The Pipeline Teams get back to work…

As companies ramp up their sales efforts again, they’re all striving to ensure their CRM and sales systems are pumping the right product through the system to fruition, from valid target, to raw ‘suspect’ to closed sales, and quick!. Our pipeline ‘maintenance’ team is gearing up again to help more people do just that...

My colleagues are pipeline experts, and the pipeline business in our industry is hotting up. Most of the pipelines we work on are now in need – in some way or other – of revitalising, clearing out, checking out, and in need of greater certainty of delivering.

They work for a variety of tech clients on this task, from top to bottom: sourcing intelligence; researching companies and contacts; monitoring conversion rates; then nurturing and converting sales leads.  

They’re a mixed bunch, skills-wise: data people; researchers; sales developers; market analysers; content creators and distributors, all working hand in hand with our clients’ sales and marketing people. 

What I’m interested in is how their world had changed, and what they are now doing differently to handle the New Normal. What’s in need of moreattention? And what the trends are that you might find it interesting too.

The pipeline people are working on a variety of customers’ CRM systems of course, but around half of them spend their time working with Salesforce.com. That’s an interesting place for them right now. So many clients depend upon Salesforce, whether they like it or not. Our role is to help them to like it more!

“How do we manage that?”, you might ask. Who doesn’t have a CRM at the centre of their business these days that needs some form of ‘fine tuning’? Let me clarify: we are not a developer, concerned with implementing or customising Salesforce.com. There’s plenty other experts selling solutions there. We are concerned with improving the content - the intelligence within the system - on companies, contacts, strategies of those businesses, and the volume, quality and timings of the sales opportunities flowing through it.

We are also concerned that sales leads enter the CRM system and progress though it towards closed business, as smoothly and as accountably as possible. 

That needs a host of different skills to work together. We need to exercise market know-how, discipline in data management, tact and diplomacy in working with (sometimes-reluctant) salespeople, just to get these pipelines in-sync, to play the right tune. And when we get it all tuned, and everyone’s signing from the same hymn-sheet, it’s music to the ears of sales leaders and their colleagues across their businesses.

One thing is for sure, we haven’t yet encountered a client whose salesforce is ‘delighted’ about the quality and accuracy of their Salesforce data. We certainly haven’t encountered a head of Sales or Marketing who is happy with the conversion rates of suspects, to qualified prospects, to proposals to sales in the ‘Funnel’ – from ‘Lead’ to ‘MQL’, to ‘SQL’, etc. But we doknow we can help change all that. 

How does our Pipeline Team achieve that? They work at every level in the Funnel, from raw target data, inbound enquiries, right through the conversions to successful sales action.

And that includes nurture - a much neglected part of the funnel. Nurture involves more than just repeat emails these days. It needs targeted content, personal contact, intelligent thought applied to each case.

We also have people on this team who do nothing but coordinate, chase and ‘persuade’, salespeople as well as prospects, to do what was committed to, as part of the sales process.

And then there’s the ROI reporting. There are too many hiding places in most sales systems, where stuff can get hidden from view for longer than is healthy for the business. As honest brokers paid on performance, we have no incentive to show anything but the true state of a sales campaign in terms of real leads, real actions, real sales returns. If your CRM system isn’t capable of generating the right reports, we have people who know how to.

So there you have it: a fully integrated, top-to-bottom team of specialists working on purifying, energising, realising better performance, right throughyour sales pipeline.

Ask yourself if you are happy with every stage in your funnel? If not can you afford to be anything but totally certain it’s flowing freely, with no leaks or obstructions?

Maybe you could benefit from a visit from our engineers?..