The Definitive Guide to

Pipeline
Management for
Sales Leaders
At a Glance

INTRODUCTION 01

TIPS FOR IMPROVING SALES PERFORMANCE 02

HOW TO BUILD A SUSTAINABLE SALES PIPELINE 03

HOW TO PERFORM A PIPELINE AUDIT 04

TOOLS THAT CAN HELP YOU MANAGE AND AUDIT 05

YOUR SALES PIPELINE

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

Introduction
Sales is the driving force of a business. Your sales
staff directly influences growth and holds the
responsibility of maintaining or bolstering revenue.
Thus, it’s essential that the staff you have in place
is 100% capable. As a sales leader, you’re tasked
with managing your sales pipeline, a necessity for
ensuring that your team is able to meet their goals.

The following eBook is the definitive guide to sales

pipeline management. Read on for insights that
will help you improve sales performance, build a
sustainable sales pipeline, and conduct a pipeline
audit. Combined, these tips and tricks will make
it easier for you to fill your pipeline with qualified
leads, close deals, and reach your sales quotas.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

Tips for Improving
Sales Performance
When your salespeople create and maintain a sales pipeline, they’ll know
exactly what stage a potential client is at in the sales process. Here are
some tips on improving the performance of your salespeople:

Tip 01
Aside from executing sales pitches and product
CREATE SALES demonstrations, organization may be the most vital quality to
successful selling. A sales pipeline pinpoints the various stages
PIPELINE in the sales process. The terminology may vary per company
pipeline. However, each typically covers the same stages: initial
contact, lead qualification, demo/presentation, proposal, and
close.

In creating a sales pipeline, you’ll know which stage each lead

is on. As a result, you’ll be aware of the steps remaining to turn
each lead into a closed deal. It helps to have a visual of where
each lead is in the process, especially when you’re working with
a bunch of them all at one time.

Tip 02
We’ll let you in on a little secret: not every lead is worth your
LEARN AREAS OF time. Some businesses keep you on a string despite having no
intentions of purchasing your product. Some have a genuine
OPPORTUNITY interest but place you low on the priority list. Giving up on
fizzling leads may seem serious, but there’s certainly no reason
to treat them with a sense of urgency.

Rather, turn your focus to a new lead or to prospects that

are further along in the pipeline. Those are more promising.
You’ll determine in the second stage of your pipeline (lead
qualification) whether a lead is worth pursuing.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

Tip 03
Nothing is more gratifying as a salesperson than getting
NOTE YOUR someone to ink a deal with your company. But, do you ever
retrace your steps and reflect on how you got the job done?
SUCCESS

Maybe you nailed a presentation, or perhaps you put just the

right amount of pressure on the prospect through strategic
follow-up calls. There’s often a rhyme or reason in sales.
Some of it is just pure luck, but most of it has to do with your
approach. Next time you lock in a deal, look back on what you
did well and implement those positives as you tackle the next lead.

Tip 04
Try your best to filter leads to the lower levels of your pipeline.
CLOSE MORE DEALS A bottom-heavy pipeline means you have many opportunities
to make a sale, as most of your leads are beyond presentation
WITH PROPER and either ready for proposal or pending commitment from the
SALES PIPELINE client.
MANAGEMENT Your pipeline should always convey:

• The total number of deals in play

• The figures on the line for each deal

• The percentage of deals you’ve closed

• The average lifetime of a deal before closure

All of these should help you set your priorities and keep you
alert as to where you are in the sales process. If you’re working
to meet your quota for the month or quarter, take an aggressive
approach with the leads toward the bottom of the pipeline.
Execute a follow-up call or visit the prospect in person. See
what is delaying a deal and be prepared to negotiate minor
details regarding pricing or services.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

How to Build a
Sustainable Sales Pipeline
The quicker your salespeople can close a deal, the better off they are. That’s
why building a sustainable sales pipeline is so important.

Step 01

REGULARLY UPDATE
YOUR PIPELINE
While a sales pipeline helps organize leads, you’ll be doing the model a disservice if you don’t
keep it up to date. The sales process is ever-changing. New leads come in and old leads die out.
Plus, you have to deal with the extreme challenge of clients changing their minds or putting
your interests on the back burner. There are many moving parts, and that’s why keeping up your
pipeline is immensely important.

Always make notes on each lead. You will know which stage of the pipeline a lead is currently in,
but it’s wise to note when a client was last contacted and when you intend to contact them next.
Summarize your last conversation with a client and pinpoint what needs to be done to move
them to the next stage.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

Step 02

DON’T ALLOW YOUR SALES

CYCLE TO LENGTHEN
Progress is most vital when trying to hit a quota. Don’t make your task harder than it already is
by trying to maintain a long sales cycle. If you routinely check your pipeline and determine which
qualified leads have the best chance of resulting in a sale, you shouldn’t have to worry about a
long cycle. You may be a single presentation or a single follow-up phone call away from closing
the sale and removing a client name from your pipeline − for the best reason.

The more clients you have in limbo, the more chaotic your pipeline will be. Perhaps you can
touch base with those types of clients early in the next month to gain a pulse. However, there
will always be a few bottom-heavy opportunities that should be handled with more immediacy.
Close those deals, clean up your pipeline, and then spend some time on the new leads.

