The F Word, Part II – Fear of a Depleted Pipeline

The F Word, Part II – Fear of a Depleted Pipeline

“Confidence is a full pipeline.” This is one of my favorite catch phrases. It
is probably one of the most important cornerstones of a successful sales professional. The reasoning is simple–the more opportunities you have in your pipeline, the better your chances of bringing on the right type of business. Why? Because you have the confidence to let go of the “iffy” deals. The ones that you know (and you always know) might not, or just flat out won’t, work.

This is a great theory to espouse. It’s catchy, it makes sense when you first hear it and the logic behind it appears solid. But that is where it can fall apart. Like most things, it depends. There are many factors that can blow this theory up: laziness, a lack of activity, a lack of focus, a lack of consistency…the list goes on.

What if you are presented with a full pipeline every week? As a sales professional or sales leader you might believe that would be your “pipe”-line dream but you have to be careful. Fear is a powerful thing and it can pollute sales pipelines with poor opportunities. Often, Sales Leaders are the ones driving this dysfunctional behavior.

Polluting the Pipeline

One of the first questions a sales professional is asked when someone finds out they are in sales or when their boss happens to stop by their desk or shoot them a text is, “How is your pipeline looking?”

The last thing a Sales Professional wants to say is “Frankly, I’ve only got a few good opportunities in the pipeline that I feel have a good chance of closing. I have determined the others were not worth chasing.”

So what happens, you get the canned answer, “It’s looking good…” then they go on to recite the top deals in some detail then throw out a bunch of other names of deals that are “developing.” Only problem is, when you do your pipeline review with them a week later, it sounds eerily similar. This continues as the pipeline gets fatter and fatter and fatter yet the close ratios go down, average deal value goes down and the Sales Professional’s performance goes down. They FEAR telling you the truth and you are left to use poor pipelines to forecast to upper management.

Forecasting is often used as a leading indicator of sales. For you as a sales leader, that is actually a lagging indicator. The forecast is for the company’s sake so they can predict growth, new organic revenue, do resource planning, etc., so it is very important. For a Sales Leader though, you need to be looking at YOUR leading indicators, specifically – activity. OOOOOHHHH, there I said it, the “A” word (my apologies for all of the bad words in this post!).

Eliminate the Fear

To clean it up you need to give your team the power to eliminate opportunities. How do you do this? It is easy with five tools:

1. Target Client Criteria – What are the types of customers they should be going after? What are the basic criteria to narrow their focus to the right prospects? (Industry, Location, Revenue, Employee Size are examples)
2. Buyers or Stakeholders – Who buys? Who is an influencer in the buying process? Remember, they don’t have to be the economic decision maker or the user of the product or service to be involved in the decision.
3. Activity – What are the right activities with the right targets and the right buyers your Sales Professionals should be involved in? Where should they be spending their focused and limited time? What is the appropriate levels of activity? How are you preparing them for those activities and interactions? Learning by doing works a lot better when they are prepared (can you say “Documented Orientation Process?”).
4. Qualifying Criteria – What are the criteria you need to know from the prospect so you can make a DECISION on whether they are a fit.
5. The Power to Say No – Give you Sales Professionals the power to say “No” to an opportunity. This creates ownership of the opportunities they say “Yes” to putting into their pipeline. But it doesn’t end there. You need to also give them the ability to say no to an opportunity at any stage of the sales process. Give them the power to critically analyze, all the way to the end of the sales process, whether or not a potential customer is a fit. Part of giving them this power is to teach them the decision making process – that is on you as the Sales Leader.

Eliminate the Fear in your pipeline by giving your Sales Professionals the power to say no. Just remember, it is incumbent upon you and your company to prepare them properly to do so and then to support them when they overcome the Fear. This will increase your sales professional’s productivity by giving them the confidence to have a pipeline full of the RIGHT opportunities. It also will increase the accuracy of your forecast which won’t hurt either.