You Can Predict Your Sales Success!

The most difficult thing about our business is predicting the future. How much money will I make this week, this month or this year? How many prospects do I need in my “pipeline” to ensure that I achieve my financial goals? Where am I in the process with each prospect? Creating and managing a pipeline is integral to your continued success.

For those of you that use a CRM (contact management software), you probably have access to a pipeline management tool that will keep you on track. The downside of many CRM’s is that they make this process far more complicated than necessary. Let’s take a moment and talk about the important elements of an effective pipeline:

1. An effective pipeline allows you to define your sales process. Every business has a unique sales process:
a. Initial call
b. Fact finding
c. Sales presentation
d. Follow up
e. Close

Your process might look like this or have some variation. Take a moment and review your successful sales from start to finish. Identify the steps that got the business closed most quickly. Put them on paper.

2. Assign percentages to each step based on the likelihood you will close the business. An initial call might only provide you with a 10% likelihood that you will close the business. While I recognize that this might only be a guess on your part, it is a starting place.

3. Ensure that your pipeline includes at least three variables. Because a pipeline is initially an estimate of your likely sales success, it is important that you have variables that will provide a reality check. These variables should include things like estimated sale, estimated time to close and estimated percent likely hood of close. When you provide these kinds of estimates, you are making your pipeline more “real” or conservative. Conservative is good! It allows you to believe your numbers. Believing your numbers is a big step toward meeting your sales goals.

4. Your pipeline should provide you with data that you can use. There should be a calculation that allows you to see the total real value of your pipeline. This allows you to see the possibilities. Your pipeline should include a metric that allows you to see what your pipeline means to your business each week. In other words, my pipeline is worth $x.xx this week. In other words this is a strong estimate of how much money you will make on average each week over the next few months. Your pipeline should also provide a calculation that allows you to predict your sales over the next year based on the prospects currently in your pipeline.

5. It must be easy to move closed sales out of your pipeline and add new business to it. This information can also be very valuable. Understanding how long it takes to close business, what percentage of your pipeline does not close, and understanding how accurate your estimates of the total sale will allow you to finesse the percentages assigned to each sales step. The end result is an even more accurate estimate of your success week in and week out.

One word of caution, be conservative! If you lie to yourself about the business that is real in your pipeline, it will serve no purpose other than making busy work for you. As questions like:

1. Does this prospect belong in my email?
2. Is this estimate of the total sale too aggressive?
3. Do they really belong in this step of my sales cycle or am I dreaming?
4. Do I think it will really close in this amount of time?

Be tough on yourself and the result will be a very predictable business. I you would like us to customize a pipeline for your business, give me a call.