Seven ideas that will help you coach to a pipeline

Studies have shown that within 90 days of initial training, 87% of the training impact is lost if it is not reinforced. Coaching plays an important role in ensuring adoption of the processes, knowledge, and skills required to be successful at the top of the pipeline. Here are seven ideas that you can immediately use to help you coach to a pipeline.

First, coach as early in your funnel as possible. Right at the top - at the handoff when opportunities enter stage 1. Management should be reviewing these opportunities every other week with each Sales Representative.

Second, spend more time motivating individual team members. Set pipeline goals. If your close rate is 50% and quarterly quotas per sales person are $100,000. Salespeople need a constant $200,000 in pipeline. Use these goals to motive and provide individual focus to each team member.

Third, lead by example. Sales Managers need to know pipeline details all the time. Speak to the numbers and ensure that their teams know they are focused on it.

Fourth, Managers should know the critical indicators of pipeline health. The answers to all of the questions that were noted earlier in this blog thread for each of the pipeline leakage points should be reported and reviewed with Sales Management during every JBP call.

Fifth, partner with Salespeople on key accounts at the TOP of the funnel. Don’t wait to coach deal-to-deal when or if they get to the final stages. Show the Reps that you are focused at the top of the pipeline.

Sixth, influence other departments. Show the Team that you mean business by leveraging the indicator data to get other groups in alignment. Groups like Product, Finance, Sales Operations, and Marketing should be driven by your involvement.

Seventh, communicate often. Every two weeks report pipeline status and health to the team. Call out successes, failures and repairs that have been engaged.

These seven steps will maintain engagement with your Sales Team members and ensure that they remain just as focused at the top of the funnel as they are at the bottom.

Now that you have invested a good chunk of time reading this installment of my blog and the previous four blogs, it would be a shame if I did not call out the action items that you should take the moment you conclude reading this blog. Here are the action steps broken down by role:

Marketing Leadership
Ensure you have an SLA and JBP with Sales
Review your nurture leakage points
Train to improve leakage
Offer tools to sales to improve “will”
If needed, invest in sales training for Sales

Sales Leadership
Ensure you have an SLA and JBP with Marketing
Demonstrate your support of the SLA
Train all of your Team to improve follow-up
Coach to the top of the pipeline
Drive balanced feedback to the Marketing Team

L&D Leadership
Take action by asking questions
Make recommendations
Be the facilitator when necessary

When all else fails, try something new. We covered many new ideas in this blog since last December. I encourage you to try a few.