Improve your team's sales forecasting accuracy and time management

Hello Sales Reset Leader

How do your team members decide about where to spend their time?

In this week’s companion Weekly Sales Reset email for front-line salespeople, we focus on how they can manage their sales pipeline.

As you know, an accurate, up-to-date and reliable sales pipeline is the best source of truth about where each of your team members should spend their selling time.

Your team members need your help in managing their sales pipeline most effectively.

And the more attention YOU pay to their pipeline, the more attention THEY will give to this crucial element of professional selling!

The rest of this email newsletter assumes you have read this week’s Weekly Sales Reset“:

• Title: Become supremely confident about achieving your sales targets

• Subtitle: How your sales pipeline should underpin every decision about how to spend your selling time

How to improve your team's results this week

• Evidence of effective sales pipelines

  • Current Pipeline

  • Pipeline History

• Recommended coaching session agenda for pipelines

• Expected pushback about sales pipelines

• Sales Pipeline Role-Play Recommendations

• Leadership Reflective Practice

Evidence of effective sales pipelines

Before you go into a coaching session with your team members about their sales pipelines, you need to review the evidence.

Current Pipeline

• When you look at each team member’s current pipeline, is their pipeline up to date?

• Are there any close dates in the past?

• How many close dates are for the last day of the month, indicating general hope and aspiration as opposed to being linked to compelling events?

• Does every significant opportunity have a clearly stated single next action?

• Are they in touch with enough opportunities or do they need to invest more time prospecting?

• Do you see evidence of stalled, zombie opportunities?

Pipeline History

• What has been the track record of each team member with their sales pipeline?

• How often have opportunities been moved back into subsequent months?

• What has been the track record of each team member with their sales forecasts and sales outcomes?

Recommended coaching session agenda for pipelines

Before leading your coaching sessions on sales pipelines, ask your team members to review the current edition of Weekly Sales Reset.

Give yourself time to reflect on WIIFM, “What’s in for me,” and empathise with your team members about how they might be sufficiently motivated to manage their sales pipeline more effectively.

Here’s this week’s recommended coaching session agenda:

1. Start with a brief review of their experience and results from their previous coaching session.

2. Ask this team member for their observations about their current sales pipeline and their processes and routines about how they manage their pipeline.

3. Together, review the evidence you found in your preparation with each team member.

4. Identify and prioritise a small range of specific practical things that this team member can do differently and better to manage their pipeline more effectively.

5. Spend some time role-playing (working with these guidelines).

6. Finish the coaching session with agreed and specific action conclusions.

Expected pushback about sales pipelines

So you know what to expect and can be prepared, here are three areas of possible pushback from your team members on the theme of managing their sales pipeline:

1. I can’t afford the time for this admin: Many salespeople prefer to spend their time “selling”, not in what many perceive to be administration. For these individuals, selling means speaking with customers. How will you help them to see the value of effective analysis and planning in managing their sales pipeline?

2. I can’t predict the future: Your team members may push back with a version of “I can’t predict the future”. How can you help them to coach their customers to gain the greatest available clarity of expectations?

3. I’m very confident that opportunity [X] will close: The majority of salespeople are optimists. And of course, they want to believe what they would like to happen! The fundamental question to ask in every opportunity is: “what is the evidence to support your belief”?

Now that you’re aware of these areas of potential pushback, what are your best responses?

Sales Pipeline Role-Play Recommendations

1. Most significant opportunity: Identify one of their most signifcant opportunities. Review the data in their sales pipeline. Identify the most signifcant missing piece of information. Role-play the conversation with the customer that will lead to greater clarity.

2. Stalled opportunity: Identify the most significant stalled opportunity. Role play the conversation with the customer that clarifies whether or not this will go ahead. Discuss the need to have these conversations in EVERY situation that appears stalled.

3. Imagine the outcomes of having a perfect sales pipeline: Clarify the elements of a “perfect sales pipeline”. Help your team member to imagine what it will be like when they have achieved this goal. Role play a conversation with them after they have achieved very significant sales results as a direct consequence of a more effective sales pipeline in this imagined future.

(You may find these recommendations about using role-play helpful.)

Leadership Reflective Practice

At the end of this week, ask yourself these key questions:

We hope you’ve found this edition of Sales Reset Leaders valuable.

Have a great week!

The Sales Reset Team

Here’s a link to a page explaining how these weekly Sales Reset Leaders newsletters are designed to help you improve your sales team's results every week with structured coaching and practice.

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Community of Practice

Ask Questions, Share Your Experience

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• LinkedIn Group - Join our World-Class Customer Success Selling Group on LinkedIn to ask questions or comment.

• Sales Reset Together Community - Click here to learn more about our private community of members committed to achieving and maintaining their Sales Reset.

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