The journey from lead to customer takes time. There are multiple stages in the sales pipeline, each as important as the next. But it’s not all smooth sailing.
Some leads will have objections; others might not be ready to buy. Your sales team could also have issues that affect the overall sales process, like lacking lead data, training, or enablement.
You'll need the right pipeline management tools and strategies to win more deals, reduce churn, and grow sustainably. We’re here to break down the fundamentals. Let’s get started.
What is Pipeline Management?
You need to spend money to make money. But, is the money you’re spending actually contributing as much as it should to your businesses’ growth?
Pipeline management answers this question and gives you a clear roadmap for where to invest time and resources and how to improve revenue.
It helps you see how many deals are in the pipeline, how close reps are to hitting quotas, and accurately forecast sales. With this data, leaders can make better data-driven decisions.
Let’s say you have hundreds of leads going in the pipelines. But reps are struggling to keep up with the volume. Here’s the catch. Even with a large influx of leads, conversions are still low.
So, do you hire more sales reps to keep up? Probably not. Chances are, underlying issues are present. There’s no problem with lead flow, but reps can’t close deals.
Looking at your pipeline, you could see leads who don’t fit ICPs and buyer personas are going through. So, you invest resources in lead generation, qualification, and segmentation instead.
Stages of the Sales Pipeline
Sales pipelines can be as simple or complex as you need them to be. But regardless of what sales methodology you choose, the stages of sales pipelines you need to manage include:
Lead Generation and Prospecting
Every sales process starts with lead generation and prospecting. Many people use the terms interchangeably, but key nuances exist between a lead and a prospect.
Leads are the people you gather from inbound marketing and outreach efforts. They show interest in your products or services. Prospects actively engage with you. They show intent.
Qualification and Segmentation
Qualifying gauges interest or intent. Strategies such as MEDDIC, BANT, or AIDA ensure leads in your pipeline are interested, can afford your product, and can make a purchasing decision.
Segmentation lets you categorize leads according to demographics, needs, or pain points. This will help you personalize outreach and nurturing efforts.
Outreach and Nurturing
Most leads convert after multiple touchpoints. Even if they sign up for a free trial or demo or ask for a quote, objections and hesitations may still exist.
You can address these objections with outreach and nurturing. Both also facilitate qualification and segmentation. For example, if a lead replies positively to a cold email, that shows intent.
Proposals and Negotiations
Outreach and nurturing provide prospects with enough information to decide whether or not to proceed with negotiations. But before negotiations come the proposals.
Proposals depend on the type of product or services you provide. You could have a flexible structure, a set package, or a customized offer tailored to the client’s needs.
Closing and Support
The last stage of every pipeline is closing and support. Here, account executives ensure a successful deal with all t’s crossed and the i’s dotted. But the sales process doesn’t end there.
Customer support is crucial for retention. You could provide content, answer inquiries, or check in with your customers to ensure they get the most out of your products.
Pipeline Management Strategies That Drive Revenue
If you want an efficient, healthy, and profitable sales pipeline, here are some pipeline management strategies and tips you can implement:
Evergreen Prospecting
Leads and prospects are the lifeblood of every pipeline. You have to keep them flowing, but the process can be repetitive. Although it’s an important step, it can waste your reps' valuable time.
However, you get Evergreen lead generation with Instantly B2B Lead Finder. You can set advanced filters to find leads who match your ICP.
When Evergreen is enabled, Lead Finder will automatically find leads matching your search criteria and add them directly to your pipelines. The best part? All leads are already validated.
Always Follow-up
Speculating on why prospects haven’t responded is a wasted effort. Instead, be proactive and follow up leads yourself. You can use a drip campaign flowchart to set up the follow-up strategy.
Follow-ups keep you top-of-mind and ensure sales reps don’t let prospects slip through the cracks. But remember, follow-up frequency should depend on your sales cadence.
Look Into Key Pipeline Metrics
There are dozens of metrics you can examine. Each provides crucial insights for data-driven decision-making. But you don’t want to spread yourself too thin looking at all the numbers.
The important thing is to look into metrics your reps, team leaders, and stakeholders understand and ensure they align with your goals and quotas. Here are some key metrics to consider:
- Sales velocity: Tracks how fast sales reps close deals
- Average deal size: The average value a prospect brings to your business
- Total pipeline value: The total value of all the leads and prospects in your pipeline
- Winrate: Percentage of conversions or closed deals in a pipeline
Automate Repetitive Tasks
If you do the same task multiple times, it can be automated. Luckily, you can automate a large part of the sales process including lead generation, cold outreach, follow-ups, and nurturing.
Manual tasks like writing cold email copy and personalization can also be automated using Instantly.ai. You can personalize using {{custom variables}}, spintax, or AI-generated copy.
A Clean Pipeline is a Healthy Pipeline
You want a constant supply of leads entering your pipeline. However, you should remove leads who don’t respond to or engage with your content.
You hurt your deliverability if you keep leads who don’t engage with you in your pipelines. But that doesn’t mean you’ll throw leads away. You can still add them to re-engagement campaigns.
Benefits of Pipeline Management
The end goal of implementing pipeline management is to improve revenue. However, that’s simply the byproduct of optimizing each stage of the sales process. When you do, you get:
Accurate Sales Budget and Sales Forecasting
Your sales budget determines the overall scale of your sales operations. But forecasting is very much tied to your budget. Sales forecasting projections let your business anticipate cash flow, allocate resources, and plan for potential contingencies.
If sales forecasting isn’t accurate, you might burn your sales budget, thinking the forecasted revenue is enough to cover expenses.
