4 Strategies for Effectively Managing the Sales Pipeline Once understood and well-managed, proper sales pipeline management can be one of the greatest tools for moving deals forward.
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Any revenue leader will tell you that maintaining a healthy sales pipeline is the key to running a successful revenue organization. However, far too often revenue teams spend valuable time giving demos to unqualified leads, not following up and letting quality deals fall through the cracks. The resulting impact can be devastating to any company.
A sales pipeline is a visualization of where prospects and leads are in the deal cycle. It's made up of all prospecting, sales and marketing efforts. As such, it's the most important resource throughout the sales process for measuring success, contributing to your bottom line, making important business decisions, predicting revenue and catching problems early on in the deal cycle.
There are many scenarios to be mindful of, but rest assured, we have solutions for avoiding these pitfalls.
Missing key information during discovery calls
Your prospects turn into a lead when they perform the desired action on your website, such as requesting a demo or filling out a form. From there, a discovery call is typically set up to determine the qualification of the lead. During the discovery call, it's usually the CRM system itself that lacks sufficient call intelligence because of the extra step it takes to input detailed notes. Plus, it's easy for a rep to be too engaged in the conversation to take sufficient notes. This means most of the information essential to the deal falls off, including:
The problems your prospect is currently dealing with, and therefore what they expect from your product/service.
Talk of your competitors. Competitors are mentioned 5-6 times more in early-stage meetings in closed-won than closed-lost deals
Identifying opportunities for follow-up.
Related: The Exact Videos You Should Use in Each Stage of the Buyer Funnel
Failure to understand the customer's needs
If the prospect is considered a qualified lead, they'll meet with an account executive (AE), who will attempt to understand the prospect's needs and close the deal. But if there's information that the sales development rep didn't pass along, the AE is immediately at a disadvantage. This lack of information leaks into future stages, which in turn impacts deal velocity and revenue.
Only when prospects are completely understood can deals be won. It's important to get to the root of your prospect's pain and needs, which can't happen unless the revenue team has the full relationship history gathered at each stage of the sales process.
When equipped with the right tools, all of the client's information can be recorded and analyzed in one place for the team to access critical information and insights. Without this information, you're slowing down the cycle and exposing your deal to more risk.
Here are four best practices to consider for effectively managing your pipeline.
1. Carefully identify the best opportunities
Make sure to pass on information indicating a deal with a lot of potential. This can include pinpointing a fit between the product and user, the prospect's willingness to buy and indicators of wanting to move the deal forward. These signals can be subtle, so it's important to have a tool to identify them.
With a more fine-tuned qualification process, you can cut down on deal time and secure more closed-won deals, further contributing to your bottom line.
Related: 3 Signs Your Sales Funnel Is Broken (and How to Fix It)
2. Decide how to best measure the pipeline
Having a blend of metrics unique to your company for measuring the pipeline helps to proactively spot any deal risks. Typical metrics include:
Total amount of deals in the pipeline
Amount of leads in each stage of the pipeline
Average size of deals
Current win rate to compare against the average
3. Update your pipeline daily
Your pipeline is only useful if it's updated. Leads are always being added, advancing to new stages in the pipeline, and information is always changing. Without all of this being reflected in your pipeline, it becomes a jumbled mess. Work with your team to stay up-to-date on deal progression and uncover issues. Sharing insights from client calls can help the team fine-tune the collective approach to outreach.
4. Keep processes updated
Always keep your processes fresh, including cold-calling sequences, demo formats and pipeline reports. Relying on the old way of doing things will only lead to bottlenecks. To keep these processes updated, it's essential to obtain deeper visibility into your pipeline, which is possible with the right tools. By doing this, you can expect a vast improvement in deal velocity and adaptability to changing sales environments. It's time to change the way you treat your sales pipeline and stop letting key information fall through the cracks. By recognizing the sales pipeline as a pivotal growth tool, you'll have better processes, pipeline velocity and more closed-won deals.
