Do Your Salespeople Really Understand Pipeline Requirements?

Guest post by: Dave Kurlan
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Personality Tests, Sales Candidate Selection - How Tests Measure Up - By Dave Kurlan

Dave Kurlan is a top-rated speaker, best-selling author, sales thought leader and highly regarded sales development expert.

Pipeline

In a recent email to a group I mentioned that (using theBaseline Sellingmodel) theyshould have the following ratios (based on their historical data) to close 1. Then they simply need to multiply these numbers by the number of clients they need to close each month:

2 closable
3 qualified (3rd Base)
6 prospects (2nd Base)
9 suspects (1st Base)
20 total opportunities in the pipeline at any given point in time

In a follow up webinar, I asked how many of them had 21 opportunities in their pipeline. None did. We discussed how important it was for them to have their 21 opportunities in the pipeline at all times and asked them to send their lessons learned.

They sent their lessons but didn't get it right. Their takeaway was that it requires 20 opportunities to sell 1. But that's not correct. It requires 9 opportunities to sell 1. Why is that distinction important?

20 is frustrating, demoralizing, overwhelming. 9 - not so much. And for your salespeople at your company, the number might even be lower.

Make sure your salespeople understand the difference between how many opportnities need to be in each stage of their pipeline at any point in time, versus how many opportunities it takes to close 1.

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Free PDF Download
Personality Tests, Sales Candidate Selection - How Tests Measure Up - By Dave Kurlan

About the Author: Dave Kurlan

RSS for Dave's articles - Visit Dave's website
Dave Kurlan is a best-selling author, top-rated speaker and thought leader on sales development. He is the founder and CEO of Objective Management Group, Inc., the industry leader in sales assessments and sales force evaluations, and the CEO of David Kurlan & Associates, Inc., a consulting firm specializing in sales force development. Dave has been a top rated speaker at Inc. Magazine's Conference on Growing the Company, the Sales & Marketing Management Conference and the Gazelles Sales & Marketing Summit. He has been featured on radio and TV, including World Business Review with General Norman Schwarzkopf, in Inc. Magazine, Selling Power Magazine, Sales & Marketing Management Magazine and Incentive Magazine. He is the author of Mindless Selling and Baseline Selling – How to Become a Sales Superstar by Using What You Already Know about the Game of Baseball. He created and wrote STAR, a proprietary recruiting process for hiring great salespeople, and he writes Understanding the Sales Force, a popular business Blog and is a contributing author to The Death of 20th Century Selling (Dan Seidman), Stepping Stones (Deepak Chopra and Brian Tracey) and 101 Great Ways to Improve Your Life, Volume 2 (David Riklan).
Click here to visit Dave's website.

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