Drip… Drip… Drip. The unfortunate sound of $$$’s leaving your funnel.

Any idea why?

If you do not know where your funnel is leaking, that is priority #1. It’s time to get under the hood, roll up the sleeves and get to work.

In a recession (economic downturn, soft landing whatever you argumentative folks want to call it, the term doesn’t matter, the conditions do), markets get squeezed. It’s inevitable. Pipeline creation gets more difficult for reps and costs more for marketing. How do you control your Customer Acquisition Cost from getting out of control? Create an airtight sales funnel. No more drip, drip, drip.

So how do we assess a Sales Funnel and then optimize it? We thought you’d never ask.

For this, we start at the end and work our way back.

#1. Win Rate:

While this is a lagging indicator of how your sales force is currently performing, it is the foundation of how to assess the rest of your sales process. Once we have a firm understanding of the total Win Rate, we can segment it for any variables that you choose and begin to work backwards.

If you do not know your Win Rate and where it is trending, get that information and get it now yesterday.

Is it trending in the right direction?

If so, phenomenal job considering all variables. If not, let’s dig back further in the funnel to better understand why.

#2. Pipeline Stages:

Ok, now that we know our Win Rate percentage, we can assess each pipeline stage and understand which stage has the largest leak. Once we understand where it is, we can start to ask the questions around the “why is it leaking,” and “how we can solve it.”

With proper reporting, this can then be drilled down into each sales team, sales manager and each individual rep. This illuminates each team and reps’ strengths and where cross collaboration and training is needed and can be beneficial.

One important aspect to note about Pipeline Stages is that you need to inspect what you expect of these stages. Confirm that your sales team is progressing opportunities through the pipeline after a specific meeting or action is taken by the prospect.

Having trackable actions is a must-have to provide you with structured, accurate data that can be measured against.

Typical pain points in a leaky sales funnel:

1. Lack of content for that particular stage of buyers journey
2. Correct individual not brought into the deal yet
3. Rep has not fully unearthed the pain point or the why behind it
4. Prospect is outside of the ICP

In the premier racing sport of Formula 1, on a beautiful sunny day do you rarely see a car outside of the top 3 teams, win the race. But on a rainy day, anything can happen. Its currently raining in the market.

Let’s get to work.

Prescriptive Profits #22