63% of respondents say that their companies do a bad job of managing their sales pipelines, which shows that there is massive room for improvement.
What is a sales pipeline?
A snapshot of where prospects are in the sales process and how close they are to buying. Showing how many deals salespeople are expected to close and when, and the status in reaching their quota.
According to the Harvard Business Review there is an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that defined a formal sales process and companies that didn’t.
So this is a lot about getting that sales process right.
This is where pipeline analysis comes in. Identifying improvements within your pipeline will help you increase your conversion rate.
10 tips for maintaining your sales pipeline
1. Update your pipeline regularly – Keep up to date with notes as leads move from stage to stage. Typically B2C is shorter than B2B. 75% of B2B sales take 4 months to close, 18% taking 12 months or longer!
2. Create a standardised sales process – Consider how much your ideal customers have in common? Work out a process you can standardise for these similarities.
3. Review (and improve) your pipeline processes – Remove bottlenecks or barriers to sale and shorten the steps to reduce the chances a prospect will drop off. Improve and adapt until you find a successful formula.
4. Follow up – Ten years ago, it took 3.68 sales calls to close a deal – today, it takes more than 8! Set a follow-up reminder. Find a balance between not enough and being pushy. (Two weeks is a good place to start).
5. Focus on the best leads – Prioritise the best, most sales-ready, high value leads.
6. Drop dead leads – A lead is dead when they clearly state they’re not interested. There are exceptions when you feel your businesses are a great fit.
7. Monitor pipeline metrics – This changes all the time:
• number of deals
• average size
• average percentage (Win/Loss ratio)
• Sales velocity (Average time to close)
8. Give your prospects more content – listen to what they want. Don’t bombard them, make your message short and simple to digest with links to other content. Brief your marketing people if you don’t have something your prospects are asking for.
9. Use a CRM to manage your sales – Easier with purpose built software like a CRM. Otherwise you can use a simple excel sheet.
10. Automate your sales pipeline – A CRM is essential for automation as email sequences can be automated to follow up with leads. If you only use excel you will find it helpful to try lead scoring such as a traffic light system. This can be a helpful quick visual tool.