Step 03

GIVE YOUR PROSPECTS EVERYTHING

THEY NEED TO MAKE A DECISION
Part of keeping a sales cycle short is maximizing the input at each stage. The presentation/
demonstration stage can save you a ton of time if it’s done right. Have a pamphlet ready for your
prospect, devote a period of time where you answer questions and be sure to discuss pricing
models or anything that you know will be of extreme consideration to the prospect.

If you’ve reached the presentation stage, then you know the group you’re pitching to is interested
in your product or service. Thus, keep their interest piqued with quality content. You’ll be able to
tell how interested a prospect is based on their engagement. If you adequately convince a lead
that your product will strengthen the business, then you’ve done your job as a salesperson. From
there, a decision should come very soon regarding the acceptance or denial of your product.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

How to Perform a Sales
Pipeline Audit
WHY SHOULD I PERFORM A SALES
PIPELINE AUDIT?
Regardless of whether sales are going great or could use some improvement, conducting
a pipeline audit is worthwhile. The aim of the exercise is not necessarily to just point out
weaknesses, but also to highlight and reinforce strengths.

Pipeline auditing brings sales managers and executives confidence that they understand their
current sales scenario at a granular and eagle-eye level, and therefore can address gaps or
build upon strong points.

Ineffective or absent pipeline audits can lead to frustration, incorrectly-placed blame or

habitually missing quotas, all of which contribute negatively to employee morale and
company culture.

HOW OFTEN SHOULD I AUDIT

MY PIPELINE?
Pipeline audits are designed to spot trends, both positive and negative, and correct the
negative ones in a timely manner. As is the case with trends, they take time to form so doing
a pipeline audit every day wouldn’t be effective. Likewise, auditing once a year could allow
issues to go uncorrected simply because they weren’t identified.

Find a happy medium for your organization. Allow a few weeks or months, enough time for
trends to materialize, but not so long that if an issue goes unaddressed the whole time that
it’s detrimental to the company.

Many sales organizations utilize sales periods for tracking quotas and conducting regular
sales reviews. This is typically a good place to start. For your next sales period review, do
a pipeline audit first and discuss your findings with the salespeople. Continue this practice
for the next couple of review periods, determine if that time frame makes sense for your
organization and, if necessary, adjust accordingly.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

How to Perform a Sales
Pipeline Audit
Step 01
The first step is having a sophisticated system that tracks
UTILIZE A CRM where leads are in your sales cycle. Excel spreadsheets work
fine for young or smaller businesses, but eventually, a CRM will
become critical to efficiency.

These systems often have lead scoring and reporting

capabilities that will prove helpful in this audit process.

Step 02
The next step is to understand the different stages in your sales
UNDERSTAND THE cycle. A typical pipeline process will have around five steps:

STAGES OF YOUR 1. Initial contact

SALES CYCLE 2. Lead qualification

3. Demo/presentation/meeting

4. Proposal

5. Closed

The goal here is to have just enough steps to capture critical

milestones in the sales cycle. You may have underlying stages,
or sub-stages, that you also track. However, they should be
grouped within one of the broader stage values.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

Step 03
The goal of any stage should be to either disqualify a lead or
EVALUATE move it on to the next stage. The rate at which leads move from
one stage to another is a good indicator of how effective your
CONVERSION & sales strategy, or salesperson performance, is at that stage.
CLOSE RATES
In evaluating conversion rates, you may also want to include
metrics on how long leads stay in a particular stage and
compare that to the conversion rates to determine the role that
time plays in this equation.

Step 04
Another metric that helps perform this pipeline audit is the idea
SCORE YOUR LEADS of lead scoring or ranking. This is a calculation that applies a
certain score for prospects that uses their budget, readiness to
purchase, the overall need for the solution and their authority to
sign a contract in order to determine leads that are more or less
likely to close.

You may also decide to include factors like industry, geography

or number of employees in this calculation.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

You’ve Done a Pipeline
Audit, Now What?
So you’ve ended your sales period, conducted a pipeline audit, identified
some areas for improvement. Now it’s time to take action. Here are a few
things that you may need to do next.

Step 01
One thing that doing a sales pipeline audit will uncover is how
LOG EVERYTHING much salespeople are engaging with your CRM, or whatever
organizational structure is in place. For optimal tracking
and analysis, it’s critical that salespeople enter as much as
information about ongoing deals as possible.

Step 02
You may find out during a pipeline audit that your system isn’t
GIVE FEEDBACK telling you the information that you need it to. Document these
improvements and share them with your sales executives,
business development team and IT.

Step 03
Another goal of the pipeline audit is to refine your forecasting
GET COMFORTABLE abilities. If the information in the pipeline is incomplete or
inaccurate, then sales projections can also become inaccurate.
WITH YOUR DATA The more familiar you are with your data, your customers and
your prospects, the better you’ll become at identifying things
like willingness to purchase, spend potential and overall value
to your company.

The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders

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The Definitive Guide to Pipeline Management for Sales Leaders