I making exceptions to my own sales rules?

Have you ever been in a situation where a customer has said to you, “I like what you’re selling, I like the product or service, and I’m all in favor of it. I’m going to talk to my boss, and I’m going to tell her that I think this would be a valuable investment. Let’s see where that goes.” So often, we hear these kinds of things and we assess how much potential this new opportunity has, how much time we should be spending on it, and how many resources should be applied towards it.

How do you make a compelling argument for why someone should buy your product or service? Selling would be easier if you could simply state the details of your business solution to an eager listener on the other end of the line who would immediately understand the value of it. But, we’re not selling to robots, we’re selling to people, and people love a good story. Plus, research shows that in complex sales, people rely on intuition to make buying decisions. This means that while people may not realize it, they are often influenced by their instincts over logical reasoning. A “vivid customer story” can activate the parts of the brain that process the senses, which can help decision makers understand, in a holistic sense, the value of your service. When you understand the structure of a story and use the digital tools that are available today, you can turn your pitch into a compelling narrative that will elicit both an intellectual and an emotional response from your listener. So, what makes a good story? And how can you use storytelling to propel your sales efforts?