What's really happening in your sales pipeline? How can you ensure that it reliably reflects where each prospect is in their decision making process? How can you avoid being swayed by the natural tendency of most sales people to take an optimistic view of progress? And how can you be sure you are accurately valuing your potential business?
You might also want to know what's changed since your last pipeline review - have deals moved forwards as expected? What's dropped out? How long has each deal stayed at its current stage? What activities have your sales people undertaken? Is the overall prognosis better or worse?
A brief history of sales pipeline management...
In their recent report on "The Case for Dynamic Pipeline Management", CSO Insights - the globally respected sales effectiveness research organisation - make a compelling case for adopting a proactive approach to managing sales pipelines. They point out that pipeline management has evolved through a number of phases.
They refer to the first era as "measure and punish", in which sales reps would promise a number they had no ability to validate and their managers had no ability to track. The rise of SFA and CRM systems ushered in the era of "stare and compare", which relied on the sales manager's memory or ability to cross-refer between spreadsheets to track changes in the pipeline. In both eras, by the time a change was recognised it was usually too late to take corrective action.
A new era of evidence-based pipeline management...
CSO Insights point out that the rise of specialised sales analytics is now offering sales leaders the chance to see changes as they occur, rather than after the event - while there is still time to react to ensure that deals stay on track and close as promised. They refer to this new era of proactive, evidence-based pipeline management as "detect and correct".
They recommend - as we do - that before sales people can move a deal from one stage in the next in the CRM system, they are required to confirm that they have observed the necessary evidence of buyer behaviour and commitment, and have conducted the prescribed sales tactics. This approach to pipeline management establishes the foundation for evidence-based sales forecasting - a topic we will return to in the next section.
Our approach...
First, of course, we'll leverage all that we've been able to collect from helping you identify the process of buying in your core target markets - and the key stages your prospects go through when choosing what and how to buy.
Then we'll look at the evidence of buyer behaviour and align sales actions that facilitate the buying process from one stage to the next. We'll help you incorporate the key checkpoints into your pipeline management process.
Finally, we'll help you design the reports that will enable you to see what's really happening from moment to moment in your sales pipelines.
If past experience is anything to go by, these insights could enable you to significantly sharpen the focus of your marketing and sales efforts, and eliminate wasted effort - why not give us the chance to prove it?
Here's how we might be able to help...
Achieving sales and marketing alignment is particularly important to any organisation that is trying to achieve a step-function improvement in marketing effectiveness or sales productivity, to out-perform strong competitors, or to successfully launch new products or enter new markets.
We've been able to help a growing number of B2B organisations to realise their ambitions by diagnosing and dealing with the constraints that have been holding them back. We may be able to help your company achieve the same. You can learn more about our approach by browsing this website.
When you are ready, please complete our contact form, drop us a line at info@inflexion-point.com or call us on +44 (0) 845 519 0295.
We look forward to finding out more about what you are trying to achieve, to sharing some ideas - and to helping you achieve the benefits of alignment throughout your sales and marketing organisation.