The first step is to review your sales process and make sure it aligns with your buyer's journey and your market conditions. You should have a clear and consistent definition of what qualifies a lead, how to move them from one stage to another, and what actions and criteria are required to close a deal. You should also review your sales process periodically and update it based on feedback, data, and best practices.
During my time in Sales I have experienced that after two follow ups and no sales conversion, a lead has the possibility to come back to you within a timeframe of six month. Follow ups must be freindly conversations, keeping the relationship open and light, avoiding pressure. Qualifying a lead requires a clear and agreed valuation from the team that fits the profile of the customer persona and moved into the Sales Process.
The second step is to analyze your sales metrics and identify the strengths and weaknesses of your sales pipeline. You should track and measure key indicators such as the number of leads, the conversion rate, the average deal size, the sales cycle length, the win rate, and the pipeline velocity. These metrics can help you evaluate the health and efficiency of your sales pipeline, as well as the performance and productivity of your sales team.
The vast majority of leads in a Pipeline are not leads. At best they are vague possibilities, inflating forecasts and protecting jobs. Sales Leaders and Sales Managers should spend far more time grilling Sales people about every prospect. If a prospect does not meet every one of your qualification criteria, it’s worth nothing. Get strong. If the pipeline is empty afterwards, problems are revealed.
Metrics serve to focus proptly on sales conversions Monitoring data can help your success. Pipeline can be very dynamic, and requires an active CRM system to facilitate criteria and keeping an helthy pipeline. Lately powerful AI- Solutions provide us more data than ever in matter of few seconds, but that is not enough because you have to interpret the results.
The third step is to optimize your sales funnel and eliminate any leaks, gaps, or inefficiencies that may affect your sales results. You should focus on improving the quality and quantity of your leads, nurturing and engaging them throughout the sales cycle, and increasing the value and urgency of your offers. You should also use tools and techniques such as CRM software, email marketing, automation, segmentation, personalization, and follow-up to streamline and enhance your sales funnel.
The fist question for me to you will be: What challenge you solve to your Customers? Understanding your target audience and how you resolve their specific challenges. By optimizing your sales funnel, you can drive revenue growth by pushing a higher percentage of prospects through each stage. The better you understand what a sales funnel is, how it works, and how to optimize yours, the easier you will find converting new leads into paying customers.
The fourth step is to test and experiment with different sales strategies and tactics to find out what works best for your business and your customers. You should try new approaches, methods, channels, messages, and incentives to generate more leads, improve conversion rates, and close more deals. You should also monitor and evaluate the results of your tests and experiments, and scale up or discard them accordingly.
I have tested different strategies to understand what worked better for me and my business. Analytics can be complex, research and experiements have helped me to understand efficiency and results overtime. Email subject lines, calls to action are useful. Focusing on clean data analytics helps to generate more meaninful insights; understanding what generates more ROI increases sales productivity and gives the possibility to allocate more resources to implement funcions and make decisions.
The fifth step is to learn and improve from your sales pipeline management experience and data. You should collect and analyze feedback from your customers, prospects, and sales team, and use it to identify areas of improvement, customer needs, and market trends. You should also benchmark your sales pipeline against your goals, competitors, and industry standards, and use it to set realistic and challenging targets, adjust your strategy, and motivate your team.
Remeber this is your own race, not a competition with others in everything. You should adjust your sales strategy and tools according to work best for you and your business. A winning team is made by great talents and supportive people
The final step is to repeat and refine your sales pipeline management process regularly. You should not treat your sales pipeline as a static or fixed entity, but as a dynamic and flexible one that evolves with your business and your customers. You should review, analyze, optimize, test, learn, and improve your sales pipeline management strategy and tactics on a weekly, monthly, or quarterly basis, depending on your business cycle and needs.
I recommend to take the necessary time to establish the measuremen that are essential to your business success. Set up clear and simple steps that help monitoring the sales pipeline process: Leads Generation, Prospecting, Qualification, Contact, Proposal, Negotiation and Close. Dedicate good time during the qualification stage, as you’ll need to make sure that the prospects you’ve discovered are really a good fit for your business. Monitor Sales pipeline through different reports such daily, weekly, monthly, yearly, to give you an overview of your goals, actuals and forcasted sales.
Customers are pople, not just numbers. Great Leaders focus on people, not numbers. You are hired to solve a problem, talk to your clients and establish authentic connections, building trust and confidence. Caring and empathy will create affiliation and meaninful opportunities.