Stop Clogging Your Sales Pipeline!
The sales pipeline is the most important sales management tool there is. Everything happens in the pipeline, or at least it should. The sales pipeline is like the hard drive of a computer. Everything runs on it. Like your hard drive, if the pipeline gets messed up or filled with crap, everything slows down and in the case of sales that means revenue.
The key to fast and efficient sales pipeline is preventing crap from clogging it up.
Getting pipelines to be efficient is not that difficult, yet based on my thumb in the air experience, less than 2 out 5 actually are effective.
Why?
- Shitty data in the system
- No data at all or critical data missing
- Inaccurate close dates or no close dates
- Bad sales stages or poor sales process
- Inaccurate data
- Sales rep “feelings”
- Poor reporting and dashboard(s)
- Poor sales leadership and management
To keep things moving in the pipeline, remove these barriers. As a sales leader, it’s our job to make sure the pipeline doesn’t become bogged down and slow. It’s our job to make it an efficient tool to driving revenue quickly. I have broken down each of the reasons your pipeline ISN’T the effective tool you need it to be and what you can do about it.
Until then, take a look at your pipeline. How many of these things are bogging your pipeline down?
This was the first post in my Pipeline Movement Series. Check out the rest of the series:
Consulting for scaling and struggling GTM Teams. Co-author of Graphic Sales Stories.
7 年I ponder this a lot. So many companies struggle here. Thanks for this post, Keenan.
Director of Sales - Travel, New Markets, and Canada
7 年Megan - couldn't agree with you more here!
Next Generation Recycling Machines-NGR Post Consumer Recycling
7 年Sometimes you need use a little Drano.
FSI Sales Leader at Snowflake, The Data Cloud
7 年I find that sales and operations leaders often prioritize top of funnel or leads over the issues you have pointed out here. Why do you think that is? The 6 out of 8 items you addressed here are simply the fact that we don't trust the data in our CRM systems. Getting complete, accurate and timely data must be the foundation before you can get real improvements around maximizing pipeline, coaching correct behavior, forecasting, etc. Good repost.