The Datahug Pipeline Management Guide

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The Datahug Pipeline Management GuideThe definitive guide to operating a quota-crushing inside sales machine.

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For companies with long sales cycles and many deals to track, sales process management is essential.

The most common way of visualizing the movement of deals through each stage of the process is called the “sales pipeline”.


Marketing and prospecting exist at the top of the pipe, pulling in new potential customers.

The end of the pipe is the point at which the deal is closed; the signature on the dotted line.

Visualize the Pipeline:


Most sales organizations focus on the top and bottom of their sales pipeline without paying

enough attention to how deals actually get from one end to the other. Their deals fall apart mid-

pipeline, and they can’t figure out why.

The reason so many companies struggle with mid-pipeline attrition is that mid-pipeline deal

stages are much harder to define and manage.

Where Most Fail


Determining when leads are acquired and when deals are closed is easy. Identifying two or three

concrete checkpoints between those points is hard.

This process requires careful examination of deals throughout their lifecycle.


The better you align your sales process with your ideal customer’s buying process, the simpler it will be for your

sales reps to get deals over the line.


Fit Your Selling System to The Customer’s Buying System

Every customer you meet will have a unique buying process, influenced by many traits:

● Location● Market● Culture● Size

This means you can’t win by forcing reps to follow a rigid course of action. You must find the common traits of your customers; the pain points your product solves, and a repeatable set of steps to identify them.


The goal: Understand the steps in your customers’ buying process and create a sales process that fits into it

● Sit in on sales calls and listen to the conversation. ● Learn the questions and requirements of potential

customers. ● Listen for the problems your prospects have and

their objections to your product● It’s easier to change your sales process than it is to

change a customer’s buying process. Create solutions or workarounds for these challenges.


The purpose of each sales meeting should be to advance along the sales process, not to skip steps and “always be closing”. Make sure your team is adequately

prepared for each step and focused on properly educating their prospects rather than hustling them.

Hustle Your Team, Not Your Customers


Create and categorize sales enablement materials (demo guides, content and other resources) for each stage of the sales process.

Optimizing your catalogue of materials for each stage of the pipeline takes guesswork out of the sales process and helps your team put

the best foot forward whenever possible.


The holy grail of pipeline management is repeatable and predictable growth. Achieving a

predictable growth curve requires consistent pipeline reporting so that you can visualize deal movement and take the right action at the right time. To make this happen, you’ll need to work with your sales team to standardize the sales process which you defined above across the

entire organization.

Report on the Pipeline


Once your sales process is set up, you can build reports that show in detail how your pipeline works. The strength of your pipeline in every stage, the conversion rates between each stage and the points where

most deals are falling out of the funnel are all reportable through simple Salesforce actions.


To create the most accurate possible forecast, each deal’s viability must be assessed individually. To accomplish this without creating a massive time-suck, you’ll need an up-to-date CRM and historical data on similar deals. The best way to collect this data is by equipping your team with tools that make their job easier while augmenting your dataset.


Once you build up enough deal volume and historical data, you’ll be able to

reliably predict revenue based on the amount of pipeline accumulated at each stage. And with the power to

visualize gaps in the pipeline in real time, you’ll be able to forecast busy and

weak months and take steps to make your revenue even more consistent.


With accurate and robust historical data, you’ll reach a point where you can see trends in individual sales rep performance at each stage in the sales pipeline. These observations will show you

exactly where you can coach and tweak your team to achieve the highest possible performance.

Coaching With Pipeline Data


Pipeline data illuminates coaching opportunities:

● Which of your SDRs is creating the most early stage pipeline month to month?○ Examine the rate of discovery calls completed that lead to

demo-ready opportunities. ● Which of your account executives has been most effective at

moving prospects into the middle of the funnel?○ Look at the number of completed demos that make it to the

next phase of the sales process.

The behavior of your top-performing rep can be used to coach the rest by integrating their techniques for getting around obstacles otherwise stumping their teammates into your coaching sessions.


Using sales pipeline data to focus your coaching efforts enables you to give your team the concentrated training they need for exactly what they struggle with, instead of spending time and money on generic, team-wide

training that many individuals probably don’t need.


Objective deal data can show where to adjust the sales process

1. Find where the most pipeline falls out of the funnel, both by rep and across the team.

2. Watch for opportunities reaching that stage, and sit in on deal review meetings.

3. Pay particular attention to any trends or recurring problems - these are the points where your sales process needs patching.

4. Apply the practices of your best reps to help the stragglers on your team prioritize better and close more deals.


Shortcut to Success

Following the steps above will get you started effectively managing your pipeline. But there are a few shortcuts you can take to make the whole

process easier. Automating CRM data entry will reduce the sheer amount of hours required to get an accurate view of your team’s activity.

Employing analytics software to take the guesswork out of gauging a deal’s health will let you focus on coaching your team, rather than figuring out

who needs help in the first place. Try Datahug to see how our software can help your team reach peak performance.

http://datahug.com/try-it-free/?ref=http://datahug.com/

The Datahug Pipeline Management Guide

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