In my experience, successful sales teams regularly review their pipeline, perhaps on a weekly basis. Several companies I have worked with schedule this for every Monday morning, enabling each sales person to dial in one by one from a far away lay-by to answer the usual questions from their manager. All well and good; and the benefits are obvious.
The one flaw or oversight I find in this is the failure to include opportunities won or lost since the previous Monday. Why bother I hear you say, after all, they are not in the pipeline anymore?
I think you should ‘bother’ because otherwise the pipeline review is not ‘informed’ by previous wins and losses. Imagine a professional sports team ignoring the result from their last game, and just planning how to win the next one – unthinkable – or is it?
So start your next pipeline review with a look back at opportunities won (why you won, who you beat etc) and opportunities lost (why you lost, who beat you etc) and then see how much better informed you are to pass judgement and offer advice on the live opportunities in the pipeline. Naturally, your CRM system will provide all the data you need – or will it?
Do you do something similar? Does it work for you? If not, why not give it a try?
