While keeping your pipeline full, there are a couple of important things to keep in mind.

The Sales Professional should probably maintain 2 pipelines:

1. The Lead-Target-Suspect Pipeline should be available for early entries and opportunities. This is a first tracking container for the Sales Pro and holds pre-dialogue opportunities. When the salesperson encounters an opportunity, say an introduction from a client, a lead from the company, even a list of attendees at a networking meeting who indicate they have problems and would like help make up the LTS Pipeline. The primary identifying factor is there has not been a true first appointment held with any of these entries.
2. The Closing Pipeline is reserved for opportunities where that First Appointment has been held. The date that 1st appointment is set is called the Create Date and starts the stopwatch on moving the opportunity to a yes or no.

The LTS Pipeline might contain a significant amount of opportunities, as the Sales Pro ought to always be conducting prospecting activities, as mentioned in Chris’s Blog.

The Closing Pipeline should be monitored carefully and the number of live entries should be limited in number so as to be controllable and maintain predictable status. The number has to do with the complexity and duration of the typical sale. A “sale” might typically require 2-3 appointments, when executed properly. The duration might be 2-3 weeks, to a month. In this instance 6-8 opportunities in the Closing Pipeline might be the right number. Think of this as herding cattle into a pen. A cowboy can only control so many, effectively!

A Pipeline is thought by many to be the most important tool the salesperson and sales manager use to maintain their communications and coaching. The salesperson and the manager should each view the Closing Pipeline everyday. (Yes! The professional sales manager should examine each salesperson’s CP everyday!) If the pipelines are correctly structured and “scrubbed” by the SP the review should take 15-20 minutes. In that time, both the SP and the SM can glean enough information to make educated interpretations and plan feedback or action.

For the SM the Closing Pipeline supplies enough information to help the SP strategize the What’s Next’s of the sales process and be able to answer upper management questions like “What’s next month looking like?” as the well maintained and accurate CP provides dates and probabilities for future business.

For both the SP and the SM that same accurate pipeline will help point to weaknesses in the process. I recently was reviewing a CP and found the WHN (What Happens Next) events and WHN Dates were either missing or unclear. It was obvious that the SP had not set clearly defined next steps in place. That pointed to a good place for coaching to help the SP tighten-up the Pipeline!

As a style marker, one of the most obvious differences between the Sales Pro and the Amateur or Entry level SP can be observed in the quality and activity of the Closing Pipeline! As a Professional, the salesperson knows the value of that tool for herding prospects to the bank!