The Datahug Pipeline Management Guide

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The Datahug Pipeline
Management Guide
The definitive guide to operating a quota-
crushing inside sales machine.
Full Version: http://discover.datahug.com/pipeline-management-guide/

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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.

The Datahug Pipeline Management Guide

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The Datahug Pipeline Management Guide