{"id":7977,"date":"2011-01-10T16:47:03","date_gmt":"2011-01-10T16:47:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=7977"},"modified":"2014-10-06T01:47:52","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T01:47:52","slug":"george-washington-on-improving-sales-pipeline-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=7977","title":{"rendered":"George Washington On Improving Sales Pipeline Management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In <a href=\"http:\/\/www.amazon.com\/1776-David-McCullough\/dp\/0743226712\" target=\"_blank\"><strong>1776<\/strong><\/a>, David McCullough\u2019s history of the American Revolution, the Pulitzer Prize winning author several times mentions what he considers one of General George Washington\u2019s most important attributes. \u201c<em>Seeing things as they were, not as he would wish they were, was known to be one of Washington\u2019s most salient strengths.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n<p>Finding a Sales Leadership parallel in this statement may seem a stretch to some, yet it\u2019s actually extremely relevant to a chief sales officer\u2019s responsibility.\u00a0 The best CSO\u2019s are keenly aware of the real viability of their sales pipeline, whether they like how it looks or not. They also talk in very transparent, objective, realistic terms about both the total pipeline and specific opportunities whenever reviewing either with anyone else in the organization.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/3forward.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Portrait_of_George_Washington.jpg\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-2059\" title=\"Portrait_of_George_Washington\" src=\"http:\/\/3forward.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2011\/01\/Portrait_of_George_Washington-250x300.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"250\" height=\"300\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"file:\/\/\/Users\/MattSmith\/Library\/Caches\/TemporaryItems\/moz-screenshot.png\" alt=\"\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Yes, sales leaders and the sales team overall are expected to be optimists and champions for their deal. However, when opportunities are overly hyped (or downplayed as practiced by professional sandbaggers) it fosters distrust of sales by the rest of the company, and results in misapplied costly support resources, missed revenue projections and possibly other unfortunate outcomes.<\/p>\n<p>Improve how you manage, discuss and present your sales pipeline by following these three best practices:<\/p>\n<p>1. Define sales stages not as one or two word categories, (i.e. \u201cSolution Proposed), but with unambiguous descriptions of specific client actions and selling activities that have occurred.<\/p>\n<p>2. Using these new definitions, reclassify your entire pipeline into the appropriate stages. <strong>Prepare to see a lot of opportunities fall back to <em>unqualified opportunity<\/em>, <em>lead status<\/em> or even drop out completely.<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>3. Commit to regular, rigorous reviews of the pipeline where open, realistic and objective assessments of each opportunity are required. Pay particular attention to opportunities where sales cycle is approaching twice that of your average win \u2013 most of those are yet to be acknowledged losses.<\/p>\n<p>In Washington\u2019s own words, \u201c<em>We must bear up against them, and make the best of mankind as they are, since cannot have them as we wish.<\/em>\u201c<\/p>\n<p>Have a sales lesson from your favorite patriot?\u00a0 Please share it with us!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In 1776, David McCullough\u2019s history of the American Revolution, the Pulitzer Prize winning author several times mentions what he considers [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7977"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7977"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7977\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8207,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7977\/revisions\/8207"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7977"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7977"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7977"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}