Five Opportunities will revolutionize the way we look at sales and sales processes. There is now a methodology and model that combines all the past and present sales and marketing methodologies and styles, into a single, easy to use model.

We have wrestled with how to classify Five Opportunities. Is it a model or a methodology? We think it is a little of both. It is a methodology, given there is a very clear method to follow. And because there is a physical way to implement and incorporate Five Opportunities into your environment, it is a model.

Five Opportunities is all about the opportunities,
  • multiple opportunities
  • multiple opportunities within the same account
  • leveraging opportunities
  • opportunities to keep communication lines open
  • opportunities to drive additional revenue
  • opportunities to minimize competition
  • opportunities that lead to higher profit margins
  • opportunities to establish and maintain long term business
  • prospect and customer opportunities
  • direct opportunities
  • in-direct opportunities
  • pro-active and re-active opportunities
  • opportunities to simplify your sales life
This entire methodology and model was birthed over 20 years ago by a sales manager that recognized inherent problems with his sales staff and set out to do something about it.
  • There was a 1-to-1 average ratio of prospects to opportunities
  • Salespeople were struggling to maintain customer communication
  • Salespeople could not be counted on to solicit and market as their job would dictate and pay checks depended
  • Long term opportunities were scarce and the majority of the “deals” were immediate or shorter term opportunities
  • Their business was flat, and not consistently growing
He was determined to put into place a solution that would take the sales and marketing out of the hands of the sales people as much as possible. He did not want to count on them for his overall success. He needed to control his own destiny. He had to have a solution that would transcend across all levels of sales people and be effective at the same time. The end result needed to be easily implemented, avoid extra non-essential paperwork during core selling hours, and not have the appearance of additional work for the salespeople.

So the solution was this,
Each sales person was tasked and required to identify multiple opportunities within each account. It was simple, and classified the opportunities into five easy to remember categories.
  1. Immediate Need
  2. Short Term
  3. Long Term
  4. The Magic Wand
  5. Identified
Included was a base set of questions and information on each opportunity, and off they went. As you could imagine their opportunity pool began to grow significantly. At the same time the salespeople were growing their pool of business, the long term business began to naturally expand for the company overall.

The focus was taken off the basic sales process, which can take years for a salesperson to become effective, and placed on identifying opportunities that were targeted at the customers’ business, than an individual sale.

He came to realize very quickly that multiple opportunities were keeping the communications window with customers and prospects wide open. He was seeing identified long term opportunities becoming significant, profitable business. Classifying the opportunities in a simple manner also made everyone more effective at qualifying and deciding where and when, to spend their time and resources.

The method of insight selling is fundamentally process driven, and the salesperson, ultimately, is still in charge of the sales process. When you begin targeting and focusing on longer term and “insight opportunities,” the overall responsibility for the success of those given opportunities should be on the company itself. Salespeople are closed sales and quota driven, and most live in the immediate and short term opportunity world. And when there are longer term opportunities involved, many actions to ensure the opportunity moves forward has a tendency loose priority.

Five Opportunities primary focus is on the opportunities, which conveniently place the sales and marketing process back into the hands of corporate. Corporate become responsible to ensure the appropriate actions are taking place at the perfect time. We can feel confident that if, and when, our sales staff changes, our business will continue to move forward.

It appears the industry is classifying sales methodologies as, Product Selling, Solution Selling and now Insight Selling. I feel it might be time to add an additional one to the list, called Opportunity Selling.