In today’s edition, we explore why you need more deals in your pipeline than you think to achieve your revenue goals—and what the implications are if you don’t have this in place. Let’s get to it.
We always need more than we think.
Especially in sales.
I was asked a question some time ago about how you can ensure you hit the targets that you have.
Do you need to be lucky?
Do you need to work incredibly hard?
Do you need to charge higher prices?
All these things help, but there is one simple way of hitting your targets, and that’s to build a pipeline full of leads.
So, what do you need in your pipeline? And what should a good pipeline look like?
I always work on a simple rule:
Ensure that your pipeline and the final stages of your sales process are a minimum of 3 (and ideally 4) times the value of the target you want to hit.
Let’s break it down a bit more.
Let’s say your business wants to achieve a new
revenue target of £500,000 for the year.
You may have certain months that are stronger or weaker than others, but for the sake of this example, let’s say the target is spread across a 12-month period.
To achieve your target, you will need to hit a revenue of £42,000 per month.
So, to hit this number, what should the value of your pipeline be?
The answer is a minimum of £126,000, but ideally £168,000. Let me explain why.
There are two main reasons:
We don’t win all the business that we have (or think we will)
All too often, deals don’t come in when we want them to
I was once told some sage advice by an old Sales Director:
“Plan conservatively but execute optimistically.”
Put simply, don’t do what most salespeople do
and expect that everything will come in. Be realistic.
We always need more than we think.
We might have a good feeling about all the leads we have, but if you are converting more than 2 in 3 leads at the final stage of your sales process, then you are probably too cheap. Even the very best salespeople in the world wouldn’t expect to convert more than 2 out of 3 in the final stages.
In addition, even good deals that will happen often get delayed for different reasons. A person has left or just joined the business, a budget has been put on hold for a few months, or a bigger, more important priority has come up.
Whilst we always try to avoid these issues, they happen. It’s life.
What matters is that we don’t totally rely on them to achieve the targets we want. Doing this means we become prisoners of hope—and no one wants to be a prisoner of anything.
When our pipeline is the same as, or just over, the target, we also exude desperation—which is always a bad thing in a sales deal. We make rash decisions and push prospects to do things “just to hit the target,” and invariably that works against us.
Yet when we have a funnel full of leads that we are engaging with and having good conversations with, the pressure is off. That comes through in the way we work, and that “hidden 10%” is the secret to winning more.
The best way to see your pipeline is like people spinning plates. They continue to put plates up on tall needles and spin them so they can keep adding more. They keep an eye on each plate and give them a nudge now and again to keep them going—until the end of the act, when all the plates come down in an orderly way.
So, what is the best way to build up a 3 to 4 times pipeline?
ABP – Always Be Prospecting.
All too often, people do some prospecting, add some good deals to the pipeline, and then get overconfident. They assume that because they have £500,000 in their pipeline, the year is done. They relax. They take their foot off the gas—and when this happens, the car comes to a stop.
The way to avoid this is to put time aside daily for new prospecting.
Whether that’s contacting people through LinkedIn, sending prospecting videos, making calls, or another form of outreach—build it into your routine.
Make it a discipline. Set yourself mini targets: connect with 3 people a day, create 5 videos, or make 10 calls.
When you do this (alongside your existing sales work), you give yourself the best chance of adding new leads—and you also subconsciously take the pressure off the current deals in your pipeline.
What’s the worst that can happen?
You have too much business coming in?
You can choose who you work with?
You can raise prices due to demand?
None of these are bad outcomes.
So, work on the rule of 3 or 4.
Commit to doing something daily to build your pipeline.
You can never have enough leads—and when you have more than you need, good things start to happen, and targets start to get hit.
Try this out and let me know how you get on. A good starting point is to look at your current target, review your pipeline (especially the final two stages), and identify the gap. If it’s not 3 to 4 times the target, get to work.
Does this cover a challenging sales or business situation you’ve had?
If not, what would you like me to cover in a future newsletter?
Let me know. I read every reply, even if I can’t respond to them all.
Thanks, as ever, for being part of the community.
Have a brilliant sales week ahead, and remember: Eat or be eaten.
