6 Ideas to Make Pipeline Review Meetings More Efficient
If you talk to most account reps, sales managers, or even casual observers they dread the weekly pipeline review meeting. The meetings can be cumbersome, and typically involve just making sure data is up to date in the system.
As established businesses strive for improvement, or small companies hit the point that deals can no longer be tracked by the head of the VP of Sales, pipeline reviews become both critical and necessary to identifying areas of risk, focusing on the right deals, and creating meaningful financial forecasts and projections.
So how can we make them better? Here are six ideas anyone at any sized company can consider implementing to make each meeting more impactful and more efficient.
1. Focus on the Goal of the Pipeline Review Meeting
One of the reasons pipeline review meetings can be lengthy and difficult is that they are trying to be all things to all people. Coaching a sales rep on how to advance a deal is vastly different than summarizing what the CFO cares about to manage cash flow and payroll for the next quarter.
Just because they *can* be in the same meeting doesn’t mean they *should*. Each leader will have a different goal to achieve. Be explicit about what those goals are. Write them down. And kickoff the meeting by reinforcing what those goals are so everyone in the virtual room is on the same page.
Pro Tip:
Create different sales review meetings to accomplish each distinct goal — for example: 1:1 deal coaching, team pipeline review, sales management accountability, and one for forecasting.
2. Establish Who Should be in Each Meeting
Does it feel like half the company is at the weekly sales meeting? Having too many people in a meeting is a recipe for disengagement. Create a list of who needs to be in each pipeline review meeting. Keep it much shorter than you think — you can always pull additional folks in if needed, but nothing deflates joy more than a recurring meeting invite that feels irrelevant.
Example:
Sales Coaching: 1–1 with manager
Sales Accountability: 1–1 with sales managers and VP of sales
Sales Strategy: CEO, VP of Sales, and sales managers
Forecasting: CFO, CEO, and VP of Sales
3. Create a Meeting Cadence
Once meeting goals and participants are locked in, establish a cadence to keep things on track. This cadence will be different for each specific pipeline review meeting and goal. For the example above, here is a recommended cadence:
Sales Coaching — weekly and on-demand
Sales Accountability — every two weeks
Sales Strategy — once or twice per quarter
Forecasting — weekly
4. Enforce Updates Before the Meeting
Increasing efficiency is an ongoing practice. Communicate that data updates should be completed before the meeting — not during it. Designate what is most important to the business unit, and double down on making sure those key fields or textual context are up to date before you talk live (and then make sure managers and execs have enough time to review the data before the meeting).
Updating data is essential, but can be a thankless chore. There are a plethora of sales productivity tools inside of Salesforce to help in efficiency and automating data capture. For Pipeline Review meetings, strive to ensure that all the key data is all in one place and eliminate dozens of clicks to understand deals.
And here’s where it can get hard — enforce that the updates are done.
One of my employees told me that I used to say “If it’s not in Salesforce, it doesn’t exist.” I don’t remember saying that, but I do remember the sentiment. Be reasonable, but firm.
5. Spend Live Meeting Time Only on What’s Changed
There may not be changes or updates in all the deals, regions, or product lines — especially if your meeting cadence is weekly.
Having visibility into only what’s changed is key. It will focus coaching and business strategy on only the most important items for that week. It also lets a manager or executive quickly review both summary and line-by-line data — without having to say “Great — the total pipeline is at X — but is that a good or a bad thing? How does this compare with where we were at last week?”
Typically data analysis done by teams to show changes required regular downloads into Excel and pivot tables — but those became quickly out of date as reps would often make changes right before a meeting.
Orgs focused on pipeline visibility and insights can use pipeline analysis templates from Tableau CRM for executive reporting and analysis, and apps like Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews for comprehensive change reporting with custom time periods.
6. Extend Functionality with Apps and Add-Ons
Salesforce is the source of truth for all sales and pipeline data, and the company is continuing to provide features for analyzing and inspecting the pipeline. Salesforce Unlimited users can now take advantage of comprehensive pipeline inspection features and analytics via their new Revenue Intelligence add-on.
The AppExchange holds many solutions for pipeline review and management, including Akoonu and FunnelSource.
Conclusion
Introducing new technology or apps with a refined business process can lead to renewed energy for a team. As one user raved on an AppExchange review “The Pipeline Review tool has made our sales team stop complaining about going through a weekly pipeline review process.”
Fun? Perhaps not. Stop the complaining and provide critical insights for the business? Yes, please.
See Akoonu and other helpful apps on AppExchange.
Megan Himan is a Salesforce MVP and six-time certified Salesforce professional. She is the director of partnerships at Akoonu for Pipeline Reviews. She dreams of visiting every ski hill and hot spring in her new home of Montana.
