Mario of Nintendo fame — yes, that Mario — knows a thing or two about pipeline management. Or, at least, the most successful players of his titular games do.
In the classic Nintendo 64 video game, Paper Mario, Mario enters the storybook Mushroom Kingdom with sprawling quests that lead to one main objective — saving Princess Peach from Bowser. If players cover their bases and speak with as many townspeople as possible, they can develop partnerships that help Mario on his journey. To get there, they need to learn about each character’s unique needs, which can be leveraged in later levels at opportune times.
In a pixelated nutshell, Mario is building a highly functional sales pipeline.
“It’s important to manage your pipeline for both the short-term — like daily and weekly — as well as the long-term monthly focus,” said Evan Weisburger, commercial team lead at Dandy. “This allows you to have a clear picture toward immediate and long-term success, and also the action items needed in order to progress opportunities while hitting your quota month over month.”
However, both video game players and salespeople can fumble their pipeline development. If Mario fixates on the end goal of saving Princess Peach alone, he can miss valuable opportunities that prove useful when he’s in danger toward the end of a chapter — and leave his pipeline stagnant.
“A few common mistakes we all make as salespeople include failing to set clear next steps, hoarding deals in your pipeline and focusing too much on the deals closest to the finish line,” said Alex Pagan, sales manager at Lev Capital.
It’s a long journey, but if strategized correctly with proper nurturing and timing, any sales rep can follow in Mario’s footsteps to keep their pipeline prosperous to reach their own storybook ending. Built In sat down with four seasoned NYC sales experts to learn about the common mistakes that lead to a disjointed journey, and how successful reps can use a robust pipeline every quarter to level up.
Lev Capital provides commercial real estate (CRE) investors access to funding.
What are some common mistakes that can cause a sales pipeline to break down, and how do you avoid them?
Setting next steps and providing context on how those steps impact the timeline for project completion keeps clients organized and salespeople on top of their most motivated buyers. Failure to set next steps can lead to a poor understanding of which deals are real and adds unnecessary time to the sales process. “Is this customer ghosting me, or are they on vacation this week?” It can be awful sitting and waiting. Reps can prevent these issues by asking clients to complete a mutual action plan (MAP) in follow-up emails. These plans show clients how missing deadlines can impact their desired end result.
Hoarding deals in your pipeline is another frequent mistake. A lot of account executives fall victim to inflating their pipeline with prospects that seem great but don’t have any motivation to buy right now. Filling your pipeline or holding onto these leads is a surefire way to overload your pipeline with opportunities that have no actionable next steps.
How do you manage your own sales pipeline?
I’ve been fortunate to have some great mentors that helped me create a systematic approach to managing my pipeline. My hope is that every day feels like Groundhog Day: From 9-12, I’m calling the top of the funnel or prospecting for new opportunities. The goal is that by nurturing my top of funnel earlier in the day — which includes mostly discovery calls — I am setting up the back half of my day for bottom of funnel deals that are closer to the finish line. These deals require more time, attention and problem solving.
In structuring each day the same way I reduce time spent wondering, “What should I do now?” Having a disciplined approach every day ensures that my full sales pipeline gets the attention it deserves. If I wrap up with my full funnel before the day is over, I’m running back through top of the funnel and prospecting.
Having a disciplined approach every day ensures that my full sales pipeline gets the attention it deserves.”
What are the advantages of a robust and fully functioning sales pipeline?
Having a fully functioning sales pipeline provides daily structure and ultimately makes you a better salesperson. Managing your pipeline well ensures you are constantly moving deals forward and replenishing your pipeline with new leads. To paraphrase sales professional Josh Braun, having a robust pipeline filled with the right types of leads helps to reduce loss aversion.
With a robust pipeline, it doesn’t hurt as badly to cut a few deals loose where you’re kicking tires because there are plenty of fish in the sea that is your pipeline. Holding customers accountable becomes much harder to do when your pipeline is lean — you really feel the pain when closing out a deal.
MarketAxess offers a fixed income electronic trading platform for institutional investors and dealers to efficiently trade bonds.
What are some common mistakes that can cause a sales pipeline to break down, and how do you avoid them?
The biggest mistake is to only look at the current growth path without looking at where growth will come from in the future. The key is to look at how to maximize current growth and make sure that there are a set of accounts and products that will come into production soon after.
How do you manage your own sales pipeline? Please share 1-2 tips that work for you.
