When you are assessing the overall health of your company, the sales pipeline is a critical place to start. When Arc looks at a sales pipeline, we measure two things. We look at each deal and where it is in relationship to the ability to close the deal – not the probability of closing, but how far along the path the deal is. Each week, the sales team should put together a pipeline report including the name of the account, its sales rep, what product is being offered, size of the deal, date of expected close, date of last contact and age (how long it’s been in the pipeline and how long at that stage). This allows the sales VP and all the sales reps to understand the larger picture and how to move their own deals forward.
The other thing we measure is velocity of the entire pipeline. This means the number and size of new deals coming in, the overall size of each step and if they are growing. For instance, a company may have 20 deals worth 100k at 50 percent and 5 worth 60k at 30 percent; the next week there may be 15 deals at 75k and 10 deals at 85k. Keeping tabs on this helps to measure the health of the entire sales process – and your entire company. If you are planning to take a closer look at how you assess your sales pipeline, contact us for more on how we can help you understand where you are at and then take your company to the next level.
(Photo credit Lisa Creech Bledsoe on Flickr)
