4 Tips To Better Manage Your Sales Pipeline

January 10, 2019 | Blog, Resources

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You used all the best marketing practices possible to find your sales qualified leads, ran successful campaigns with innovative and exciting methods, and did all that your team could to reach your ideal candidates, why aren’t you having more success? This is a question that many will ask themselves as they restructure or emerge from a quarter with less than impressive sales.

Sometimes, we start to look for cracks in the pipeline, finding areas where deals just aren’t going through no matter what you do or how perfect the relationship could be. If you want to increase your conversions, you need to manage your sales pipeline efficiently and adequately. Companies that can master their management will see more revenue growth.

Having trouble imagining where you can better manage your sales pipeline? Here are some tips that we have seen work out:

Tip 1: Target The Right Prospects – And Know What They Need

The only way to speed up your sales cycle and to make your pipeline more potent is to concentrate on the right kinds of deals – meaning you should try to focus on quality over quantity. This is the direct opposite of the approaches many people try – they believe that if they try for more clients, more will work out. However, focusing on the right prospects will allow you to move at a faster rate. To determine the right companies and decision makers that you need to target with your sales and marketing efforts, you can use predictive analytics, historical sales data, and even do some research on your competitors.

Of them, the best approach is to use predictive analytics to find people who are already looking for what you are selling. This approach helps you to get ahead of your competition and make plans that will reach the key decision makers and departments that will use your tools and solutions. It is much easier to move through the pipeline when you know what a prospect wants. This isn’t contact information – it is an in-depth understanding of their businesses, challenges, goals, budgets, and needs.

Of course, you also have to listen to your prospects to collect crucial data but having a headstart can be extremely helpful.

Tip 2: Start Managing Time More Efficiently

If you ask anyone if they manage their time well, they will probably say yes – but that isn’t accurate for most of us. Find methods that will minimize “busy work” and instead focus on a seamless workflow. Your team should have a set method to automate anything they can, keep everyone updated about new information, and a way to check yourselves.

One fundamental way to manage time more efficiently is to focus on each individually. Don’t ignore opportunities that are in your pipeline, but ensure that you give personalized attention to each prospect. To do this, you may have to use a tool to track the movement of a deal and evaluate your sales pipeline to spot deals that need immediate attention from those who have a specific set of tools.

Tip 3: Reduce The Length Of Your Sales Pipeline

The longer your sales pipeline is, the less likely your business is to seal the deal. You want to set a timeline and create a plan to fulfill the needs of that timeline that is concise and fast – but you don’t want to rush yourself through the process. Doing this correctly can take some time, especially if you are a newer business or you are completely changing your approach to sales and marketing.

What you want to do is scrutinize current strategies and find ways your earlier methods have failed and succeeded. Your team will want to update sales strategies periodically to explore new techniques to shorten the sales cycle while at the same time finding methods that haven’t worked previously and documenting why they didn’t work.

Tip 4: Flush The Sales Pipeline Routinely

Your pipeline is bound to be varied, so you need to find ways to quit wasting time on the prospective clients that don’t need your solution, cannot afford it, or aren’t serious about looking at this time. You are wasting time and effort on them. Clean out the low-quality deals regularly or divide them into categories that will help you to determine where you should focus on your time and efforts.

To do this, you may want to keep your eyes on sluggish prospects but don’t blindly abandon them. If things slow to almost a crawl, then you can allow them to fall out of the pipeline

Creating and maintaining a healthy sales pipeline is crucial to help you meet your sales targets – and maybe even exceed them. To get there, you may need some help. That is where MRP can assist you – we have tools that carry out the predictive analytics that form the foundation of your sales pipeline. Give us a call today to find out more.

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