Sales prospecting pipeline management is not an exciting part of the sales process to most, but it can be a critical element. The foundation that all else built upon.
During my early career in sales leadership, I managed an Inside Sales team responsible for scheduling meetings for the Field Sales team. They were an amazing team, all of them consistently reaching every goal set for them. Two of them though, Bill and Jane, stood out as exceptional performers.
As their manager, I observed their healthy competition as a motivating force, pushing them to consistently exceed expectations and come up with increasingly imaginative ways they could compete against each other: meetings booked, meetings attended, total sales from those meetings (both number and revenue), percentage of meetings booked to attended, percentage of meetings booked that resulted in sales, etc
They recognised this was not about activity for activity sake.The activity had to have an end product.
When sales activity increases but results fall
They competed daily, with the outcome always very close, until one day when Jane’s performance dipped. This continued the next day and the day after that. Jane remained the second-best performer on the team but the gap between her and Bill continued to widen. This continued for several days, and while her performance was still satisfactory, she risked falling to third place, a position she hadn’t held since her first month of employment.
Jane was genuinely confused, and couldn’t understand what was happening.
“I just don’t get it Ray. I have looked at my numbers and since my performance numbers started to drop I have made more phone calls and sent more emails than I ever have, but it has made no difference, in fact my results have got worse. The number of people answering my calls has really dropped off and responses to my emails are pretty much non-existent. Other than doing more of everything I am not doing anything differently so I need to rework my voicemails and scrap my existing email messaging and start again. What I have been doing is simply not working anymore”
So what was going on?
The hidden prospecting pipeline problem
Jane’s approach, whilst understandable, seemed very radical. Jane may have been right but I was not convinced – I was definitely not prepared to throw the baby out with the bathwater.
Jane seemed convinced external factors were affecting her performance. This did not make sense to me though, as the same drop off was not being seen by anyone else in the team, which I would have expected if this was an external issue. Also, the drop off happened very quickly, there was a moderate decline for a week or two and then a sharp decline in the third week. This was not external, I was certain this was happening as a result of a change Jane had made. I just needed to find out what?
So we dug deeper into the data. Had the times of the day she was calling changed? Had she changed the days of the week she was sending emails? We drilled down to the locations of the companies she was calling to see if that had changed. We left no stone unturned.
Why new prospects matter in sales prospecting
I then asked whether she had changed how or where she was sourcing her new contacts. Maybe she was using a different list source? If so, perhaps the information on the new list wasn’t as reliable or maybe the list was fine but Jane was now targeting the wrong people or the wrong type of companies.
“That can’t be it” Jane said.
“I haven’t been adding anyone new for weeks. I had so many people in my queue to contact that I thought I would spend my time calling rather than finding even more people to call”
The clouds parted and all became clear.
I looked at the number of times everyone in Janes queue had been contacted. Before the decline started Jane was contacting everyone 3 times on average over a 4 week period. In the last month this had increased to an average of 8 times over 4 weeks.
One month previously 80% of Jane’s contacts had been to people for the first time and in the last month that had dropped to less than 20%. In fact now 80% of people she was trying to contact she had tried at least 4 times in the preceding fortnight.
The level of contact Jane was trying to appoint were C Suite and senior level managers within typically larger organisations. They were not the type pf people who were waiting for a sales person to call or email. Some of them would answer unsolicited calls and email but the majority wouldn’t.
There were not enough new people coming through
The more new people Jane contacted for the first time the greater chance she had of coming across those that would respond. By the third or fourth time of not answering, that contact would by definition, be less likely to answer any subsequent calls or emails. That obviously didn’t mean Jane should not contact those people regularly but she certainly couldn’t rely on them.
Sales prospecting pipeline lessons for leaders
Jane immediately started list building again bringing new contacts in the right types of companies back into her workflow. As a consequence Jane’s calls and emails dropped back to the level they were at month ago but she also saw her performance bounce back. Jane was back in the game, her meeting levels and sales put her back on competitive terms with Bill.
Jane was obviously very happy that the problem was resolved. Bill, not so much, although I believe secretly he was, as he thrived off the competition and it drove him to greater heights.
In hindsight the answer to the puzzle of Jane’s performance decline seems fairly obvious but hindsight is a wonderful thing. I would challenge you to take a step back and answer the following questions truthfully.
- Would I have gone straight to the eventual solution?
- Would I have ever got to the eventual solution?
In the words of Sherlock Holmes:
“When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth?”
Ray
The Sales Doctor
Consult | Assess | Recommend | Execute
Post by Ray King, 12th September 2024
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