{"id":7979,"date":"2010-06-18T16:48:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-18T16:48:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=7979"},"modified":"2014-10-06T01:48:26","modified_gmt":"2014-10-06T01:48:26","slug":"how-to-present-a-sales-pipeline-to-management","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/?p=7979","title":{"rendered":"How To Present a Sales Pipeline to Management"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Sales leaders spend a lot of time explaining their <strong>sales opportunity pipeline<\/strong> to their peers in company leadership.\u00a0 But can they do a good job?\u00a0 Can they quickly focus in on the important components and key values that a \u201csales outsider\u201d is expected to know?<\/p>\n<p>Strangely, many CSO\u2019s struggle in this very important responsibility \u2013 and if the numbers or their explanations sound fuzzy \u2013 other members of the team may decide the sales leader has something to hide.\u00a0 Even worse, the rest of team may think the sales leader simply does not understand the numbers themselves.<\/p>\n<p>If you are a Sales Leader with this responsibility we have a few suggestions before conducting your next management level pipeline review.\u00a0 These guidelines will help guide the discussion and position you as the authority on your pipeline.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>First, apply definitions to your most important pipeline elements, write them on a terms sheet then provide that information at the beginning of the review meeting.\u00a0\u00a0 Definitions will make it far more likely everyone understands and sees the numbers the same way, and allow you to spend time on the important parts of your pipeline review.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Second, test your sales logic on how the numbers look and feel.\u00a0 Look at the implications of close rates both on existing pipeline and target values (do you have enough qualified opportunities at current close rates to achieve the goals)?\u00a0\u00a0 Review average opportunity age and duration to make sure you are not portraying deals that are likely dead as still valid.\u00a0 Have \u2018up to date\u2019 status on the largest opportunities as they are the ones most scrutinized when review teams come together.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li>Finally, consider applying activity definitions to your stages, along with traditional stage names. \u00a0\u00a0Activity definitions such as those we suggest in 3forward\u2019s pipeline stages and definitions template\u00a0greatly increase the consistency with which opportunities get classified in the CRM and therefore improve the integrity of the pipeline value estimates.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>We have seen too many pipeline reviews end badly for the sales leader when confusion or misunderstanding around the numbers casts doubt on the data. Simple steps like these can greatly reduce the likelihood that will happen at your next review.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Sales leaders spend a lot of time explaining their sales opportunity pipeline to their peers in company leadership.\u00a0 But can [&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\/7979"}],"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=7979"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8209,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7979\/revisions\/8209"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.matthew-j-smith.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}