When you have a solid sales pipeline, you have a continuous stream of potential customers that meet your target profile and want to buy from you. Your pipeline’s quality has an effect on your sales’ reliability over time, because your sales’ results rely on what was placed in the pipeline weeks ago. To create a solid pipeline you will need to have a solid ICP definition, a consistent and repeatable way to reach your targets, and a method for qualifying leads to ensure you’re spending the right amount of time on the right types of deals.
In addition, you’ll want to monitor the overall health of your pipeline using easy-to-understand metrics and fix weak areas. When all of these parts come together, sales teams can make better forecasts about their future, and they can generate more revenue with less last-minute stress.
1. Develop an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) Definition and Strengthen Targeting
The quality of your pipeline will improve if the correct people are entering at the top of the funnel. Your ideal customer profile should define the types of industries, companies of what size, budget ranges, and typical pain points that your product or service solves.
In addition to defining your ICP, targeting needs to identify buying roles and triggers. For example, does the person you are trying to sell to have expansion plans or do they have a new compliance need? The more specifically you define your targets, the less waste you will experience from unqualified leads, and the higher your response rates will be.
Some of the most common inputs for developing your ICP include:
- Examples of your top retaining customers
- Reasons for which deals close or fail
- Contract sizes and length of buying cycles
- Regions or segments that have greater margins
2. Use Multi-Channel Outreach and a Weekly Cadence
Prospecting is most effective when done consistently, rather than sporadically. A weekly cadence helps maintain consistent outreach and provides a basis for measuring the effectiveness of that outreach.
Using multiple channels in your outreach will help you to get your message to decision makers who are very busy. Using multiple channels will also give your message reinforcement, without being redundant.
Here are some ways to develop a practical cadence:
- Combining email sequences with clear, concise, value-based statements
- Combining phone calls with a specific question or desired outcome
- Combining social touches with thoughtful comments or direct messages
- Combining referrals and warm introductions from current customers
Each of your touches should attempt to begin a conversation, rather than to present a full pitch.
3. Qualify Early to Preserve Time and Pipeline Quality
While having a large number of leads in your pipeline may seem like a positive, a large pipeline is not always a healthy pipeline. Early qualification will prevent your team from pursuing deals that appear great on paper but will never close.
Early qualification should verify that there is a good fit, urgency, authority, and budget. This can be done with a few simple questions. The goal is clarity, not interrogation.
There are several signs that qualify a deal as having potential for closing, including:
- A clearly defined problem with quantifiable impact
- A defined decision-making timeline and agreed upon next steps in writing
- Access to the key stakeholders in the organization; not just a single contact
- Clearly defined budget ownership or a realistic plan for funding
Any deals that do not qualify should be moved to a nurturing track, and not remain in the active stages of the pipeline.
4. Increase Conversions with Follow-up Discipline and Pipeline Health Metrics
Many opportunities are lost simply because there was too much time between follow-ups, and there were no clear next steps. A strong pipeline process establishes standards for how quickly to respond to inquiries and how meetings should be conducted.
Your data should be used to understand where in the pipeline the deals are dropping off and why. While small improvements in conversion may not outpace larger increases in lead volume, the former is often more cost-effective.
Several pipeline health metrics to consider, include:
- Conversion rate from lead to meeting
- Conversion rate from stage to stage
- Length of sales cycle
- Win rate by segment or source
- Coverage of your pipeline to your quota
Your regular reviews should focus on actions such as fixing a particular stage, updating messaging, or improving the quality of your discovery calls.
Conclusion
Consistent proven pipeline sales require clear targeting, disciplined outreach, early qualification, and data-driven improvement. These methods will greatly reduce the waste of time and resources, and significantly improve the percentage of opportunities that are actually closeable. When sales teams establish a consistent cadence and defend the quality of their pipeline at each stage, and continuously use metrics to improve the pipeline, the performance of the pipeline will become more predictable. Predictability is the foundation of long-term, sustainable sales growth.