A full order book is normally a sign of a healthy business. For a manufacturer running close to capacity, a professional services firm with strong utilisation, or a commercial trade business with crews committed to projects, there may appear to be little reason to devote scarce management time to sales.
The difficulty is that current workload reflects sales activity from an earlier period. It tells management how successful the business has been at winning work, but considerably less about the work that will replace it.
This creates a particular risk in businesses where the same senior people are responsible for both winning and delivering work. As delivery commitments increase, business development receives less attention because customer and project issues are more immediate. The consequences may not appear until several months later, when current projects finish and there is insufficient qualified work ready to replace them. This of course can create dramatic cash flow issues which can be damaging.
The answer is not simply to “do more sales”. A better approach is to protect the small number of commercial activities that create future revenue, particularly when the business is busy.
Protect the activities that create future work
Not every sales activity needs to continue at the same intensity throughout the year. However, allowing business development to stop completely during periods of high workload creates an unnecessary dependency on timing and good fortune.
Management should understand which activities consistently contribute to future revenue and protect them accordingly.
For a professional services firm, this may mean maintaining relationships with previous clients, continuing conversations with prospective clients and ensuring senior people remain visible within the markets from which future engagements are likely to originate.
For a manufacturer, it may involve maintaining contact with important distributors, prospective customers and existing accounts where further requirements are likely to emerge.
For a commercial trade business, the priority may be maintaining relationships with builders, project managers, consultants, suppliers and other people who influence the flow of future projects.
The appropriate activity will differ between businesses. What matters is identifying which activities genuinely create future opportunities and ensuring they do not disappear whenever operational workload increases.
This is not about keeping salespeople busy for the sake of activity. It is about maintaining the commercial relationships and conversations that will matter when today’s work has been completed.
Be more selective when resources are stretched
Busy periods should also change the way opportunities are assessed.
When a business has limited estimating, sales or management capacity, responding to every possible opportunity can be just as damaging as doing too little. Time spent preparing a detailed proposal for an unsuitable prospect is time that cannot be spent on a strong existing opportunity or an important customer relationship.
Qualification therefore becomes more important as capacity tightens.
Before committing significant resources, management should have a reasonable understanding of the customer, the requirement, the likelihood that the project will proceed and the business’s ability to provide a commercially attractive solution.
This is particularly relevant to businesses where producing a quotation requires technical input. An engineering manufacturer may need design or application expertise before providing a meaningful price. A commercial contractor may need to interpret plans, complete take-offs, obtain supplier prices and assess labour requirements. A professional services firm may involve a principal or senior consultant in determining scope.
That effort has a cost.
The question is not simply whether the business can quote the opportunity. It is whether the opportunity justifies the resources required to pursue it.
Better qualification allows a busy business to remain commercially active without overwhelming the people who are already responsible for delivery.
Build a Sales System That Still Works When You’re Busy
A useful test of any sales system is what happens to it when the business becomes genuinely busy. If lead qualification, customer follow-up and business development depend on people finding spare time, they will inevitably deteriorate when delivery pressures increase. The sales process may work reasonably well during quieter periods, but it is not yet a reliable business system.
The objective should be to identify the relatively small number of activities that must occur regardless of workload and make them part of the normal operating rhythm of the business. New enquiries need clear ownership and qualification criteria. Significant opportunities need an agreed next action rather than being left indefinitely in the pipeline. Quotations that justify further effort need a defined follow-up process. Important customer and referral relationships need regular attention rather than being revisited only when new work is required.
This does not require a complicated system, and adding more administration is unlikely to improve matters. In most businesses, the opposite is preferable. The process needs to be simple enough to continue when salespeople, managers and technical staff are under pressure. Responsibilities should be clear, unnecessary steps should be removed and the CRM should make the process easier to follow rather than creating another layer of work.
Management also needs to distinguish between activities that require judgement and those that can be systemised. Deciding whether a complex opportunity is commercially worthwhile may require experience, while allocating an enquiry, scheduling a follow-up or identifying an opportunity that has received no attention should not depend on somebody remembering to do it.
This is where a documented sales process becomes particularly valuable. The purpose is not to create procedures for their own sake, but to ensure that the essential elements of sales continue when the people involved are focused on delivering current work.
A sales system that only operates when people have spare capacity is not really a system. A good one continues to protect future revenue precisely when the business is busiest.
Make the existing customer base part of the sales plan
Businesses under delivery pressure often think about sales primarily in terms of finding new customers. Existing customers can receive surprisingly little commercial attention because the relationship is assumed to be secure.
That assumption deserves to be challenged.
An existing customer already understands the business, has experience of the product or service and has overcome many of the uncertainties associated with choosing a new supplier. Depending on the business model, understanding what that customer is planning next may be considerably more valuable than generating another cold lead.
This does not mean bombarding customers with promotional communication. It means maintaining a commercially useful understanding of their circumstances.
A manufacturer might want to understand future production requirements, equipment replacement or expansion plans. A professional services firm should understand what is likely to follow the current engagement. A commercial trade business completing one project may have an opportunity to discuss the customer’s next development, planned maintenance requirements or other work already being considered.
Those conversations are useful in their own right, but collectively they also improve management’s understanding of future demand.
Use the pipeline to make better operational decisions
A sales pipeline should ultimately be useful beyond the sales function.
For businesses managing labour, equipment, production capacity or professional utilisation, a credible view of future work helps management prepare before a problem becomes urgent.
If the pipeline indicates strong demand several months ahead, the business has time to consider recruitment, subcontracting, purchasing or capacity. If the pipeline is weak, management can increase commercial activity before utilisation falls and cash flow comes under pressure.
The emphasis should be on credible pipeline information.
A large pipeline containing old quotations, weak enquiries and opportunities that have not progressed for months provides little useful information. A smaller pipeline containing properly qualified opportunities with genuine customer engagement may be considerably more valuable for planning.
The purpose is not to predict the future perfectly. No sales forecast can do that. It is to give management enough reliable forward visibility to make decisions while there is still time to influence the outcome.
Being busy should give you choices
A strong current workload should place a business in a good commercial position. It provides the opportunity to be selective about future customers, pursue more attractive work and make considered decisions about growth.
That opportunity is lost when sales activity only resumes after the workload has fallen.
The objective is therefore not to maintain maximum sales activity regardless of circumstances. It is to maintain the right activity: protect the relationships that generate future work, qualify opportunities carefully, understand what existing customers are likely to need next and maintain a credible view of the pipeline.
Done consistently, this creates something far more valuable than simply being busy.
It gives the business a greater degree of choice over what it wants to be busy doing next.