Sales managers’ interaction with their salespeople is critical to increasing pipeline visibility and improving the quality of pipeline data within SFA systems. Sales managers have the ability to provide an accurate lens for executives to look through and see what will likely happen in the future. Unfortunately, first line sales managers often deliver ablurry image that results in loss of pipeline data integrity.

The real challenge is that sales managers tend to evaluate their salespeople’s individual opportunities and pipeline health in an ad hoc fashion that is inconsistent across the regions. While some managers may have an excellent pipeline management approach, other managers may be taking a different approach or be leaning too much on a salesperson’s gut feeling about their opportunities.

A practical step for increasing pipeline visibility is to sharpen the focus of sales managers’ interactions with their teams by establishing a cadence of weekly, monthly and quarterly sales review meetings. In those review and planning meetings, sales managers will ideally ask their teams a consistent set of probing questions to evaluate opportunities, elevate the opportunity strategy and validate where an opportunity really is in the customer’s buying process.

Here are a few example categories and questions for an effective opportunity review meeting:

Opportunity Qualification

• Where did we enter the customer buying process?
• Have we worked with the customer to define the evaluation process?
• Can we change or influence the evaluation process?
• Can we win this opportunity?

Business Value Assessment

• What are the customer’s business / technical issues driving them to ‘do something different’?
• What are the compelling strategic, financial or personal drivers for doing something now?
• How will our solution address the previous 2 questions?

Solution Assessment

• What is the value proposition of our solution?
• What is our unique business value to the customer?

Organization/Relationship Analysis

• Do we have a ‘Power Sponsor’?
• How do you know they are a ‘Power Sponsor’
• Who are the other individuals involved in the decision process?
• Who must we neutralize? How?
• Who is our coach?

Competitive Analysis

• What are the competitors’ strategies and what traps will they set?
• How will we neutralize them?
• What traps will we set?

Action Plan

• What is the customer’s defined buying /approval process? Timeline?
• What are the potential risks and delays?
• What is the specific closing action plan?
• Is there a complete Evaluation Plan in salesforce.com for all identified issues and next steps?

(Note that these questions should be developed by the sales leadership team based on each company’s unique selling environment, solutions and typical customer buying process. Other key sales review meetings include the forecast review, business plan review and account review.)

We are often asked ‘What does an opportunity review have to do with pipeline visibility?’ It has everything to do with pipeline accuracy and visibility. Through careful evaluation of each opportunity, the pipeline can be scrubbed and the lens into the future made clearer based on the realities of each opportunity across the selling team’s pipeline.

With an accurate assessment of the pipeline, sales can develop focused strategies for closing top opportunities, manufacturing and/or services will know where to allocate focus and resources, and senior management can more confidently use the sales pipeline to make projections beyond the current quarter.

Clearly understanding your customer’s buying milestones is essential to pipeline visibility. Without clearly understanding where your salespeople are in the customer’s internal buying process, you can’t know if a particular opportunity is merely possible, probable, or a sure close. Assuming salespeople and their managers are managing the pipeline based on clearly defined customer buying milestones, we have seen numerous organizations significantly increase their ability to assess the pipeline well beyond the current quarter.

Here are a few examples of customer buying milestones that provide more concrete evidence that real progress is being made in a sales cycle:

1. Customer acknowledges a business need and agrees to evaluate a business relationship with Acme Solutions
2. Customer confirms opportunity priority, internal business case, funding and agrees to a ‘Needs Analysis’
3. Customer confirm our recommendation will meet their requirements
4. Customer may or may not generate an RFP
5. Customer confirms Acme Solutions is on the short-list
6. Customer confirms their support for the Acme Solutions proposal
7. Customer approves proposal and price
8. Contract is executed

‘Customer’ as outlined in the milestones above may represent an executive sponsor, decision maker(s), key stakeholders and or a selection committee.

Based on a defined customer buying process and typical buying milestones, the pipeline of opportunities can be rendered visible by sales managers asking their salespeople focused questions based on these verifiable customer actions. The content of these questions must be consistent and a ‘critical few’ questions must be asked on a regular schedule. In part 2 (next week) we will talk about how to implement a cadence of sales review meetings to improve the effectiveness of interactions between managers and reps in light of the customer buying process.