I was interviewing a potential team member this week when she asked me, “Can you tell me about your sales pipeline? How does Denamico sell in a way that makes you stand out?”
I was impressed. It takes confidence to ask a potential employer that question. It also shows experience.
A person would only think to ask that question if they had previously been at a company where the pipeline, or how they did sales, wasn’t working.
Like they were having deals consistently dying halfway through the sales process. Or where they weren’t generating enough net new leads. Or they weren’t clear about their ICP (ideal client profile) and taking on bad fit clients...
We need that experience on our team because our clients have similar issues they need help solving.
Pipeline is one of the top challenges I’m hearing about right now. With clients, on LinkedIn, and in conversations generally.
Where pipeline falls apart most often:
- Leads look good on paper, but go dark after the first call
- Sales is chasing deals that don’t match your ICP because marketing is flying blind
- Your “forecast” is really just pie in the sky
- Reps don’t know the strategy behind who or how they should be "hunting"
- Everyone’s focused on trying to close deals this month because they haven’t met quota yet vs building pipeline for next quarter
The worst part about a weak pipeline is that it leads to a lack of $$$.
The second worst problem with a weak pipeline is that it’s often not a quick fix.
Especially when all the key data you need to make quick decisions is not readily available, or reliable.
“There is a point at which...you need to dig a little deeper than just picking up the phone for your existing customers. You need to figure out where to go next based on the information you have.” - John Plumley, Senior Director of RevOps at Tristate HVAC
John was a recent guest on the RevOps Champions podcast and that quote really resonated with me as I listened to the conversation with him.
John comes from a sales background, and he’s been with Tristate HVAC, for 16 years. He’s also an engineer, so solving problems is in his DNA.
I couldn’t agree more with his sentiment that we are beyond the point of making business decisions that are not based on data, about pipeline or anything else. If we aren’t using data, across all functions of our business, to help us work smarter, we’re losing out.
John’s observations reminded me of a mid-market manufacturing client that we worked with a couple years ago. They served clients in a lot of "traditional" industries - think power generation, oil & gas, etc.
They came to us when they had already purchased HubSpot and were ready to get going so they could move off of Salesforce and resolve some of their obstacles.
Many of their challenges were adversely affecting their pipeline:
- Teams operated in silos, limiting the sharing and tracking of critical information.
- Inefficient handoffs between teams resulted in missed opportunities and miscommunication.
- Double-entry of data slowed down processes and introduced errors.
- Difficulty in viewing all customer-specific activity across departments.
- Multiple systems caused inefficiencies in managing customer and lead data.
- Without automation, teams were burdened by manual data entry and tracking.
- Inability to access a comprehensive view of customer data hindered informed decision-making.
These were blockers to increasing their revenue. They were adversely affecting their profitability. And it was painful for them to know that and not be able to fix it.
The client had done a great job of preparing for the implementation;
- They had formed a committee of the right stakeholders,
- They were aware that some of them had competing priorities but they were collectively making decisions for the greater impact of the company, and
- They were intentional about not wanting to rebuild what they had done in Salesforce - they wanted to be smarter and do it better this time.
We asked them what their appetite was for potentially slowing down so they could speed up.
“What do you mean?” they asked.
We explained that we wanted to take a couple of weeks to understand their requirements (business and technical), their processes, what they needed from their Epicor integration, about their people and how they best learn.
We told them, “Taking time to make sure we all understand those things, will help us to make better recommendations to you, it will help us create a better project plan, and it will set you up for a more successful implementation, meaning higher user adoption and better outcomes.”
They were keen.
It was an incredible project for both their team and ours. They were eager to learn, engaged, and fun to work with, and the impact was real:
- They reduced their software costs by 20% through consolidating systems.
- They collectively eliminated over 6,000 hours of manual work on an annual basis.
- Marketing increased the amount of revenue it was contributing by 30% from using data to inform its activities.
Creating your own competitive advantage through the alignment of your data, and technology was a point that John shared in the podcast as well.
“It’s like you’re in a sandbox of toys that you get to use to grow a business... If you’re in a market that does not do these types of things, now you get to lead the charge and do something that other people aren’t doing.” - John Plumley
Having a strategic perspective like John enables us to think beyond operations and really pioneer what our future could look like. That’s exciting!
Working with clients to dismantle the crippling inefficiencies of siloed data and technology systems, and instead harnessing the power of readily available data, we've witnessed transformations that lead to real, measurable outcomes.
And stronger pipelines, the lifeblood of a business, is definitely one of the best of those outcomes.
Cheers to growing better, together. 🌱
Kristin
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Kristin Dennewill
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