Everyone who has ever watched or read a weather forecast understands that it’s an extremely inexact science. In fact, if you and a friend are each getting a weather forecast from a different app on your phone, the predictions might be wildly different. In some cases, you might get very different predictions if you are using the same app but are just standing in different places. In my own house, we’ve gotten different forecasts when one person was upstairs and the other was downstairs.
Depending on your mood, incidents like this can be amusing or even mildly irritating. With how far scientific knowledge has progressed, it seems like we should be able to know with certainty whether or not it’s going to rain.
But meteorologists are less surprised when forecasts aren’t quite right. They understand that the weather results from millions of different factors interacting in complex ways. And making a small change to just one factor can have effects that ripple throughout the system.
In fact, chaos theorists have suggested that a butterfly flapping its wings in Brazil could lead to a tornado halfway around the world.
The “Butterfly Effect,” as this idea is known, can come into play in the world of business as well.
While it’s not quite as complex as the earth’s weather patterns, a business involves an intricate interplay of people, products, messages, and money. Making a very small change in one area can have a huge impact on other aspects of the business.
This is particularly true of Sales Ops.
Small adjustments in your sales processes and strategy can also lead to huge gains for the organization. Here are four resources that explain how:
- How to Improve Your Close Rates not only explores what hold many teams back from improving their win rates, but shows you how to overcome the organizational hurdles that stand in the way. After all, just a small improvement in close rates can mean a significant boost to the bottom line and this webinar explains how you can tap into your existing data to discover and replicate the approaches that are already proven to work better for your team.
- Reducing Losses to “No Decision” details a variety of strategies and tactics for winning deals that would otherwise become “permanently frozen”. It highlights best practices and explains how to correct a common “mismatch” in sales strategy that often exacerbates the issues.
- Accelerating Sales Cycles discusses why even small reductions in cycle times can produce huge cash flow, capacity, and productivity improvements. It shows how best to measure and analyze current performance to glean actionable insights and what you can do to help speed up sales across the board.
- Using Sales Analysis to Drive More Growth will help you ask the right questions. It demonstrates how to apply analytic techniques to every aspect of the sales process and drive higher margins as a result.
If you spend some time looking back over your life, you can probably spot some examples of the butterfly effect in action. If you hadn’t had a particular teacher, maybe you wouldn’t have chosen the profession you did. If you hadn’t agreed to go out with friends on a particular night, maybe you wouldn’t have met your spouse. If you hadn’t changed lanes to avoid a piece of debris on the highway, maybe you would have hit the deer that was crossing the road.
In the same way that these small decisions had an outsized impact on your life, simple Sales Ops tweaks can make a big difference in your company. By making small, positive changes in your approaches, you can set your organization on a course to avoiding potential trouble and experiencing greater success.
How to Improve Your Close Rates
Trial and error with something as important as your close rates is risky. How do you know which strategies and tactics you should use to improve? In this on-demand training webinar, learn effective strategies and tactics for improving your sales team's ability to win---at scale and with less risk.
Reducing Losses to "No Decision"
Studies have shown that companies can lose up to 40% of their forecasted deals to "no decision". In this on-demand webinar, learn strategic and tactical approaches for dealing with prospect inaction.
Accelerating Sales Cycles
Sales cycle times have major implications for cash flows, productivity, and returns on sales. In this session, learn proven "big bang" strategies and tactics for slashing time-to-close across your sales operation.
How to Use Sales Analysis to Drive More Growth
Sales analysis often has much more potential than it is given credit for. This on-demand webinar explains how to using the analytical processes and underlying data to reveal powerful insights and opportunities for growth.
