Quick Take: 10 Ways to Fill Your Sales Pipeline

In this Quick Take episode, we're exploring one of the most crucial aspects of success as a business: the ability to keep your sales pipeline full.

By the end of this short episode, you'll have 10 effective tactics at your disposal to ensure that your sales pipeline is never empty.

LINKS:

The Center for Sales Strategy

Matt Sunshine

Episode Transcript

Matt Sunshine (00:15):
Welcome to Improving Sales Performance, a
podcast highlighting tips andinsights aimed at helping sales
organizations realize, and maybeeven exceed, their goals.
Here we chat with thoughtleaders, experts and gurus who
have years of sales experience,aimed at helping sales
organizations realize, and maybeeven exceed, their goals.
Here we chat with thoughtleaders, experts and gurus who
have years of sales experiencefrom a wide range of industries.
I'm your host, matt Sunshine,ceo at the Center for Sales
Strategy, a sales performanceconsulting company.

(00:37):
In this Quick Take episode,we're exploring one of the most
crucial aspects of success as abusiness the ability to keep
your sales pipeline full.
By the end of this shortepisode, you'll have 10

(01:01):
effective tactics at yourdisposal to ensure that your
sales pipeline is never empty.
With that, let's dive in.
All right, so these are 10really great ways to fill your

(01:21):
sales pipeline, and so let'sjust get into it.
So number one is never stopprospecting.
I mean, I can't say it enough,but the very best, the very best
salespeople out there, theyjust never stop.
They're always looking and theyset a time to do it.
They're intentional about theirprospecting.

(01:42):
Number two know who yourcustomers are Like.
Have a good handle on thecategories of business or the
job title of people.
Know who your customers are.
The very best salespeople havea keen sense of who are my best
customers and who should I bespending time paying attention

(02:05):
to, not just for prospecting,but even of your current
customer base.
You got to know who your verybest customers are.
Number three is ask forreferrals.
There's all sorts of data outthere that would suggest that
people would love to givereferrals, and there's also data

(02:27):
out there that shows and weknow this to be true at CSS
shows that salespeople arereluctant to ask for referrals.
So you want to increase yourpipeline, you want to build a
stronger sales pipeline?
Ask for referrals.
The fourth thing is masterupselling and cross-selling.

(02:52):
Always be looking foradditional opportunities to help
or to provide solutions foryour current customers, whether
that means services that yourcompany already has or
cross-selling to services thatmaybe another part of your

(03:13):
company offers.
So upselling and cross-sellingare two great ways to really
increase that sales pipeline.
The next one is know what yourtriggers are.
You know, right.
You need to be keenly aware ofwhat triggers.
What are the triggers for yourprospects?

(03:35):
What are the triggers for yourcustomers?
What works, what works and whatdoesn't work?
The very best.
Salespeople absolutely knowwhat it is, that, what triggers
they can use to spark action,and that's really important.
Number seven number sevenautomate as much as possible.

(03:58):
There's a lot of technologyavailable out there.
There's a lot of things thatcan help you to speed up your
process or to increase thevolume of your activity.
Now, I'm not suggesting thatyou automate everything and you
take the human out of the salesprocess, but I am saying let's

(04:20):
take advantage of the technologythat is available and automate
what can be and what should beautomated.
Also, number eight veryimportant drop your dead leads.
Stop calling on leads that arewasting your time.

(04:41):
If you've been calling onsomething for a really long time
and there's been no significantmovement forward, challenge
yourself and say what do I thinkis going to happen that's going
to make this still be a goodclient or a good prospect?
Drop your dead leads.
And number nine and this is soimportant all of these are

(05:04):
important, but this one, I think, gets overlooked a lot Analyze
your pipeline.
Take a look at what are yourstrengths and weaknesses when it
comes to your pipeline.
Do you have a lot of reallygood prospects?
Are you able to getappointments with them?
Have you done discoverymeetings?

(05:25):
Are you presenting proposals?
Are you negotiating thoseproposals?
Are you closing and winningthose proposals, and where are
your bottlenecks and where doyou need to maybe spend a little
bit more time?
Where do you need to improve orwhere do you need to accelerate
your effort?
How long are things staying ineach one of those parts of the

(05:51):
sales process?
How long are they staying there?
Are they staying there too long?
What can you do to speed thatup?
And the last thing number 10,is always keep learning, always
be learning, always be listeningand asking questions.
None of us know everything.
Always be learning, and I thinkthat will serve us well by

(06:14):
taking that always be learningattitude.
This has been Improving SalesPerformance.
Thanks for listening.
If you like what you heard,join us every week by clicking
the subscribe button.
For more on the topics coveredin the show, visit our website,
thecenterforsalesstrategycom.
There you can find helpfulresources and content aimed at

(06:35):
improving your sales performance.