Stop Blaming Marketing: You Own Your Pipeline | Sales Strategies

When I ask sales teams what’s the number reason why their pipeline isn’t more full—how come they’re managing a pipeline so lean it’s going to be impossible for them to hit their targets—they give me an excuse. They abdicate responsibility, claiming that their marketing department has not provided them with enough leads.

You have to be responsible for your own pipeline.

How Would You Fill Your Pipeline if You had to Do it on Your Own? 

1.) Practice good pipeline skills every day. Do something every day to put new leads in the top of your pipeline. Whether it’s making calls to past clients, asking for referrals, utilizing LinkedIn to make new connections, or attending a networking event, never close your computer and go home for the night until, indeed, you’ve done something to put new leads in the top end of your pipeline. That is going to create prospecting or pipeline-building muscle.

2.) Practice effective pipeline hygiene. What’s pipeline hygiene? Pipeline hygiene is making sure that you’re calling the dead leads in your pipeline—the leads that you’ve been pushing hard, but you know that you are never going to close. If you practice good pipeline hygiene and call those dead leads every month, you’ll always have a pipeline of the highest quality leads as well as the highest quantity leads.

Far too often, salespeople are complacent in their pipeline management because they think they have enough volume or number of opportunities to hit their targets. Those leads are, however, often bad. More importantly, on a monthly basis, make sure to call your pipeline, clean it up, and ensure it’s only filled with the best quality and the right quantity.