You’re probably doing pipeline coverage wrong (I was), but this isn’t a 3x "rule" hot take. In this week’s Uncharted Territory, I went deep to demystify a misunderstood metric with some major help from Paul Stansik, the ideas of Dave Kellogg, my own mistakes and some math[1]. If having a chance to hit your number matters to you (and I hope it does), I highly recommend you read this. Here’s what’s inside: 1?? Why the 3x rule is like the baba yaga (but isn’t necessary wrong) 2?? How pipeline coverage answers 1 of the 2 key sales questions 3?? The right way to calculate it and why it’s not the inverse of win rate 4?? The importance of to-go[2] pipeline coverage for tracking progress 5?? Dealing with the pipeline hygiene dumpster fire 6?? Reporting and Paul Stansik’s concept of maintaining “fingertip feel” Special thanks to David Bannister, Ryan Milligan and Ray Rike for answering the call for thoughtful pipeline coverage content! ?? ?? Tap "View my Blog" by my name to go straight to the article. — [1] I got to use LaTeX in a post for sales leaders which makes me (and literally no one else) happy. [2] I resisted a H O T T O G O reference in the article, but not in this footnote
None of this works nor makes any sense unless you know what the ideal pipeline is for the period in the first place.
Hayes Davis - the latest benchmarks on Pipeline Coverage Ratio from Q4-24 research...not yet published Key to point out that Win Rate is not the inverse of Pipeline Coverage Ratio - a topic that Dave Kellogg and I discussed on an episode of SaaS Talk with the Metrics Brothers benchmarkit.ai/saas-talk-1/is-pipeline-coverage-ratio-simply-the-inverse-of-win-rate%3F
There certainly is a sweet spot in pipeline coverage IMO. While something like 10X might feel amazing, all the sudden you're overwhelmed by which opps to focus on and they all end up slipping.
I have to set aside the right amount of time for this and I shall as you name dropped some pretty important peeps :)
Thanks for the love sir. Great article.
Thanks for the shout-out and the kind words. For those so motivated, here's a link to everything on Kellblog in the pipeline category and skimming through it, there really is a ton there on the subject. https://kellblog.com/category/pipeline/
Do you have any recs for pipeline generation and/or coverage?
CEO, RevOps Inflection. We help drive growth through strategic RevOps
2 个月This is great stuff. The only part missing (although it is referenced) is the historical coverage numbers against actual performance so you can see how well you're doing. A number without context isn't as helpful. If a majority of your closes come in month 3 of the quarter, it may be that 3x is ok for months 1 and 2 but it also may need to change throughout the quarter. I like that the template breaks out the data by stage. For enterprise motions, it's likely that the earlier stage stuff converts at a much lower rate so looking at the composition of the your pipeline is key. I've historically simplified it down from a presentation standpoint to see total pipeline coverage and active pipeline (later stages). This is the fun part of Ops!