To beat your competition in today’s world of Big Data and the Socially Connected Enterprise, you need a simple strategy to manage the potential from all that Sales Pipeline data your team is collecting.  Indeed, Data-Driven Pipeline Management happens when a little science informs the art of managing Sales Teams.  By following these steps, you can begin the transformation from gut-feel to data-driven today!

1. Document Your Sales Process

According to CSO Insights, companies with a Dynamic Sales Process perform significantly better than their ‘Tribal Wisdom’ counterparts.  Depending on the nature of your business, you’ve probably adopted some formalized process or another.

• Research the Buying Process

• Map Sales Stages to the Buying Process

• Define Selling Process

• Map ‘observable’ Milestones That Tie Buying and Selling Process Together

Whether it’s SPIN, Solution Selling, Conceptual Selling, Challenger or a home-gown blend, you have to get everyone on the same page, speaking the same language and on the same CRM system.

2. Build a Sales Opportunity Scoring Model

It’s generally true that losing takes twice as long as winning – imagine the productivity gains if you knew which deals were which earlier in the process.  You can, but you’ll need a Sales Opportunity Scoring model and a way to use that model to drive risk-profiling, monitoring and alerting.

• List Sales Cycle Attributes

• Determine Ideal Sales Circumstances

• Assign Scores to Attribute Values

• Weight Scores and Attributes by Relative Impact

3. Instrument Your Revenue Cycle

A clear understanding of the Demand Generation Waterfall is essential for Sales Managers.  Sales & Marketing lie as adjacent functions along a process continuum – Revenue Performance Management.  Marketing-led business’s have fewer constraints on growth and drive lower customers acquisition costs.  You run Sales – do you know how many leads it will take to feed a fully productive Sales Person?  Do you know the right time to add the next Sales Person to your team?

• Define Milestones Along the Revenue Cycle

• Create Starting Assumptions for Time & Average Deal Size

• Create a Formula to Measure Conversion Rates at Each Point

• Build The Model

• Observe and Adjust

4. Streamline Sales Meetings

Sales meetings are a big waste of time – every hour a 10-person Sales Team spends in a meeting will cost you $1K – that’s $5K a week or $250K/year!  Start by fixing your Weekly Sales Meeting.  And you don’t need every meeting to be with the whole team.  As a Data-Driven Sales manager, you’ll soon stop running God-Awful Sales Meetings for good.

• Don’t Mix Short-Term with Long-Term

• Minimize Calls That Include the Entire Sales Team

• Stay Tactical at Period End Points but Strategic in the Middle

5. Detail Your Sales Forecasting Process

The Sales Forecast Call is often considered a necessary evil – largely a management reporting exercise and a waste of time for most of the Sales Team.  It’s a missed opportunity to leverage the only required management process in Sales to actually improve the business.  What level of forecast detail is required?  How do you isolate and manage risk to get a handle on Sales Forecast Accuracy?  How do you drive accountability?  What coverage ratios are needed to comfortably hit the targets and how do you know when there is a problem looming?  If you don’t know these things, you’re flying blind.

• Set up a Forecast Call Cadence to Match the Rhythm of Your Business

• Use the Pipeline Risk Data to Help Prioritize Deal Review

• Track Changes Over Time on Key Measures To Help Isolate Problems

• Commit the Sales Team to Action and Track to Drive Accountability

6. Measure & Manage Your Sales Pipeline

Your Sales Pipeline is the crown jewel of the Sales program.  It’s the gift that keeps on giving – if managed properly.  The best Sales Managers know exactly how to assess the value of their pipeline and they can see issues emerge in real-time.  Tying pipeline valuation measures back to the Sales Opportunity Scoring model is essential to knowing if you have Enough Sales Pipeline and Following The Data Trail to friction points in the Revenue Cycle.

• Build a Model That Reveals Sales Pipeline Quality, Independent From Sales Management Interpretation

• Calculate a ‘Weighted’ Sales Pipeline Value

• Watch Weighted Sales Pipeline Development Trends

• Illuminate the Gaps between Projected Sales Pipeline Value and Sales Targets

• Drill-Down on the Gaps

7. Manage Exceptions

Manage-by-Exception is a widely adopted management principle but how do you identify the exceptions?  It’s all about Leveraging the right Sales Benchmark.  By comparing your Sales Opportunity Scoring model to actual Sales Pipeline activity, you’ll make sure the team is immediately alerted to Sales Forecast Risks.  This extends the reaction time for management, leaving them a precious window of time to course-correct.

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–Swayne