Pipeline Will Always Be KING In Sales
The Daily Sales
Entertaining, Motivating, Educating and Inspiring Salespeople all over the world!
There is one universal, undeniable and crucial-to-know truth in sales...
Pipeline will always be KING/QUEEN
It's the most important thing in sales, that's what we're trying to say here!
One of the main reasons sales reps miss target is because they haven't built enough pipeline.
If you look back at when you've missed target, how many times would you have actually hit target if you had generated a few more opportunities?
Sales pipelines work like this...
Let's say you have to make 5 sales to hit your sales target. You need to prospect and build a pipeline of opportunities that you work to close at least 5 to hit target.
The problem is it's not that simple!
Here are some of the common mistakes that salespeople often make with their pipeline:
1) They don't find ENOUGH opportunities to hit target
A lot of sales reps don't generate enough opportunities each month to hit target...
Let's say you need 5 sales to hit target as we mentioned above. Unfortunately, a common trap that salespeople fall into is only building a pipeline of 5 opportunities. The reality is if you build a pipeline of 5 opportunities, not all 5 opportunities will close. Which is why a lot of salespeople end up not hitting target.
The key is to understand your close ratio.
If you close 50% of your pipeline, you'll need 50% more to hit target. So to hit 5 sales, you'll need at least 10 opportunities in your pipeline to hit target. If you close 25% of your pipeline you'll need at least 20 opportunities to be able to hit target.
2) They live in pipeline DENIAL
Far too many salespeople refuse to accept the reality about their pipeline...
They'll always tell their sales managers that their sales pipeline is amazing, but in reality it's not. Unfortunately whilst this attitude will keep their sales managers off their back, it rarely results in the salesperson hitting target and often results in the salesperson struggling in the long run.
Pipeline?honesty?is key to sales success.
If an opportunity has gone cold, if they're not responding to you, if you haven't fully qualified them, anything that makes the opportunity questionable, take it out of your pipeline. Leaving it there will only cause problems.
This is where a good CRM is crucial, one that is designed for sales pipeline management...
We would recommend you check out?Pipedrive , it's the CRM built BY salespeople FOR salespeople and has one of the best (if not THE best) pipeline management designs.
Pipedrive?is a world leading CRM for user reviews, customer satisfaction and ease of use.?You can try it free for 30-days for yourself or for your sales team right here. ?(They have one of the best pipeline management setups out of all CRM's making it so much easier to manage sales pipelines for salespeople and sales managers) If you follow any of the?links?in this newsletter you'll get an extended 30-day free trial, and if you like it you'll also get 20% discount on your first year.
3) The celebrate the OPPORTUNITY over the sale
Some salespeople make the mistake of celebrating the opportunity before it becomes a sale...
We've encountered many sales professionals who make SO MUCH noise when they generate a sales opportunity.
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Now don't get us wrong, we're all for celebrating in sales, at every stage of the process. The problem is, to a lot of sales reps, that's the peak. They celebrate the opportunity so much they no longer have the drive to do all the work required to close the sale, and what often happens is the opportunity goes cold.
Pipeline is king, but closed deals are life.
Build your pipeline up with more than enough opportunities, and then make sure you put in the hard work to close as many of them as you can. It's ok to celebrate creating a new and exciting sales opportunity, but true success comes the moment the deal is signed (and when the customer is happy!).
4) They STOP prospecting when they've got "enough" opportunities
Some salespeople spend ages building their pipeline or they run out of leads, and then stop...
Now we know it's hard work building pipeline, it's exhausting!
All the efforts required to make loads of calls, send loads of emails, send loads of LinkedIn messages along with everything else, it is draining. So when you do finally have enough opportunities, it's easy to want to just focus on converting those. The problem is, each time one closes, your pipeline shrinks.
"Building pipeline is a 24/7/365 thing"
All-day, every day, every week, every month, every year, prospecting and building pipeline should never stop if you work in sales.
The best sales professionals out there are prospecting all the time and never stop, because they know they need to keep feeding the funnel. For each sale that you close you need to generate several more opportunities, to be able to continue closing sales.
This is why pipeline is KING!
No pipeline = no sales.
It's not just "Always Be Closing" in sales, it's also "Always Be Prospecting". You need to keep that pipeline full and work on adding new opportunities all of the time. Here are our top tips:
What would tips would you give for salespeople when it comes to building and managing their pipeline? Add them in the comments, you might just help someone!
We hope you've enjoyed this newsletter!
This article is supported by?Pipedrive, one of the world's best CRM's used by over 100,000+ companies in 179 countries.?You can try it for free right here. ?The best sales managers choose Pipedrive because it is DESIGNED for sales teams and has been voted the easiest to use CRM.
They normally offer 14-day free trial but if you follow one of our links in this newsletter you'll be able to get an?extended?30-day free trial and as a bonus, if you choose to use?Pipedrive?after your trial, you'll get?20% discount?on your first year (that's a pretty amazing offer if we're honest!).
If you're potentially interested in trying?Pipedrive?out, we have a few extra resources that might help:
Staffing and recruiting planning and consulting
1 年Managing the pipeline is more important than just about anything else in sales. Sales leaders are best utilized by regularly looking at their producers' pipelines to make sure there are adequate number and dollars on the left side and that nothing stalls to long as it makes its way through to the right. When individual producer and manager are both focused on the pipeline - everyone wins. Pipeline management is probably even more important than activity metrics (but they are important too).
Customer Success Manager- Enterprise NB
1 年Natalie Jayne Hall
OM at Maxim Healthcare Services
1 年Sarah Siano Ben McCutcheon Lots of great points and chuckles here.
LinkedIn Top Voice | INC 500 Winner | Founders: Spending too much time in sales? Feeling Founder overload? I can fix that without breaking the bank. I have been where you are now. Book an introductory call.
1 年The trick to a successful and accurate pipeline is making sure you understand what the customer is telling saying and not just what the salesperson wants to hear.? Pipelines are driven by customer actions, not by what they say they will do.?Sales Managers need to ask questions like: ·????????Are you speaking with the decision maker? ·????????Are you speaking with the person who can sign the order? ·????????Have they asked you for a quote before you offered it? (Very important.) ·????????Do they have the budget for your product or can they get it? ·????????When do they want to implement our solution? ·????????Have we delivered a proof of concept? A weekly or biweekly pipeline review will give you a better forecast, enable better decisions and build credibility with upper management, who need accurate information.??
Co-Author of Go for No! | Speaker and Virtual Trainer. Reprogramming how people think and feel about rejection to sell, serve, and succeed in business and life. | Follow & Hit the ?? for NOtivation! #GoforNo
1 年Being willing to ask tough questions up front, questions you might not want to know (that lead to a NO) will leave you with a healthy pipeline full of qualified prospects. A good no is better than a bad yes.