This Pipeline Metric Can Dramatically Impact Your Results | Sales Strategies

This week, I want to discuss your pipeline metrics. Our clients are noticing an unstable marketplace and, if you’re not paying attention to this instability, it can dramatically change your pipeline metrics and lead to disastrous results.

Number of Days Sitting in Your Pipeline 

The key metric we are noticing that’s changing and having the biggest effect is the number of days that are sitting in the pipeline. In particular, what many of our clients are finding right now is their closing ratios aren’t changing. In fact, they’re not losing extraordinarily high amounts of business despite the instability in the market. The average deal size and the average number of deals isn’t changing, but what is changing is that number of days sitting in the pipeline and it’s growing substantially. This can have a dramatic impact on your sales results if you’re indeed not paying attention. It doesn’t seem like a big increase to go from 90 days to 100 days, but that’s 10 extra days—which, over the course of the year, can mean the difference between hitting or not hitting your target.

So, I want you to pay attention to this often misunderstood or missed metric. People don’t pay attention to it very often. They look at their closing ratio because that’s the big one that everyone’s excited about, but pay attention to this number and start to look if it’s changed. If you can measure it against last year, I would recommend that because it will dramatically change how many opportunities are needed in the pipeline.