Sales Pipeline: A Complete Guide for Sales Leaders

Building a sales pipeline is harder than ever before as buyers shift toward self-guided, digital buying behaviors. In fact, 75% of B2B buyers prefer rep-free experiences instead of working with a sales rep directly.

To compensate for this shift, many sales leaders demand a higher volume of activity from the sales organization to make up for lower engagement rates — more calls, more emails and more social touches. This can create tension among sellers and marketing partners, not only because bandwidth is limited, but because more touches lead to diminishing returns and potentially annoyed prospects and customers.

Successful sales leaders bring sales and marketing functions together to design orchestrated programs that deliver more value to prospective buyers, increase engagement rates and make better use of available resources.

Orchestration is a key strategy for solving the sales pipeline challenge. Three proven steps enable successful execution and engagement with hard-to-reach buyers:

Step 1. Assign a program owner from sales and marketing. The program owners assigned to design an orchestration plan should be responsible for three core elements:

• Marketing air cover. Marketing delivers digital advertising to key contacts or specific target roles at target accounts across the entirety of the program.

• Pre-outbound. Marketers, executives and/or other nonsellers deliver a set of initial touches via multiple channels (email, phone, social) before sales or sales development begins their primary direct outreach campaign.

• Outbound. Sales or sales development delivers a set of direct outbound touches aimed at driving direct engagement with targets, with the intent of having more in-depth conversations to qualify potential needs and promote a high-value offer.

The most effective orchestration programs require a high level of coordination to ensure that everyone involved stays on message and supports one another to drive meaningful buyer engagement. Clear identification of owners and timing of each planned touch will create a more seamless and impactful experience for the buyer.

Existing customers play a major role in meeting revenue goals. Recent research reveals that sales leaders expect 70% or more of their organizations’ revenue to come from current customers. Yet efforts to drive cross-sell or upsell in accounts can fail when they are too generic or lack insight into the specific and total addressable opportunity.

Six specific strategies can help sales effectively identify, size and prioritize potential opportunities in accounts for sales growth and revenue expansion. 

• Expand: Purchase of additional primary product usage or volume by the existing business unit sponsor, or a price increase with the sponsor

• Upsell: Purchase of additional capability or of a separate product that is premium to the original product by the existing business unit sponsor

• Cross-sell: Purchase of different products, capabilities or solutions by the existing business unit sponsor that satisfy additional, complementary needs not met by the original product

• Penetrate: Purchase of additional primary product by the new business unit sponsor

• Develop: Purchase of additional capability or of a separate product that is premium to the original product by a new business unit sponsor

• Diversify: Purchase of new products, capabilities or solutions by a new business unit sponsor that satisfy additional, complementary needs not met by the original product

These strategies are not mutually exclusive. Each can be used across the entire customer account to get closer to achieving the total addressable account opportunity.

Once the organization has determined the sales growth strategies it will adopt, align each to a specific sales motion — i.e., a sales-driven engagement approach to advance or achieve the desired type of growth. Examples of sales motions include:

The days of the proverbial senior decision maker are behind us. The average buying group now includes 11 active members, each with their own perspective and ability to say “no.” Pipeline growth relies on the ability to drive buyer consensus.

Customer consensus doesn’t result from connecting individual stakeholders more closely to the seller organization. Rather, it comes from connecting them more closely to each other and their own organization.

Our analysis of more than 700 individual buyers shows that customer stakeholders fall into one of three groups — and not all are useful in supporting the buying process. These groups include:

• Mobilizers: These stakeholders excel at rallying their organizations around a purchase, driving consensus and championing change. 

• Talkers: These stakeholders are always willing to talk with sellers and share information but are not capable of moving a purchase decision forward.

• Blockers: Blockers are the anti-customer stakeholder; they are wired to avoid change and strongly prefer stability over disruption. As such, they rarely help suppliers.

To help the sales team move stakeholders successfully through the sales pipeline, facilitate collective learning by:

• Recognizing and leveraging Mobilizers. Mobilizers have a common trait focused on getting things done. They can be effective customer change advocates and overcome internal resistance utilizing stakeholder-specific persuasion tips, tools and coaching guidance from the seller. Once Mobilizers are identified, prompt sellers to capture and record valuable customer intelligence from Mobilizers such as information on upcoming initiatives, friction points inside the organization, shifts in influence dynamics, and key stakeholder turnover.