As a sales professional, your time and resources are invaluable, and you can't afford to spend time chasing the wrong business. It's important to plan ahead with the right business intelligence tools to decide where you need to concentrate your efforts.

For example, you can focus your energies on selling existing products to existing customers, a fairly low-risk proposition. For sales growth, however, you might also want to allocate some time to the higher-risk task of selling existing products to new customers. And, with careful planning, you can create a strategy to sell new products to new customers. Higher risk generally carries with it a higher potential for reward, but it's your job to make sure that the potential benefits of a sale outweigh potential marketing costs.

The following information and tools, like the risk assessment form below, can help you analyze sales opportunities successfully and make the most of your sales resources.

• Target the right customers (Article)
  Analyze your customers, market sectors, and competitors to develop a successful sales strategy.
• Risk assessment questionnaire (Template)
  Use this Word template to assess a sales opportunity.
• Introducing Microsoft Office InfoPath 2003 (Article)
  Learn how to use InfoPath to design and fill out electronic forms.
• Sales opportunity review worksheet (Template)
  Use this InfoPath template to gather sales opportunity information.