Boost Sales

By Lars Henningsson and Rupert Flores

The pipeline should be at the core of any sales organization.
Boost Sales shows how a strong pipeline focus drives the overall sales results and supports sales executives to reach higher targets. The authors take us through cases where better use of the pipeline led to a 400% sales increase and more. With other clients, a better-managed pipeline was a strong contributor to similar magnitude improvements. They freely share their ‘secrets’ of how to make this happen.

The book follows a number of real-life sales executives that in three to six months quickly improved their numbers when pipeline reviews helped them address areas and gaps that previously had held them back. We meet sellers who double, triple and quadruple their sales results. It is fantastic inspiration and reading for any sales executive who wants to improve his or her sales performance.

Boost Sales has an important message to corporate executives. A stronger pipeline focus will increase the new business results. Rightly applied, it can add millions to the top line and have a very positive impact on growth. Doing so does not require large investments, just a bit of training, know-how and a distinct and enhanced leadership approach.

Boost Sales is easy to read and full of examples that will help you and your company to improve the sales results.

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Lars Henningsson is a Columbia University, New York, graduate with 30 years' experience of helping great client companies improve their sales, marketing and supply chain performance. He is the Managing Director of Leading Sales.

Rupert Flores is a Barcelona School of Economics educated former sales director with more than 25 years of sales and consulting experience. Since 2016 he has led his own sales consultancy company: Emotional Sales Training.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Leading Sales Ltd.
• Release date: Feb 8, 2021
• ISBN: 9781838246549

Book preview

PREFACE

Having successfully trained and developed sales directors and sales managers for 15 years there was an obvious need for a book to support the training. From our experience, a professional pipeline focus is the starting point for any sales leader who wants to boost his team’s sales result. The present book is therefore entirely concentrated on this topic.

Most sales leaders and sales executives are practical people and want hands-on advice that works in the field. This is such a practical handbook based on real life examples that we have set out to create. The book therefore contains a lot of cases of how to analyse and interpret concrete pipeline situations. It is a very positive book, about how to help the sales team members succeed. The book also gives some more strategic tips of how a stronger pipeline focus can be the engine in a sales force transformation.

INTRODUCTION

WHY WE HAVE A PASSION FOR THE PIPELINE

It is now more than 25 years since we started to work in sales and faced establishing our very first pipelines. Like all other sales executives and account managers, the first time it was done we were just following the guidelines in the same way one was instructed to complete the sales reporting, updating the CRM (customer relationship management) system and submitting expense claims. It was later, using the pipeline on a daily basis, that it became clear how beneficial it is. Where colleagues saw control, we saw help to reach the quarterly sales objectives. When others filled it in superficially because they had to do it, we saw that the more rigorously it was done the better was our control over proposals and meetings. Where colleagues forgot to follow up on the proposals that they delivered weeks ago, we forgot none.

What was the result? Objectives were reached quarter after quarter, year after year. In more senior roles, as sales director and as principal consultant, the pipeline became the fundamental tool for the sales forecast. We learned just how big the impact of active pipeline management was on teams and on colleagues, and also experienced how inadequate the understanding of the way the pipeline works can be at senior corporate levels. In fact, what is called the pipeline can, in some companies, be just a long list of dead or obsolete opportunities generated from the CRM.

There are different pipeline models. In this book we use the one we like the best. But the most important is not the model, but that you actively use whatever pipeline your company has signed up for. It will help you to reach the objectives, just as it has helped us over the years. And it still does.

There are some good sales executives in most companies. But a good sales executive taking control over his activity wins many more deals and new accounts than the equally good ones that do not use the pipeline to guide their activities. If you are currently working as a sales executive, this book will help to establish firm control of the pipeline and thus of your chances of success. You will learn to visualize in what direction the business is going, and what you need to focus on when there is still time to influence the outcome. It also makes it possible to do a meaningful self-analysis at the end of the year.

As a sales leader, managing director or chief executive officer, the book is about how to leverage a stronger and more meaningful pipeline focus to increase the sales of your company. Rightly applied, a forceful pipeline focus can add millions to the top line and be the enabler of a fundamental transformation of a company’s sales organization. The good news is that doing so does not require large investments in more reps, new IT systems or software. Stronger pipeline focus only requires a minimum of training and a different leadership approach. It is equally applicable in B2C (business-to-consumer) and B2B (business-to-business), though our personal experience says that the improvement opportunity often is larger in B2B, perhaps because the longer sales cycles make it more likely that sales executives lose track of prospects and deals over time.

CHAPTER 1

PIPELINE REVIEW

The pipeline is one of the topics that everyone speaks about, but from what we have seen, very few sales leaders really understand how to carry out a proper pipeline review. Even experienced leaders struggle when they try to analyse the pipeline of their reps, and worse, often fail to come up with plans and remedies. It does not come intuitively to everyone, as it requires combining a helicopter view with the deep-dive into individual deals to rapidly assess the probability. The good news is that it is a skill that can be learned.

The pipeline is the key tool of any sales organization. If correctly constructed, it rarely lies and should be the sales leader’s primary point of reference. Bringing executive attention to the pipeline changes the culture, and at the same time it serves to give the sales rep more content, internal support and DMU (decision making unit) input, helping him or her to win the deal.

What exactly then, is a pipeline? The pipeline is the total number of qualified opportunities that a sales person is working on. It shows the status of each opportunity and the estimated value. It thus gives a total overview of how well positioned the sales person, a sales area, or a sales department is to reach the target.

When we train sales leaders, we instruct them to do weekly pipeline reviews with their staff, at least until the sales rep reaches the budget level. This helps to set the standard regarding activity – choosing the right kind of leads, what information the sellers need to obtain, and this would be both from, and about, the client. It also gives the sales leader the chance to steer the rep to the best sources of help and support internally.

Once the sales rep is delivering regular results at/or above budget level, the intensity of the pipeline reviews can decrease to fortnightly and then to monthly intervals, depending on the industry and the length of the sales cycle – but never delegate it entirely. Even very successful and experienced reps benefit from in-depth discussion of their pipelines. Because we all tend to be infatuated by our latest clients, many of us find it boring and time-consuming preparing for the operational start-up of the new business gained.

The sales rep, with a correctly balanced pipeline, will always have a stronger sales result over time than the one that does not. And it is the sales leader’s task to make sure this happens. The key things to pay attention to are the balance of the pipeline’s different stages, the forecast, and the realism of the size and timings of the expected deals. The forecast should always be significantly above budget. If not, action is required. The pipeline forecast is thus a fantastic way for a sales leader to influence the outcome before it is too late. It is a great lead indicator that should be treasured by senior leaders. This is not always the case. Just the other day it became clear that a CEO we spoke with had no clue what the difference was between the pipeline and the pipeline forecast.

With one of our clients, there was absolutely no pipeline culture and reps and managers alike struggled to pay enough attention to it, always hunting the next big deal, rather than focusing on constructing a balanced pipeline. Inviting the managing