I am always looking at the new accounts to bring onboard, new products to add within existing accounts, and also how to scale each client segment. Create a business plan based on the growth expected from existing accounts as well as which accounts and client segments are expected to grow.
You never know what roadblocks will happen, however a strong pipeline will make a setback short-lived and help stabilize performance.”
What are the advantages of a robust and fully functioning sales pipeline?
Keeping a robust pipeline is the key to meeting and exceeding sales growth targets. You never know what roadblocks markets or turnover will happen that can be a set back on growth, however a strong pipeline will make a setback short-lived and help stabilize performance despite any hurdles.
Dandy combines in-person dental treatment with advanced virtual care to improve the dental experience for patients and doctors.
What are some common mistakes that can cause a sales pipeline to break down, and how do you avoid them?
First, I would say having unrealistic expectations. Having a deep understanding of how successful a discovery call or follow up call went is crucial to being able to manage pipeline expectations. This is something that comes with time in selling a certain product or service, as well as understanding the industry you are selling into. The ability to manage your own expectations as a rep is something that, if you can get ahead of, will make the life of your manager and broader sales org much easier while also building trust. Using sales methodologies such as MEDDIC (Metrics, Economic buyer, Decision criteria, Decision process, Identify pain and Champion) ensure deeper discovery, which as a result enables you to uncover pain and priorities, and allow you to create urgency at later points in the sales cycle.
The second mistake is forgetting to nurture opportunities. In the same light as the above, understanding which opportunities are “close” to buying is just as important as identifying which opportunities are not. This allows you to nurture certain prospects in your pipeline with information that is relevant to them. The best marketing organizations communicate with customers and prospects through educational material, content and resources, which shows industry expertise that the prospect doesn’t have.
How do you manage your own sales pipeline?
While it’s important to focus on numbers and what stage opportunities are in, I’ve also found it helpful to humanize each prospect. I’ve most recently found myself asking the question for each opportunity that hasn’t moved forward: “What is holding this deal up from signing today?” This enables you to think in the prospect’s shoes, and ultimately take action that is directly relevant to the prospect’s needs, questions or concerns. This is where I find the greatest value in deep discovery through MEDDIC in being able to leverage pain points and priorities when helping to progress opportunities.
This allows you to create something that is repeatable and easy to communicate to sales leadership. It’s just as important for your manager to know how you manage your pipeline, so that you can work together to forecast and take immediate action on deals that need attention.
While it’s important to focus on numbers and what stage opportunities are in, I’ve also found it helpful to humanize each prospect.”
What are the advantages of a robust and fully functioning sales pipeline?
First, the ability to accurately forecast. It allows organization through potential short-term wins and long-term opportunities that need some nurturing over the course of several weeks or months. Additionally, accurately forecasting will help you gain the respect and trust of the leadership within the organization.
Second, it allows you to manage your time more effectively. With a robust and functioning sales pipeline, you are able to spend your time on things that are going to progress an opportunity. Progressing doesn’t necessarily mean someone signing the contract, but it could be sharing an internal article on a certain topic that the prospect has reservations on. Some small wins will lead to a larger win down the road.
Lastly, it builds a future book of business that allows you to plan your success several months in advance. Understanding which deals need action today is just as important as knowing the timeline deals that need to be nurtured. You can nurture the accounts through webinars, articles, new product releases and more that pertain exactly to where the prospect is in the buying process.
Orum provides enterprises with an automated, machine learning-based platform that enables fluid money transfers at any time, any day of the year.
What are some common mistakes that can cause a sales pipeline to break down, and how do you avoid them?
One of the most common mistakes is not understanding who the decision maker is for whether a prospect is going to move forward with you or not. Another is not understanding the needs of each stakeholder and what they truly care about when making a buying decision. Last, I would say not fully understanding what problem the prospect is trying to solve with your solution. All of these problems can be solved by doing some background work on both the prospect and the people you’re talking to.
How do you manage your own sales pipeline?
Creating a scalable and repeatable sales process is crucial. Find problems that you’re trying to solve across multiple companies in your pipeline and then repeat that value proposition. It lets you work smarter — not harder.
Find problems that you’re trying to solve across multiple companies in your pipeline and then repeat that value proposition.”
What are the advantages of a robust and fully functioning sales pipeline?
This is where you can get the scalability and repeatability, because you have enough volume. Another advantage is that with enterprise sales in particular, the buying journey is long, so having a robust pipeline allows you to keep hitting goals even if each deal takes a while.
