16.04 – How To Prioritise Your Pipeline
Effectively managing your sales pipeline is crucial for closing deals. By identifying leads based on their likelihood to close within a specific time frame and sorting them accordingly, you can optimise your efforts. Properly qualifying leads when they enter your sales funnel allows you to understand each lead’s propensity and time frame for purchasing. Sorting leads by closing time and transaction value helps identify the highest quality leads, allowing you to direct your sales team’s efforts more efficiently.
Categorising Each Opportunity
CRM systems like HubSpot and Salesforce allow you to assign probabilities for closing to each prospect within a specific time period. These systems enable you to score leads as high, moderate, or low for closing. Organising your leads in a pipeline template, either on your CRM platform or in Excel, helps you see where to best allocate your resources and time. Time spent chasing unpromising business is lost, so assigning probabilities and lead scores early in a prospect’s journey maximises your efforts and helps you reach sales goals efficiently.
Categories to Consider in Your Sales Pipeline
- Immediate opportunity
- Future opportunity
- Demo or meeting booked
- Post-meeting status
- Closed won
- Closed lost
- Objections
Sorting by Emotional Triggers
In addition to categorising by closing probability, sort your leads according to the emotional triggers that most influence them to engage, trust, and purchase. Reviewing your customers’ ESP profiles (refer to Chapter 2) and building your sales presentations, proposals, and messaging around these emotions can significantly enhance your chances of success.
Developing questions or screening criteria based on your ESP profiles helps sort high-quality leads and quickly eliminate poor-quality prospects. During initial conversations and needs assessments, ask questions such as what they fear missing out on, what anxieties they face when purchasing in your category, and what proof of concept they need regarding your brand’s promises. Inquire about the social proof they require to move forward. These answers will inform your sales conversations and offers.
Documenting Objections and Changes
Documenting the emotional and tangible reasons an account didn’t close in an “Objections” category helps improve your sales strategy. Common objections may include price, risk aversion, lack of status, etc. As leads move through different categories, note any changes. For instance, if a lead’s probability percentage shifts from 75 percent to 25 percent, document the reasons for this change. This information allows you to address related issues with future leads and continuously improve your lead management process.
By prioritising your pipeline effectively, categorising opportunities, sorting by emotional triggers, and documenting objections and changes, you can streamline your sales process and enhance your ability to close deals successfully.
