Pipeline Management: Sales Training & Coaching

Pipeline Management: Sales Training & Coaching?

?Pipeline management plays an integral role in a salesperson's success. Because of its significance, we urge sales leaders to incorporate regular training and coaching in this area.?

Only?34% of organizations rate ?their sales managers' training as "effective." Therefore, we want to provide guidance on what topics you should use to improve a sales team's pipeline management skills.?

Why your sales team needs pipeline management training?

The sales pipeline comprises steps that take an opportunity from start to closing. It breakdowns confusing sales funnels and turn them into five manageable and actionable stages:?

Because of this systematic approach, salespeople can review stages of their funnel, identify weak spots and improve upon them.?

All sales team members need a comprehensive and solid understanding of managing a pipeline effectively. With this knowledge, members of your team can:?

• Nurture leads?
• Forecast sales accurately?
• Stimulate resource allocation?
• Recognize aggregate sales velocity?
• Monitor their individual or team's progress?

Each of the above is fundamentally responsible for a successful sales team. If you can provide sales training and coaching to enable your team to thrive in these areas, accomplishments will follow.?

However, approaching sales pipeline training correctly is a top priority. If your team already knows the basics behind the structure, reasoning, etc., then you should follow up with additional training on the following topics.??

5 Pipeline management training topics?

Usually, sales managers only provide training to low performers. However, it should get provided across the board. Even those that are exceeding targets need to continue to learn more.?

Though pipeline management is a short, sweet way of breaking down a sales funnel, there's much to learn. Therefore, if your sales team already knows this area, we recommend training them in the following areas:?

1.???Lead scoring?

When managing leads in a sales process, most salespeople?target anybody and place them all in one category. That practice isn't as excellent as you think.

With a sales pipeline, you can take a more comprehensive look into how the customer journey looks under multiple circumstances. When you access this information, salespeople can identify which sales route is best for that particular customer.?

One of the most effective ways of managing this is lead scoring. The concept behind this involves you delegating points to certain leads and prospects on specific criteria.

?With lead scoring, potential customers acquire "points" based on their actions (for instance, +20 points for visiting a pricing page). As these points increase, the customer is closer to a conversion.?

Having a systematic approach to this enables salespeople to gain better insights into how "warm" their clients are. With this information, they can decipher which clients they should pursue first to obtain the greatest results.?

1.???Monitoring sales funnel?

As sales leaders, you know the importance of a sales pipeline and its data. However, obtaining data, throwing it into a funnel, and doing nothing with it is useless.?

Therefore, it's a good idea to have sales pipeline training regarding monitoring the funnel and adequately using the data it presents. The following topics can help in this area:?

• Creating and sticking to a pipeline monitoring schedule.
• Taking note of critical indicators that influence pipeline flow and sales performance.
• Keeping account information up to date. Mark outdated accounts and dead leads.
• Prioritize high-value deals and strive for a shorter sales cycle flow.
• Determine the most effective sequences and tactics for achieving success at each level of the sales process.

These topics should be a key area of focus regarding pipeline managing skills. Individually they're powerful. However, together, they can dramatically improve a salesperson's results.?

2.???Managing sales activities?

Another topic area that should get discussed is the ability to manage sales activities. But what do we mean by this??

Assume they?generally close one transaction for every five presentations given. They're?also aware that it takes ten meetings with prospects to determine their needs to create five presentations. In that circumstance, they should work their way up the list for each, identifying the steps required to determine the sales activity they need.

Therefore, with their sales pipeline, they can determine how much work is required to capture a client and focus on the ones that matter most. For instance, if it only takes you two meetings with a prospect to determine their requirements for a presentation; you'd ideally want to focus on this client first for the most efficient approach.?

3.???Running a sales pipeline review?

Including the above, you should focus on further training in running a sales pipeline review. After all, without reviewing a pipeline, how do you know whether it's optimized for success??

When providing training in this area, there are multiple segments you want to discuss:?

• Identifying obstacles, challenges, and possible areas of improvement?
• Looking through the "four lenses" stalled deals, must-win deals, misaligned deals, and outlier deals.?
• Switching into a buyer role to check how streamlined the purchasing journey is?

These, along with many more, are the areas of training you want to provide a sales team. Knowing these is powerful, as it'll help optimize a sales pipeline into a more successful one.?

4.???Understanding sales pipeline metrics?

Every salesperson using a pipeline needs to understand the metrics. Guaranteeing this knowledge, ensures they know what information is worth capturing about the new prospects.?

Alongside this, it helps with the usage of a pipeline. Without understanding the standard metrics, it's challenging to utilize the information effectively.?

All pipelines will differ but go through metrics such as:?

·???????Win rate?

·???????Pipeline value

·???????Number of deals??

·???????Average deal size?

·???????Lead response time

·???????Average sales velocity?

·???????Number of new leads per month?

Ensuring everybody on your team understands the above will help them gain the most out of their sales pipeline.?

Conclusion?

The above detailed five topics regarding pipeline management that you should assist your sales team with. Undoubtedly, these are extremely strong areas to focus on. With them, you can help a team gain more from their pipeline management and, ultimately, better sales. The only thing left to do is teach. Therefore, create a structured plan based on the above and provide your team with a brighter future.?