Sales pipeline management is essential to improve the performance of your sales. If you are facing stagnating sales, understanding the sales funnel would help you identify the areas of concern. Most managers do a poor job of managing their sales pipeline. And that’s why their teams suffer the most – leading to loss of revenue due to improper sales management.
Sales pipeline is essentially an understanding of where your customers are in the funnel. It is the journey of each customer – starting from awareness to action. It shows the different levels that sales managers have to deal with the different types of customers in the funnel. Managing your sales pipeline is crucial to increase the number of leads, retarget qualified leads, and close more deals.
In this article, we will focus on the top ways to manage your sales pipeline. Managing the funnel requires a deeper understanding of organizing and tracking prospects. There are multiple things involved like process optimization, sales team management, and much more while managing the pipeline. Let’s have a look at a few ways in more detail.
5 Top ways to manage your sales pipeline
These ways are also known as the best practices to manage the sales pipeline. They will help you to streamline the sales process and deliver better outcomes. While closing more leads is the primary purpose of any sales activity, managing the pipeline ensures that you are doing it the right way. Here are the top ways for sales pipeline management –
1. Regular follow-ups
Prospects do not remember your business – you have to remember them. Taking regular follow-ups is essential if you want to keep the prospect in look throughout the entire sales process. Most teams struggle with checking up on their prospects and understanding their requirements. You can also automate the process of follow-up emails and calls.
2. Engage the best leads
Not all qualified leads are the best. Instead of focusing on all the leads at once, you should focus on the most high-value, sales-ready leads. Don’t try to search for a needle in the haystack. Only identify the prospects that are ready to purchase your products and can be quickly converted into customers. Know what leads are the most valuable to your business and work on them.
3. Eliminate the dead ones
Another important part of managing the sales pipeline is eliminating the dead leads. Letting go of a lead can be hard – especially if you have developed it over a period of time. A dead lead is one that doesn’t respond to your calls and is typically not interested in purchasing your products. By quickly identifying the dead leads, you can move on to the more important ones.
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4. Analyze the metrics
Numbers are the core for managing your sales funnel. The entire process depends on how well you understand the metrics and crunch the numbers. You must be aware of the number of deals in the pipeline, the average size of each deal, percentage of deals you close, and the average out how much business you have generated in the last few months. Comparing them ensures that you are on the right track.
5. Conduct regular reviews
Probably the most important way to improve your sales performance is to conduct regular team meetings and reviews of the sales pipeline. The team can regularly review the lost sales opportunities and how they can improve upon them. Reviews are important to evaluate the entire process and understand what went wrong during the process. It also gives a comprehensive overview of the entire pipeline.
Sales pipeline management requires sales managers to take responsibility and ownership of the process. By keeping the above things in mind, they can ensure better lead generation and closed deals from sales activities.