What is your Technology Sales Pipeline looking like?

It is a common metric for enterprise sales teams that the technology sales pipeline should be at least 3 times the sales number you want to achieve in that quarter. This may be true but what about if you could increase the size of your pipeline and, at the same time, improve the 1:3 ratio to 1:2 or 1:2.5.

The problem is usually based around the effectiveness of individual sales peoples ability to qualify opportunities. Qualification of individual prospects and the overall technology sales pipeline is usually coloured by sales peoples desire to please their bosses and demonstrate how hard they are working rather than reality.

It may be the case that if more effort was allocated to ensuring that the quality of opportunity that went in at the top of the sales funnel, the more accurate the predictability of sales closing at the other end will be. So why do sales people and sales managers not start qualifying prospects effectively until the deal “looks interesting”?

Qualify effectively from the outset, identify the small proportion of your prospects that are serious about doing business and allocate time proportionately to closing those sales. At the same time it is important to qualify out those prospect companies where you recognise that there is no business opportunity within the medium term. Sounds sensible and sounds easy, so why do so many sales people spend time chasing deals that will never happen?

Once the top 10% of opportunities are qualified in as “active sales” and the bottom 50% qualified out as not effective use of time and resource, a pool of approximately 40% of your total prospect database should remain. It is this 40% that, if managed and nurtured properly, will provide your ongoing qualified technology pipeline and delivering a constant flow of opportunities. By nurturing prospects and contacts effectively they are fully aware of your organisation, capabilities and relevant customers, all in the context of their needs and the opportunity they have to do business with you. Through constant, relevant contact with multiple touch points in the prospect company it will be natural to enter the sales cycle at the right time and enable sales people to continually qualify, at different levels, through the prospect nurturing process.

The above is obvious and if I asked one hundred sales people if they worked in this way, 99 of them would confirm that they do, but my experience would tell me that, at best, a mere 5 out of 100 sales people actually work in this way.