As Sales Development Reps, pipeline management is crucial to our everyday prospecting efforts. Having an organized sales pipeline not only makes sales prospecting effective, it makes it efficient.
There are several methods to manage your sales pipeline. Kim Staib even shared a strategy for a more detailed pipeline review to stay proactive in prospecting and discover hidden opportunities. However, when I want to stay organized, I find that structuring my pipeline by these elements works best:
By Priority
Make sure to tackle your highest-priority pipeline first. This should include important target accounts, requested follow-ups, and warm inbound leads. If you have a list of key accounts, focus on those first. Next, pay special attention to your scheduled follow-ups. If a prospect asks you to check back with them at a certain time, be sure to do so. Following up as promised will not only boost your credibility but also likely lead to a more fruitful conversation when it’s at a time they chose. Lastly, prioritize anything that is considered “hot,” like an inbound lead from a webinar or eBook. The longer you wait to follow up on these leads, the less likely you are to reach the prospect and engage them.
By Opportunity Size
Every SDR wants to meet quota. One way of ensuring this is by focusing on the opportunity size that your offering has the most historical success in. This goes hand in hand with the target account list I mentioned previously. Review your pipeline and the potential opportunities you have in front of you. Now, sort them by size. Which are the ones that will bring in the most revenue for your company and help you to make your quota? Closing one or two big deals can be the equivalent of closing a handful of smaller ones. However, if you focus on the opportunity size that isn’t the right fit for your offering, you could be neglecting accounts that are ready to close. Bottom line, make sure not to neglect the smaller companies in your sales pipeline, they matter too!
By Demographics
Use the existing information in your sales pipeline to your benefit. If you are prospecting higher education establishments, try reaching out in the summer when they are more likely to be focusing on improvements for the upcoming school year. If your timing is strategic, they have more availability to evaluate new solutions to challenges they have been facing. If you have a handful of prospects that expressed budget concerns, reach out to them around the end of Q3 when they start their budget planning for next year. Get to know the space that you are prospecting into and understand the kind of compelling events that will push them further down your sales funnel. In terms of your prospecting strategy, identify where your accounts are located geographically and separate your pipeline by timezone. Switching up your call strategy so that you are alternately hitting various time zones in the morning and in the afternoon will increase your chances of catching someone live on the phone. Demographics can be a great way to organize sales pipeline without over complicating it.
Not every SDR has the same set of preferences when it comes to segmenting their sales pipeline. However, we all share one common objective: to turn that pipeline into revenue. Whether you choose to organize your sales pipeline by priority, opportunity size, demographic, or another method of your choice, be sure that you are putting yourself in the best position to convert. Don’t let a messy and disorganized pipeline ruin your prospecting efforts!