What is a ‘Healthy’ Pipeline?

Your pipeline will consist of discrete stages, each with goals, activities/tasks and/or milestones that must be met before the next stage or step can be pursued. Each transition from one stage of the pipeline is considered a ‘conversion’. These transitions become critical to sales success because they can be analyzed numerically, and they provide important data and feedback to sales management. 

Let’s say your pipeline looks like this: Contact > Lead/Opportunity > Sales Qualification > Decision > Closed Won/Lost. If we analyze the conversions at each stage, we’ll gain insight into what is and isn’t working. Our analysis will be dramatically enhanced when we add specific goals and milestones that must be met before transitioning from one stage to the next. Many organizations will have multiple pipelines that represent different scenarios in sales – maybe the existing customer pipeline is different from that of a prospective one or there may be stages that are different for an inbound inquiry as compared to an outbound cold call.

Whatever your pipeline and criteria needed to transition from one stage to the next is, the labels and sales-specific language within your organization must be clear to the entire sales team and everyone in the organization. No plan is a plan to fail. A great plan that’s launched without clear communication will struggle to be as successful as intended. 

What is your pipeline, and how well understood and effective is it? What CRM are you using and how well does it reflect your pipeline and support analysis of your sales efforts? With today’s CRMs, Sales Managers/Leaders rely heavily on reports that can help bring to light training possibilities for their team, and to enhance the performance of individual sales team members.  

We’ve heard from many organizations that their biggest current issues are supply chain and staffing levels. These current challenges overshadow sales as a concern. This may be the perfect time to examine or re-examine your sales efforts, the process, stages, and pipeline(s). So don’t wait - proactively evaluating your sales will lead to stronger conversion rates and results. 

Read more about sales management here!

Are you ready to begin your journey?

Are you ready to build a sales-focused organization with a high performing sales team and an effective sales management solution? 

Whether you’re satisfied with the effort, focus, and results of your sales team, many people we speak with have been hesitant to act – simply because they don’t know where to begin. If you’re open to a brief call, let us know and we can take the first step together.

Call us at 248-468-7400 or fill out our contact form to receive a sample sales candidate assessment report! Together, we can assess how your company is doing, what potential it has, how to realize this potential, how long it will take along with expected gains. We are here to help you determine the best way to achieve your goals.