Fewer Bottlenecks in the Sales Pipelines
Bottlenecks can appear at any stage of your sales pipeline. The good news is that you can control them (unless a significant market shift occurs).
Pipeline management lets you see the holistic picture of all underlying issues in your sales processes, whether at the top, middle, or bottom funnel.
For example, suppose the bottleneck is at the bottom funnel. In that case, pipeline management can determine that a sales training program is needed so teams can handle objections and better articulate the value your product provides.
Improved Sales Performance Management
Pipeline management and sales performance go hand-in-hand. It helps the sales team keep deals organized, track where leads are in the sales funnel in real time, and identify high-value leads.
That means reps can focus on high-value leads with strong buying intent instead of wasting time chasing leads who might not be ready to make a purchase.
Realistic Goal Setting and Sales Quotas
Many sales teams fail because of unrealistic goals and quotas that can’t be met. Remember, goal-setting shouldn’t be a gut feeling. It should be based on accurate data and sales tracking.
Pipeline management provides data on crucial metrics like deal flow, conversion rates, and sales cycle length to ensure goals align with performance trends.
Better Sales Prospecting
Lead generation and prospecting kick off every sales process. But, if you’re just letting leads into your pipeline for the sake of having leads in the pipeline, you’re burning time and resources.
Pipeline management ensures that SDRs have a clear idea of your ideal customer, how to segment leads, and how to reach out to them.
Who’s Supposed to Handle Pipeline Management?
A sales manager or CRM administrator can oversee the entirety of the sales process. However, pipeline management requires a holistic effort from your entire sales team.
That’s because each stage of the pipeline requires different disciplines and expertise. So, each of the following roles has to take responsibility for managing your pipelines:
Top of the Funnel (TOFU): Lead Generation & Awareness
At the top of the funnel, content is king. It’s the best way to articulate your value without being overly salesy. The goal of TOFU is to attract, generate, and qualify leads. It’s handled by:
- Marketing teams: Creates content, runs ads, and generates leads
- SDRs: Qualifies and nurtures inbound and outbound leads
- Cold email marketers: Focuses on automated outbound lead generation strategies
Content comes in many forms. It could be the posts you publish on social media, the blogs on your website, or the email copy you send during cold outreach campaigns.
Middle of the Funnel (MOFU): Lead Nurturing & Sales Engagement
In the middle of the funnel, leads show interest in your offer. They’ve done enough research and read enough content that makes them want to know more. The roles in charge are:
- Account executives (AEs): Contact leads, build relationships, and present solutions
- Sales managers: Guide teams, progress, and optimize strategies
- Finance teams: Helps structure pricing models, discounts, and exclusive offers
Bottom of the Funnel (BOFU): Closing Deals & Customer Handoff
The bottom of the funnel is where interest turns into buying intent. Here, prospects want to move forward with a deal. Sometimes, they'll have objections that the following can address:
- AEs or sales managers: Handle negotiations, contracts, and closing deals
- Executive leaders (CEOs or Heads of Sales): Enterprise negotiations and contracts
- Customer Success Managers (CSMs): Onboarding, relationship building, and customer satisfaction.
Post-Sale: Retention & Growth
The sales cycle doesn’t stop at the bottom funnel, even after converting a lead into a customer. Remember that it’s more profitable to nurture existing customers than it is to find new ones. The people in charge of this post-sale nurturing include:
- Customer Support: Troubleshoots issues and provides ongoing assistance
- Executives and Strategy Teams: Use feedback to refine offers and improve retention
- Customer Success Teams: Nurtures customers and provides support on how to make the most out of your products or services
Non-Negotiable Tools for Pipeline Management
As mentioned, pipeline management lets you take an in-depth look at every stage of the sales process. That means pipeline management requires a tech stack that helps you manage all these stages. Here’s a look at all the essential tools you’d need:
Lead Generation Tools
Every sales pipeline starts with identifying, qualifying, and segmenting leads who get the most value from your offer. Lead generation tools let you automate all three of these processes.
For example, you can use Instantly B2B Lead Finder to look for leads with $2M ARR, have HubSpot in their tech stack, and launch a new service.
But even if these leads match your ICP, they’ll still be cold leads who need nurturing. Use website visitor identification tools if you want warm leads in your pipelines.
Validation Tools
Before adding the lead list to your outreach campaigns, validate them with up-to-date data using validation tools like Neverbounce or Millionverifier.
However, if you want to streamline the process, Instantly B2B Lead Finder gives pre-validated leads. With B2B Lead Finder, there’ll be no need for third-party validation tools.
CRM
CRMs are at the heart of pipeline management. They give the entire sales team visibility into every stage of the process. But managing a pipeline isn’t a one-person job.
Each stage requires the right people overseeing it, from prospecting to closing. The issue is that most CRMs require you to pay extra for each seat you add.
As your team grows, so does your overhead for a tool that innately requires multiple users. That’s why Instantly created Instantly CRM. One subscription already gives unlimited seats.
Automated Outreach Tools
Leads don’t move further down the pipeline by themselves. You must reach out to every lead, ask the right questions, and provide the right data to help them make informed decisions.
But outreach isn’t just automating cold emails and follow-ups. It also means understanding prospect needs and writing personalized copy that aligns pain points with your value proposition.
Instantly can do all of this for you with just a few clicks. Our tool automates email sequences with multiple variables for A/B testing and uses lead data and custom variables to automate email copy tailored to an individual level.
Key Takeaways
Pipeline management ensures every sales process has a standard you can follow and iterate on. It lets leaders know where to allocate resources and helps reps optimize every stage of the pipelin,e from prospecting to closing and customer support.
Instantly.ai is built to facilitate and automate tasks in each stage of the sales process. Try it out for free today.
