Pipeline Management will be your second important step after adopting CRM software. All activities as decision making connected with devising strategies for customers needs, enhancing sales productivity or defining metrics and more won't be working properly without profound understandings of Pipeline Management.

1. Pipeline Management:
Success with CRM

2. Nikolaus Kimla
n.kimla@pipelinersales.com
www.pipelinersales.com
CEO at Pipelinersales Inc.
Written by...
Based on the ebook:
Pipeline Management: Success with CRM

3. Pipeline Management:
The Backbone of
Your Enterprise
1

4. Pipeline management means having your sales cycle
from lead to close laid out in exact steps, each of
which must be taken to obtain a successful sale. It
might also be called “opportunity management.”
Pipeline Management: The Backbone of Your Enterprise

5. Companies generally fall into a rough range of
possibilities with regard to pipeline management. Of
these, the flexible pipeline is the method by which the
most successful companies operate. Feedback is
consistently obtained from salespeople as to the
pipeline’s accuracy and reflection of the real world.
The pipeline is adjusted whenever needed.
Pipeline Management: The Backbone of Your Enterprise

6. Pipeline management is the most
successful where it most closely
follows the actual prospect buying
patterns. The deeper the
understanding of your customers and
prospects, the more accurate your
pipeline will be.
This practice also means higher
closing rates and established trust:
customers become partners.
Pipeline Management: The Backbone of Your Enterprise

7. Pipeline Management:
Critical to Attaining
Company Goals
2

8. Accurate and effective pipeline
management is essential to the
attainment of long-term
company goals.
Pipeline Management: Critical to Attaining Company Goals

9. ● Aligning sales process with customers’ decision-making
● Understanding customer needs
● Devising effective customer strategies
● Enhancing sales productivity (focusing on the
highest-value activities)
● Defining and implementing metrics (e.g. retention,
profitability) to evaluate critical sales activities
● Ensuring accurate reporting of forecasted sales
opportunities in the pipeline
Pipeline Management: Critical to Attaining Company Goals
A recent report listed these
as the priorities for
companies in the coming
year:

10. It is interesting to note that none of
these are possible without flexible,
intelligent pipeline management.
Pipeline Management: Critical to Attaining Company Goals

11. Pipeline Management:
A Self-Sustaining
Success
3

12. From the CSO Insights Sales Management
Optimization 2013 Key Trends Analysis comes
a true story that clearly illustrates how effective
pipeline management can lead to
ever-increasing sales success.
Pipeline Management: A Self-Sustaining Success

13. A particular company, as part of their opportunity
management process, required salespeople to note
each tactic utilized at each step of the sales cycle,
right in the CRM database. Over a period of years,
this practice resulted in a wealth of valuable data.
It isolated several highly successful tactics.
Pipeline Management: A Self-Sustaining Success

14. This is a very good example of
using pipeline management to
clearly isolate successful sales
methods. Once such methods are
discovered, they can be put to use
by the entire sales force and
result in higher profit and attained
company goals.
Pipeline Management: A Self-Sustaining Success

15. Pipeline Management:
The Vital Importance
of Automation
4

16. When developing the sales
process into discrete pipeline
steps, automation must come in
on the “ground floor.” At the very
least, the IT department must be
fully advised of the various sales
process steps, once they are
decided upon and implemented,
so that these steps can be
automated for use.
Pipeline Management: The Vital Importance of Automation

17. If automation is properly utilized from the get
go to support sales activity, needed information
will be just a click away. A salesperson will be
able to record vital data in its proper place, so
that it can later be accessed and utilized to push
the sale along to a close.
Pipeline Management: The Vital Importance of Automation
If automation is properly
utilized from the get go to
support sales activity, needed
information will be just a
click away.

18. CRM and Booming
Your Company
5

19. Today, CRM applications offer
many different options,
including detailed analyses of
product lines, forecasts, past
performance, sales teams and
individuals, and many others.
CRM and Booming Your Company

20. CRM – customer relationship
management is a fantastic way
to bring sales and expansion to
your company. This is only
true, however, if the program
is truly used and
used correctly.
CRM and Booming Your Company

21. Where CRM Can
Go Wrong
6

22. Within a company’s overall budget,
automation can be given a lower
priority. The net effect is that
adequate automation is not provided
for areas of the company that truly
need it. This is probably most critical
for sales and marketing, due to their
relationship to company success –
which of course leads us right into
the subject of CRM.
Where CRM Can Go Wrong

23. At the very least, anyone charged with
purchasing and implementing a CRM should
spend time in the sales department, watching
salespeople work, noting the pitfalls they
encounter, and talking with them at length.
Where CRM Can Go Wrong
Another reason a CRM can
fail is that input is not
obtained from the personnel
in the company most closely
connected with it.

24. Another key reason a CRM can fall short of expectations is when it
doesn’t reflect actual sales operations. Even if an actual sales process
is not formally established, salespeople always have patterns they
follow in qualifying leads, making contact with the prospect company,
obtaining their requirements, providing needed information or
demonstrations, and closing sales. A CRM that does not follow these
patterns or at least take them into account is useless to sales reps as
well as other CRM users throughout the company.
Where CRM Can Go Wrong

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