4 Tips to Get Your Sales Pipeline to Pump Out More Deals

The principle of Occam’s Razor (the simplest solution often is the right solution) is the key to high performance in sales. Nowhere is this more evident than in managing your sales pipeline.

Your sales role might change the quantity and quality of your pipeline, but this framework should be equally useful.

1. Automate initial engagement, as much as possible

Salespeople spend the majority of their time just trying to make contact with a customer or someone that can lead them to a client. Unfortunately, that eats up lots of time that you should spend on talking to customers or prospects.

At its core, this is a productivity problem. Designing a strategy to shift this ratio from overweight unanswered calls to conversations will dramatically increase your wins.

In my experience, the simplest solution is to automate some facets of your initial engagement strategy. The most obvious are to create automated email autoresponder and drip campaigns. But, how you do this is everything and most people start out all wrong.

Brevity is your friend. More specifically brevity in an email looks more like a friend.

I use a very brief email that acknowledges that I’ve received the customer’s inquiry. I encourage them to reply back. I encourage them to give me a little more detail on what they are looking for, ask any specific questions, and to schedule a specific time to talk.

In a cold, anonymous Web world — a quick personal response stands out. “There’s a person on the other side of that online form?”

Beyond being an exhilarating customer experience, this tactic will help you quickly sort and prioritize the customers in your pipeline — highlighting the most serious and engaged opportunities.

Note: I’m increasingly using a similar tactic with text messaging. I’m finding in my own preferences and that of my colleagues that we appreciate the less intrusive text message over a phone that I’m often unable to answer (i.e., at work, in a meeting, on a conference call or giving a webinar). Whereas I can consume and reply to a quick text in most settings.

2. Eliminate “what do I do next” decisions

Always deciding what you need to work on next is another big productivity killer. This dilemma kills sales performance in a couple of ways:

1. If you’re like most salespeople you have tons of things you could be doing, and

2. There is a pretty good chance that your lizard brain will take over and chose to do one of the easy things, not the sales things

Even the best of salespeople wrestle with the psychology of our day. We battle our fears and egos on every call. The best of us have learned to shut down the part of our brain that regularly tortures us with the consequences of missing our quota, getting rejected or even berated, and not landing in the top tier of our team.

But, it’s hard to learn this skill.

The secret is to remove the decisions and force yourself to leap in without thinking and to rely on our training and expertise to take over.

Let me try to illustrate how this works.

When I was in the Air Force, I went to jump (parachute) school. Now, this wasn’t your typical civilian jump school where you get a few hours of training, and then they strap you under an expert skydiver to “experience” free fall parachuting. No, this was stand in the door by yourself, jump out, and then pull your own ripcord after 13 seconds of free fall — no instructor, just you and few thousand feet between you and mother earth.

If you’ve never done it before you’re probably wondering how anyone persuades themselves — decides — to step out that door, as you look down at all the tiny houses, roads, and vehicles below. You might wonder what was going through my mind as I stood patiently looking at that ominous view waiting for the jump master to yell, “Go!”

The truth of the matter is I wasn’t thinking anything. I had turned off the decision-making part of my brain. When I heard the word “Go!” I just stepped out, confident that all my training would kick in — in less than 13 seconds.

That’s what you have to do in sales. Stop thinking through all the scenarios and just hit dial. Be confident that all of your training will kick in when you hear the first ring. Sure that your embedded training will yield you a successful call or at least you’ll gain the experience to improve the next one.

3. Every lead touched gets the next step

The chances are good that you’re managing a large pipeline of leads. In quick order, you will lose all sense of who is viable, who needs follow-up, and who is just a random fresh lead.

Most CRMs have a variety of mechanisms to manage this problem. But, most are overly complicated, and some just make it more likely to lose leads in your system.

Losing good opportunities in the complexity of your CRM is probably the number one killer of sales performance.

I avoid this nightmare with a simple little rule: Every lead touched gets the next step.

When I talk to a prospect, the last note I leave on the record is my next step. That often also includes when I want to speak to them next — an appointment.

If you’re consistent in noting your next step and setting a date for that next step, your customer will find you remarkably attentive and understanding of their needs.

4. Responsive leads always get priority

This last tip is another common mistake that always surprises me.

We’ve all heard the sage wisdom: a bird in the hand is better than two in the bush. But, I continually see salespeople skip responses in their inbox to go trolling for new conversations.

Why would you ever let a customer ice in your inbox while you go chasing potentials?

I think it’s just our natural human anxiety kicking in again. But, don’t do this.

If you get a response — positive or negative — your pipeline management routine should kick in. If it’s negative (“buzz off”), they just did you a favor and saved you from continuing to chase non-opportunities. If it’s positive (“give me a call” or do this…) leap into your next step note and get to work on making them a client.

No matter how much time you spend on that response, it will be the most productive use of your sale day.

Master pipeline management to generate more deals

Top sales performers learn the art of managing large pipelines with the finesse of managing relationships with their closest friends and family.

By leveraging a bit of technology, some well thought out organizational systems, and simple clear messaging you can make your pipeline consistently pump out deals.

Hope you enjoyed this little slice of my experience.

If you have any questions or want to chat here are the best ways: bill.rice@kaleidico.com or @billrice