Pipeline Management. Step One Open your Mind

I have shared with you in our Pipeline Management series, how to get your boss off your back and how to use an amnesty to get your team to cleanse their pipelines. In this article I will share practical tips on filling your pipeline.

I was running a prospecting and opportunity creation workshop in Malmo, Sweden when a few alarm bells began to ring in my head. The Nordics VP of Sales and the VP of Marketing were participating. During one of the exercises, as I was coaching one of the teams, I asked the VP of Marketing where had she allocated her marketing budget for the following year. “New account acquisition” was the instant response. "We always focus our marketing funds entirely on new account acqisition", she explained

I was really concerned and wanted to help her and the VP of Sales to get them off “Status Quo” mode, the way that they have always done it. Craig Elias explains that Status Quo, or path dependency, is our greatest competition and I wanted to help the client to consider a potentially better outcome for them. One of our biggest challenges, when we engage clients is to get them to open up their minds to potentially better outcomes for them.

I used a couple of the techniques that you will learn on our Sales Funnel courses, to create some latent pain. I reflected back her response like a mirror, with an upward intonation of my voice. “New Account acquisition?” and looked a bit confused, using the Columbo technique. The think emoji is a great way to depict this. As you will appreciate, before you even attempt to ask a pain question, you must establish good rapport. Again we cover this in depth and in practice in our Sales Funnel workshops.

Questions are such a valuable technique. If you tell someone anything he may and will probably doubt you, but if you ask questions to enable your customer or prospect to come up with the answer himself, he owns the answer and believes it. "Never ever tell, if you can ask a question." was a great lesson I learned from Heino Hovingh, Principle Partner at Hovingh and Partners. Quoting one of my all-time gurus, Dale Carnegie "A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion still."

I continued. “Tell me about your revenue projection for this year and current year”. She fetched the VP of Sales from his team to help and asked him the same point. He asked me to clarify.” So you have a revenue target of $200 Million?” “Yes”. How much will come from your existing customers and how much from new customers?” “$175 Million from existing customer and the rest from new customers?” “Really? So almost 80% of your revenue will come from your existing customers?” was my response, looking confused again.

It was time for another pain question. “What was the outcome of your latest pareto analysis of your existing customer base revenue?” “Pareto Analysis? The VP of Sales asked. I explained the Pareto principle in sales that 80% or more of revenues tends to come from 20% or less of the customer base. “So what are your top 20% revenue earners?” “I don’t know. I suppose, off the top of my head, we have twenty top accounts.“ He guessed. He hadn’t done any Pareto analysis

“So these top twenty accounts, how do you manage them? I asked. “The same as we manage all our customers” he responded, looking more and more concerned. I reflected back with a verbal mirror. “You manage these top accounts the same way as the rest” with the upward voice inflection., followed by a Columbo.

“So what would the impact be if you lost one of those key customers?” quietly introducing the concept of a key customer. “It would be a disaster” was his reply. I looked pensively and rightfully concerned. Red flags were all around us.

Returning to the VP of Marketing. “So almost 80% of your business comes from existing customers, but you do not allocate any of your marketing budget to your existing customers?” “No” was the response. Time for another “Really?” and a Columbo.

So what do you suggest the VP of Sales asked?

“Let’s come in early tomorrow morning and I will share with you what World Class Sales Organisations do”. Step one had been achieved. getting my VP's to open their minds to other ways of thinking about filling their pipeline.

In the next article I will share with you the practical things that I shared with the VP's, with analysis supported by the Chartered Institute of Marketing.

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