What steps can you take to ensure your sales team follows pipeline management processes?

If your team isn’t following your process it’s likely a combination of not understanding how to and not understanding why it’s important. I would take this 3 step approach to increase adherence: 1. Tell them why it matters TO THEM. Your reps don’t care about data hygiene. They do care about making their lives easier. Explain why and how the process does that. 2. Workshop the tech stack. Do NOT make them sit through a product training. DO have them complete each step in an environment where they can ask questions and you can offer suggestions/hacks to make using the tech easier. 3. Set the expectation that you’ll be spot checking their work. If they aren’t doing it circle back to start at 1 but in a 1:1 this time.

Couldn't agree more there with you David Murray! I would also add the way in which you say things is very important and is often a big factor in success, delivery is key. Demonstrating confidence and ultimatley giving yor cleint faith that they are in safe hands!

To encourage sales people using pipeline stages, I make sure the pipeline stages are integrated in any shared dashboards, training and 121s. It is part of the sales strategy. Here are practical examples: Deals are discussed in 121s based on their pipelines status. Deals and their journey through to ‘win’ are shared on screen or board showing progress and recognition. Sales people’s competencies are measured based on deal velocity and conversion based on their pipeline management. Job descriptions and recruitment processes make use of pipeline stages. Integration of pipeline data in everyday sales leadership activities ensures the sales team will adopt this important sales tool.

One thing I've found helpful is to have reminders on each of the steps of the sales pipeline path schedule & its stages. This helps to avoid missing an important deadline or a date you already commit with a potential customer. Also, it is advisable to make a constant check in the step by step in order to find opportunities in the overall process. There may be some steps that are not necessary anymore, some that may need a time lapse variation or a new step that needs to be included in order to optimize the path.

One thing I've found helpful is to clearly understand the pipeline stages. I use Hubspot and Salesforce and both are fairly good at this but when does one stage begin and end - the team need to know. Also, making sure those stages are updated is key. Automations work a treat for this but also make the team proactive enough to stay on top of their own pipelines.

Share with your team why you need this from them: show them what the management is looking at, and make sure everyone understands what we want to achieve. Then make sure the habit is easy to follow by helping them to remember with a placeholder in the calendar or any other basic action. Try to make it fun also ;))

Sales enablement is a key factor for today's salespeople. If coaching doesn't happen then bad habits start to occur. I remember when I went through a drought of sales, I asked my coach to hear my pitch and tell me what I was doing wrong. She stopped me after 30 secords and asked me the same question. It turned out it wasn't what I WAS saying but rather what I WASN'T saying. Ommission is as powerful as inclusion. But without that coaching - I would have continued to fail.

Set clear expectations from the outset and provide simple-yet-effective training on the tools and resources they'll be using. Encourage them to ask questions and empower them to own and innovate their process. This is what worked for me when I was a frontline sales rep, and I never missed a sales target.

Training & coaching on a regular base in groups and individually helps to keep your standards and to develop further growth.

Have one source of data - the pipeline tool. If it is not in their it doesn't exist. Ensure your sales pipeline discussions with each sales person are based on what is in the system and visible to you as the manager. let the sales folk own and manage the content - resist getting overly involved with the persons accounts - by all means offer help but remember you are not leading the sale - the sales person is.

Managing your pipeline as a rep is table steaks. I've always explained to my reps that as part of your base salary - the expectation is that you MUST have your pipeline up to date. Also, explain WHY... There's 2 key reasons: 1) The owners/founders/C-suite need to report numbers each week. The CRM is designed to provide this level of detail. Businesses make hiring decisions and resource allocation decisions based on sales forecasting. As reps - you need to do your part on accuracy. 2) It's an insurance policy for the rep. Are you doing the work? Is it that ops are lost bc you aren't clear on how to manage ops OR have your run the op well and it didn't work for other reasons. In the end - it could save your job!!

It’s always a question of managing expectations and the reasons behind it. Revenue and revenue forecasts are essential for leadership to take decisions whether to invest or cut back. One of the main sources of this information is the CRM and it’s only as good as the quality of the data you put in. A sales rep should understand that inputting data and managing their deals properly isn’t just for leadership, it also helps them in a few ways. One is that it helps them with planning and follow-ups so that deals don’t fall through the cracks but also if their results are lagging to explain what’s happening. If their activity metrics increase it shows they’re aware.

Understand the funnel both at the micro and macro level. how are deals progressing? How are sales people progressing and advancing their pipeline? How is the team pipeline changing, growing, converting etc. look for fast runners and lagging prospects. Ensure capacity matches opportunity.

Reviewing the pipeline is part of weekly tasks. It’s all about supporting your team and help them surmount any roadblocks on their way to closing deals. It’s good for them and it’s good for the team. It also enables management to quickly address any issues by analysing where deals get stuck and if any tweaks can be made to unclog it.

A culture is created by the public recognition system. You get the behaviours you reward. If you insist on the importance of the process but then you reward and recognize only the results, your incentive system is going against your message. If you want your team to pay attention to the process, talk about the process and recognize the role model behaviours related with process excellence.

Get your reps to contribute inside a team meeting. Some reps are more inclined to build out systems inside CRMs or detailed reports that they customize. Have those reps own a meeting with the Team to showcase what they're doing and let them provide a link to their efforts. Foster a culture where best practices are shared, admired & celebrated! I've seen this happen many times and peer to peer around pipeline/CRM can have awesome results!

Apart from the usual weekly sales meeting I’m a strong believer in not just an open door policy but also to incentivise coaching. A separate weekly coaching session can help team spirit, enhance culture and help the team surmount obstacles with a sense of mutual ownership. Always be learning and improving!

Make sure the pipeline management helps them to do a better job. They want to sell more, you want them to sell more, so it should not be too difficult... if the system is: - realistic (based on their real sales process), - well explained and understood, and - used for process improvement rather than for micromanagement or mistrust.

Estoy de acuerdo con todo lo dicho además creo que entregar un ejemplo concreto del proceso llevado a cabo con un cliente aporta mucho. Y finalmente implementar la gestión de revisión del pipeline basado en estas etapas, para generar esa costumbre en cada comercial.

When it comes to our sales team and pipeline management, key steps truly matter. We heavily invest in comprehensive training, ensuring everyone not only understands but values effective pipeline management. Our top-notch CRM system isn't just for tracking leads; it's our secret sauce for interactions and pipeline pulse. Frequent check-ins are our norm. We gather regularly, spot hiccups, and brainstorm smoother strategies. Recognition is vital. We celebrate wins with incentives, keeping the team fired up. Feedback is gold. We're all ears for processing fine-tuning because growth never stops here."