YOUR ULTIMATE GUIDE TO SALES PIPELINE MANAGEMENT

The sales pipeline is your company’s foundation. Its performance has a part in dictating how the company performs.

Pipeline management is critical for winning more deals and ensuring every sales opportunity is healthy.

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With the right tools and know-how, you can reduce the time you spend managing activities, reminders and follow-ups to focus on what you do best: selling.

Here is a basic definition of sales pipeline management: overseeing and directing the opportunities in your sales pipeline.

But managing pipelines involves so much more than that.

Because it focuses on how you sell to potential customers, mapping out your methods step-by-step, you can use pipeline management to both analyze and supercharge your sales process.

Every opportunity in your pipeline occupies a designated stage within the sales cycle.

If you manage your pipeline successfully, you’ll be able to track and evaluate the activities associated with each of those stages in a meaningful way, including activities like:

• Cold calling and cold emailing new leads
• Setting appointments and meeting with new prospects
• Sending lead nurturing offers (e.g., discounts and tutorials)
• Generating effective sales proposals

A well-managed pipeline will provide you with clear insight into how well your sales process is working and where impactful improvements can be made.

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To fully answer the question of what is pipeline management, we need to examine what it is about the pipeline management process that allows salespeople to:

• Identify and do away with bottlenecks and weak points in their sales cycle
• Better understand why some sales deals fail while others succeed
• Spot and prepare for potential sales slumps and growth

All these accomplishments and more are made possible by six key characteristics that drive pipeline management.

1. Metrics: A wide variety of pipeline metrics can be used to analyze your sales process (e.g., calls made or closed deals)
2. Maintenance: Keeping your pipeline clean improves efficiency functions
3. Optimization: A well-managed pipeline enables you to evaluate and then optimize your process at each stage of the sales cycle
4. Sales team management: Knowing how and when to help your team make the most of their sales process is an integral part of pipeline management for sales leaders
5. Sales forecasting: Proper pipeline management makes it possible to both forecast and increase your sales revenue
6. Tool integration: Best practices include taking advantage of pipeline management software and integrations specifically designed to coax the best performance from your sales pipeline

We’ll walk you through these pipeline management principles in more detail as we work through this guide.

Before you can benefit from the pipeline management process, you need a pipeline that’s built to perform.

No sales professional wants to see a potential deal slip through the cracks. Each stage of the pipeline should be built with the intention of making it easy to:

• Visually manage the various events that make up your sales cycle
• See where your potential buyers are at all times on their journey from cold lead to customer
• Access valuable data (like conversion rates, for example) that demonstrate the success of your selling activities at each stage of the sales process

Bear in mind that there is no one-size-fits-all sales pipeline structure.

However, there are half a dozen fundamental stages that frequently pop up in sales pipelines. You can customize these six sales steps to meet the needs of your organization.

1. Prospecting
2. Qualifying
3. Contacting
4. Building relationships
5. Closing
6. Following up with cold leads

The best way to determine when you should be pushing a deal through your pipeline is by establishing which activities need to be completed, or conditions need to be met, at each stage of your sales cycle.

Wherever you currently stand—and whatever sales pipeline management best practices look like for your business—keeping your pipeline clean and organized, with the help of a customizable CRM tool, will make it easier to coax the best performance from your sales process.

Sign up today for a one-month free trial and discover how Pipedrive intuitive tools can help you master pipeline management, close deals faster, and grow your sales process.