No salesperson ever banged a gong to celebrate a pipeline that was 100 percent up to date. That said, properly managed pipelines are crucial to the success of a sales team. They enable individual sellers to better understand the current state of their leads and deals and what actions to take next. For leaders, up-to-date pipelines make it possible to generate accurate sales forecasts and focus their team’s efforts where they can make the most impact.
Understanding the value of a properly maintained pipeline isn’t difficult. What is difficult is finding a way to make updating deal statuses, contacts and next steps a daily habit.
Riley Ford, an account executive at SaaS app management platform Lumos, has perfected this art form after spending more than seven years in sales. Ford has found a way to make pipeline management part of her daily routine and shared her best practices with Built In San Francisco, including the tool she uses to make updating Salesforce a breeze.
Lumos provides companies a birds’-eye-view of their SaaS applications and cloud services. Its platform is designed to help companies get a better understanding of their app spend and utilization and to increase security through time-limited access to business-critical tools and services.
What’s the single most important best practice you follow when it comes to pipeline management?
Looking at your pipeline every day and updating Salesforce can be draining and a less-than-exciting part of the job, but it’s critical to pipeline management. Setting aside 30 minutes daily to update your deals, contacts, next steps and closing out any stale pipeline should become part of your routine.
Identifying your lack of pipe early in a quarter will lead you to focus on prospecting before it is too late.”
What’s one improvement you’ve made to your pipeline processes over time, and what impact has that had on your work?
Accurate forecasting is vital! Updating opportunities for the realistic amount they will close for is critical. If you don’t do this consistently your pipeline can be overinflated and lead to you missing your number. While it can be humbling to have less pipeline, having a snapshot of what is real will help you know where to spend your time. Identifying your lack of pipe early in a quarter will lead you to focus on prospecting before it is too late. Early on in my career I put the number of the maximum deal possible, but now I focus on the data of what the deal is likely to be. It has been a game changer and allowed me to accurately forecast internally as well, too.
What’s a best practice you follow for monitoring your sales pipeline over time and keeping it clean and up to date?
I’ve used tools like Scratchpad to keep my pipeline updated. It makes it super easy to update consistently and is so efficient. If you don’t have access to tools like Scratchpad, set a recurring daily calendar invite with a link to Salesforce as the location. Whether you jam in the morning or evening, it makes daily updating so much easier.
