A sales pipeline plays an important role in any successful business. To properly manage your sales pipeline you need to start by documenting the current sales process.
Sales pipelines show the sales expected to be closed by your salespeople, as well as how close they are to reaching their sales quota. You can see this data for any given week, month or year. Through your sales pipeline, you should be able to document your leads and their progress as well as determine, through your buyer’s journey, the processes and stages so you can quickly determine at any given time where the lead is in your pipeline.
While thinking about your processes and planning your initial strategy, keep in mind that you will have to continually make changes based on the data.
“Without an effective sales process, your company’s sales team is unlikely to reach its true potential.”
~ David Gargaro business.com
- Clearly define your sales process.
To determine what is and isn’t working you need a defined process of specific steps to have an accurate understanding. Sales is a structured set of tactical steps. The sales process is a journey for the prospect and a roadmap for the salesperson. If you accurately define these processes, with clear guidelines that must be followed, then your analytics will hold true for future decisions to be made.
- Planning Asset Creations
These assets can be anything from a landing page, user surveys, white papers, case studies, and in general call-to-actions. Depending on your industry, these can be widely different strategies as well as a different look and feel. The key for any business’s top-of-the-funnel is to attract, excite and inform. Assets created around this mentality will bring in the largest amount of individuals into your pipeline. In the middle of your funnel, you may want to focus on helping the customer visualize the use of your product or service. Think about assets that quickly highlight logistics, interventions, and ease of use. Getting the buyer to truly think about utilizing your product or service is key. The bottom of your funnel is all about the value proposition and asking for the sale. This is the time to have assets created that suggest to act now or to take action.
- Delivering Your Assets and Messaging
Deciding on where, when, and how you will deliver your assets is key. We highly suggest that all plans involve the ability to track and measure. These strategies will typically include Social Media, Email Delivery, Display Ad Campaigns, and Organic Efforts. The key takeaway when setting up these campaigns is your messaging and imagery must be utilized. Just as your assets need to be professional, make sure your delivery is meeting the same standards. This is also a great time for A / B testing. You may want to swap out imagery, videos, and text. Slight changes can have a major impact on your success.
- Making Metric Based Decisions
Neil Patel says, “Maximizing your conversion funnels can only happen when you experiment with each element of customer interaction, dig deep into the analytics and then optimize the design.”To measure your sales pipeline, performance, and forecasting you need to track relevant metrics. These are the three top metrics, but you need to dive a lot deeper, depending on your business, your offer, and evaluating the assets and delivery methods you have set in place.- Engagement– Conversion rate
– Number of Opportunities
Measuring metrics can help track performance as well as show ways to improve growth and make better decisions in your sales pipeline moving forward.
More leads in your sales pipeline do not necessarily mean more sales. Performing regular cleanups will help you gain more efficiency. Drop the dead leads and devote your time and focus on the higher value prospects.
The higher value prospects start with those that have engaged with every step of your funnel and then lose value from there. However, this is also the time to look at the strengths and weaknesses within your entire plan and reevaluate your plan if needed.
Bython Media specializes in developing, delivering, and monitoring these pipeline strategies for our clients. If your business is needing a complete solution or help with any part of your pipeline, we invite you to schedule a call and learn what we can do for your business.
