An opportunity without all the necessary information and data points is NOT a true opportunity. I’ve written before about how important a sales process is for your organization, and here is one of the next steps you need to take to elevate your sales process to the next level.
Removing the "clutter" from your sales pipeline helps you more effectively evaluate the opportunity and helps you identify the most lucrative and well qualified leads. I've always managed my pipeline in the same way, and it's been extremely effective for me. One of my cardinal rules is all the data for an opportunity must be completely filled out before I consider it a true opportunity. Let me break this down a bit more with 5 critical components.
This is a critical piece of data. If your team is very good at predicting closure dates, you should be able to better plan your delivery capacity. Another way to track this information is to look at how this type of revenue has closed historically. Getting a feel for the trend information about this specific opportunity is a good way to determine future outcomes. If you need a refresher on revenue types, check out an earlier blog post on why revenue by type is a KPI you need to monitor, which details how we leverage that information effectively.
In order to effectively fill in this type of data, you may need some help from another team member or resource to get the most realistic price points. For example, you may need some engineering support to help you scope the amount of hours for an infrastructure upgrade or back-up software deployment. You also need to determine if the opportunity is reasonable and realistic. I used to have a sales rep who would list out "Network Upgrade" because he constantly heard that buzzword during the meetings. Unfortunately, an upgrade could cost over $20,000, depending upon the sophistication of the network, so until the amount is better qualified it’s tough to judge it’s validity.
In an earlier post, I described how creating and enforcing a sales process that included a next step increased my closure rates by 40%. In my experience, this is the most important part of the opportunity.
You need to be well aware of the status and progress of every opportunity within your sales process and be able to identify when an opportunity might be "stuck". Some companies create a complicated process with a ton of steps, but I believe you can streamline this process into four steps, Connect, Qualify, Evaluate, Decision.
Have you ever reviewed the opportunities in your pipeline and realized they all have the same month's end close date. If and when the deadline passes, you or your sales team simply updates the Expected Close Date to the next month's end. If you're not experiencing this then your sales team is meeting every close date and is the greatest on the planet. I know its difficult to predict close dates, and the power tends to lie in the customer's hands, but it's important to have estimated close dates. Accurate estimated close dates help you better manage your long and short term resources.
None of these steps are rocket science, but they do require discipline and organization in order to ensure all the steps are completed properly and the data points are filled out. If nothing else, these simple steps will encourage your sales team to input only real opportunities, force your sales reps to properly qualify the opportunities by investigating and documenting the right information, and be more thoughtful before slapping a bunch of random items into your pipeline.
Organizing your sales process takes a little planning, but eliminating excess information and clutter from your sales pipeline allows you and your sales team to focus on the most qualified opportunities.