Recently I listened to Brad, the CEO of a $20 million technology company, conduct his pipeline review with his sales team. It might sound odd that the CEO was running the sales meeting, but it is not uncommon to see CEO’s running the sales organization in companies as large as $40 million in revenue.
Brad had their CRM (Customer Relationship Management) tool projected on the wall. He sorted the opportunities by salesperson. As he went through each opportunity, Brad asked the designated salesperson, “This one says it’s closing by the end of the month. Anything new? OK. How about this one? Anything new?” In each case, the salesperson would give a brief answer along the lines of one of three things: 1) “I’ve got a call into them.” 2) “We had a good discussion/meeting, and it looks good.” Or 3) “I think it’s going to slip into next month.”
Does this sound familiar?
If you manage salespeople and this sounds familiar, don’t be alarmed. It’s candidly how most of the sales meetings I observe have been conducted for years. The simple problem is that style of pipeline review is centered on what you want (i.e., The Sale) instead of what the customer wants or needs (i.e., Results).
Here are 4 questions managers should ask salespeople, and answers salespeople should know for each of their customers. Do this, and you’ll have a clear sense of which pursuits are real, and which ones are a waste of time. Each question should be answered in the customer’s words. It doesn’t matter what you think. All that matters is what you know you heard from the customer.
4 Questions to Increase the Reliability of Your Sales Pipeline
