Drive Sales Growth through Effective Sales Pipeline Management

I’ve put up the first (of hopefully many) white papers up on the Articles page.

It’s a bit of a heavy one to start off with - 13 pages on Sales Pipeline Management. One of the things I’ve learnt over the last few years is that sometimes the things which really help you improve your sales aren’t necessarily sexy. Sometimes it’s the dull basics of managing in a systematic way that makes the difference.

Also Read: Lead Conversion in Salesforce – Leads, Contacts, Accounts, and salesforce opportunity | Opportunity in salesforce

Here’s the intro to the white paper:

In today’s increasingly competitive world, companies must focus obsessively on maximising their sales opportunities. They must ensure that:

• They invest their sales time, resources and investments in the areas of highest return
• They achieve a regular flow of sales into the company to avoid damaging “boom-bust” cycles
• They are able to rapidly respond to the changing needs of customers and specific opportunities and adapt their sales tactics accordingly
• They can identify and diagnose which areas of their sales approach are working well and which need improvement
• They can accurately track and forecast their sales and take corrective actions where needed

Sales Pipeline Management is a key management tool which has been developed to address these issues – yet many companies fail to implement it effectively, if at all. 

Many organisations still rely heavily on instinct, guesswork and “seat-of-the-pants” management to control their sales pipelines. As a result, many are trapped in a vicious circle where they over-focus on highly visible areas such as closing late-stage deals, and under-invest in key areas such as early-stage lead generation. 

This leads to a further drying up of quality opportunities, a panic-driven focus on closing the few remaining opportunities in the pipeline at all costs, and more neglect of the critical front-end. For small or medium-sized businesses – and particularly for owner-managed companies – this can be even more crippling, as the key business-winners are often also heavily involved in the execution of sold work – and are easily dragged away from working on filling up the earlier stages of the pipeline. 

The issue behind these problems is often the lack of a visible and rigorous sales pipeline management process. It doesn’t have to be complex – but it does have to be done.

Also Read: Evaluating CRM return on investment, Roi of CRM, Roi on CRM