Pipeline Management Simplified
“Sales pipeline management isn’t taking a quick glance at the pipeline and moving on with your day. It involves analysing, tracking, and optimising your pipeline consistently.” – Forbes
What is a sales pipeline?
A pipeline is a visual representation of where leads are in your sales journey. It will display where the majority of your leads are, where leads are stalling, and which marketing activities are most effective at converting and bringing in revenue.
Furthermore, it provides accountability and breaks down the sales process into smaller tasks to make it easier to reach marketing goals.
Pipeline management
According to research by Harvard Business Review, companies surveyed that had formal and effective pipeline management saw their growth increase by 15%.
A pipeline should be unique and reflect the typical customer’s journey, which varies from business to business, and sometimes, product to product.
This brings us to pipeline management. It involves having a salesperson or manager following activities that push people through the pipeline. Examples of these activities are:
- Direct marketing, e.g., cold calling or cold emailing
- In-person or online appointments to meet with leads
- Organising and conducting demos
- Forming sales proposals
Infographic vector created by vectorjuice – www.freepik.com
What is the journey of your customer or client?
No two businesses are exactly the same, and neither are pipelines. For example, the pipeline of a dental practice would be centred around appointments and treatments, whilst quotes and tradie pipeline is about quoting and jobs.
Sales pipelines (aka your customer journey) typically follows this sequence:
- Lead prospecting
- Lead qualification
- Contact
- Proposal
- Negotiation
- Close
Despite being related to the sales funnel, they are two different concepts.
Why is it important to track the pipeline journey?
Effective pipeline management can help you chase hot leads and filter out the leads that are going nowhere. For instance, the ones that fail to show up, have shown no interest after an initial meeting, or can’t be reached by phone or email.
Pipeline management plays an essential role in determining which leads are worth giving your attention to. The faster you drop cold leads, the more time and effort you will have to focus on leads that are closable.
By consistently tracking and analysing your pipeline, you can see how long customers are spending at different stages in the pipeline journey.
If you notice that there is a stage where leads are stalling, ask why are leads not progressing in our pipeline? How can we make this process smoother?
Moreover, there is an opportunity to reactivate and remarket to existing customers as this is 60 to 70% more cost-effective than prospecting for new customers.
Pipeline management made easy with LANA
Every lead and opportunity for your company should ideally be housed in a sales pipeline, making it fundamental for sustenance and growth.
See how important pipeline management is to map out and analyse your customer’s journey? If you would like a deeper understanding of how a sales pipeline can help your sales process, please see LANA’s website and book a 15-minute demo today!
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