In an ideal world, you’d only have to sell one deal a year and it would cover all the billable hours you’d have to produce.  When it was over, there’d be another one, no lapse or lag.  That’s not the world most of us live in.  Most us live in a world of multiple engagements, lag times between new engagements and engagements of different size and duration.  The question is:  do you spend time on high-potential or high-probability deals?  And what is the proper ratio? Balancing your time is key to developing enough deals of both types and spending more time on deals that have both high potential and high probability.

High potential deals are those that promise significant billable hours, longer engagement times and additional work in the future.  Read “high-potential” as “high dollars.”  These also can be the flagship accounts that you “brag about”.  High-potential deals are by definition harder to close, and here’s why:

• More competition between providers
• More options for the buyer
• Greater commitment required by the buyer
• Longer time needed to close the deal
• More people involved in the decision
• Greater emotional investment on your part

High Probability Deals

These are easy to come by, easy to fulfill and may already make up the bread-and-butter portion of your practice.  A high-probability engagement offers:

• Lower volume
• Less time to deliver
• Less competition
• Shorter time needed to close
• Fewer options for the buyer
• Less emotional investment on your part

You may also think of “high-probability” engagements as those that relate to compliance, or where the client has some “pain” associated with not fixing the problem.  There may also be some urgency about completing the task.

Most of us spend 80% of our time on deals that are either high potential or high probability but not both.

The concept is this:  prioritize your efforts based on the potential or probability of each deal.  Allocate a certain amount of time to pursuing each deal.  Don’t spend more time than you should pursuing work that isn’t defined as high potential.

Think in terms of a matrix.  What deals are you working on now that are low potential, low probability or both? 

We’ve created a matrix below to help you visualize your deals based on potential versus probability and re-structure and prioritize your time and energy spent pursuing these deals.

Refocus on High Probability, High Potential

We recommend that you aim for spending 60% of your practice development time on engagements or proposals with both high potential and high-probability.  The rest of your time should be evenly distributed between high-probability or high-potential opportunities.