Member since February 2025
Liz Heiman is the Sales Operating System Architect and the founder of Regarding Sales. Liz guides “Ready-to-Scale” founders and CEOs to take the chaos out of sales so they can create a more sustainable growth strategy that strengthens the pipeline and streamlines their process to increase revenue on a predictive basis.
Early in her career, Liz trained some of the world’s powerhouse sales organizations. Using Strategic Selling™ and Conceptual Selling™, she helped them boost sales by improving their sales processes and systems. Now her focus is start-up and mid-sized companies selling into complex B2B environments, including medical, government, and enterprise.
Liz’s team uses strategy and process to build a roadmap for success that drives extraordinary growth. While most clients achieve the sustainable year-over-year growth they need, others have realized exponential growth very quickly; as much as $10 million in one year.
Liz is on a mission to challenge assumptions, build trust, and make founders’ dreams come true.
Topics that put a smile on my face:
Sales Strategy
Sales Process
Sales Operating Systems
Scaling Sales
What’s wrong with your CRM?
One of the things that founders and CEOs tell me is that sales is unpredictable. They don’t know how to figure out what is really closing or when. It is a really common problem.
So I sat down with my client, and we looked at the funnel in the CRM, and I saw something I have seen recently. Over 60 percent of their opportunities were stuck in “Proposal with Client.” It’s funny because I have been seeing this a lot lately. Companies have been setting up their CRM with activity-based stages. For example, “Meet, Demo, Proposal, Proposal with Client, Negotiate.” That works great if you have a simple sale, meaning you only speak to one person, and it is a pretty clear path to close. If you have a B2B complex sale, the sale doesn’t go in a straight line. So what happens is that regardless of where the buyer is in the buying process, the seller creates a proposal after the demo and sends it to the buyer they talked to, and there it sits until such time as they are ready to get serious about buying.
This is what I found with my last client. They add things to the funnel once they create a proposal, regardless of where the buyer is in the buyer journey. When we started talking this through, I discovered that their customers can ask for a budgetary proposal a year or two before they buy because they need to get the budget approved and the project funded. They also get a request for a proposal early in the buying process when they are trying to get some information before they are ready to buy. That proposal could go through as many as a dozen revisions before they are ready to sign. Some clients have the information they need and are ready for a proposal, then make minor revisions before they are ready to sign. All of these were sitting in the same stage in the funnel. This wasn’t helping them plan or forecast. We rewrote their sales process using stages that are not activity-based. Their stages are Prospect, Qualify, Develop Solution, and Close. Now regardless of when the first proposal is created, we can track them through their buying process. If it is a budgetary quote, they leave it in prospect or qualify until the funding is received and they are ready to start the buying process in earnest. If the client is asking for the first draft of a proposal that will need several revisions until it is right, then it is in the develop solution stage. It can go back and forth until the client agrees to the solution and price. Then it can be moved to the Close stage, where the focus is on getting signature and payment. They are so excited about the change. Now they have a funnel that looks like a funnel, not a vase, and they can predict what is going to close and when.
Sometimes the solution is so simple, but the impact is huge.
I grew up in the world of sales. My Dad started Miller Heiman (now part of Korn-Ferry). I started working in the business as a teenager. I never thought sales would be my career. I started packing boxes, then office admin, then doing research, then I set up and ran the marketing department. I decided I wanted to do international peace studies, so I went to graduate school and got my degrees in International Political Economy with a focus on Asia-Pacific. While working on my dissertation on US-Japanese trade negotiations, my dad called and asked if I would run the Asia-Pacific division for him. It was losing money and needed to be turned around. So I did. After the company was sold, I became an independent contractor, then started my own sales and marketing consulting business. And, here I am 20 years later, helping ready-to-scale companies with sales strategy and systems.
One of the things that founders and CEOs tell me is that sales is unpredictable. They don’t know how to figure out what is really closing or when. It is a really common problem.
So I sat down with my client, and we looked at the funnel in the CRM, and I saw something I have seen recently. Over 60 percent of their opportunities were stuck in “Proposal with Client.” It’s funny because I have been seeing this a lot lately. Companies have been setting up their CRM with activity-based stages. For example, “Meet, Demo, Proposal, Proposal with Client, Negotiate.” That works great if you have a simple sale, meaning you only speak to one person, and it is a pretty clear path to close. If you have a B2B complex sale, the sale doesn’t go in a straight line. So what happens is that regardless of where the buyer is in the buying process, the seller creates a proposal after the demo and sends it to the buyer they talked to, and there it sits until such time as they are ready to get serious about buying.
This is what I found with my last client. They add things to the funnel once they create a proposal, regardless of where the buyer is in the buyer journey. When we started talking this through, I discovered that their customers can ask for a budgetary proposal a year or two before they buy because they need to get the budget approved and the project funded. They also get a request for a proposal early in the buying process when they are trying to get some information before they are ready to buy. That proposal could go through as many as a dozen revisions before they are ready to sign. Some clients have the information they need and are ready for a proposal, then make minor revisions before they are ready to sign. All of these were sitting in the same stage in the funnel. This wasn’t helping them plan or forecast. We rewrote their sales process using stages that are not activity-based. Their stages are Prospect, Qualify, Develop Solution, and Close. Now regardless of when the first proposal is created, we can track them through their buying process. If it is a budgetary quote, they leave it in prospect or qualify until the funding is received and they are ready to start the buying process in earnest. If the client is asking for the first draft of a proposal that will need several revisions until it is right, then it is in the develop solution stage. It can go back and forth until the client agrees to the solution and price. Then it can be moved to the Close stage, where the focus is on getting signature and payment. They are so excited about the change. Now they have a funnel that looks like a funnel, not a vase, and they can predict what is going to close and when.
Sometimes the solution is so simple, but the impact is huge.
I grew up in the world of sales. My Dad started Miller Heiman (now part of Korn-Ferry). I started working in the business as a teenager. I never thought sales would be my career. I started packing boxes, then office admin, then doing research, then I set up and ran the marketing department. I decided I wanted to do international peace studies, so I went to graduate school and got my degrees in International Political Economy with a focus on Asia-Pacific. While working on my dissertation on US-Japanese trade negotiations, my dad called and asked if I would run the Asia-Pacific division for him. It was losing money and needed to be turned around. So I did. After the company was sold, I became an independent contractor, then started my own sales and marketing consulting business. And, here I am 20 years later, helping ready-to-scale companies with sales strategy and systems.
