Moving Deals Forward: Best Practices for Pipeline Management

October 5, 2023 - 10 min read

Wrike Team

In today's business landscape, effective pipeline management is crucial for organizations looking to stay ahead of the competition. A well-managed sales pipeline can not only help drive revenue growth but also provide valuable insights into the health of a company's sales process. This article will explore the key components of pipeline management and highlight best practices for optimizing your sales pipeline.

Understanding the Basics of Pipeline Management

Pipeline management refers to the process of overseeing and optimizing the sales pipeline, which is the visual representation of all the potential deals and opportunities a sales team is working on. Essentially, it is a snapshot of the entire sales process, from lead generation to deal closure.

When it comes to pipeline management, it's not just about tracking deals and forecasting revenue. It goes beyond that. Effective pipeline management involves actively managing the entire sales process to ensure deals progress smoothly through each stage. It requires monitoring the movement of deals, identifying bottlenecks or stalled deals, and proactively addressing any issues that may impede progress.

Its Importance

Effective pipeline management is vital for the success of any sales team. It enables sales teams to make informed decisions, allocate resources efficiently, and drive revenue growth. By having a clear view of the pipeline, sales leaders can identify trends, understand conversion rates, and implement strategies to improve overall sales performance.

Moreover, effective pipeline management allows for accurate sales forecasting. By analyzing historical data and understanding the current state of the pipeline, sales leaders can make reliable predictions about future revenue. This is crucial for setting realistic targets, making strategic business decisions, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of the organization.

Also, effective pipeline management promotes collaboration and accountability within the sales team. With a clear and transparent pipeline, team members can easily see the progress of each deal and understand their role in moving it forward. This fosters a sense of ownership and responsibility, leading to increased motivation and productivity.

Two employees discussing something on a computer screen — Photo by LinkedIn Sales Solution on Unsplash

Key Components of Pipeline Management

Now that we understand the basics, let's explore the key components of pipeline management.

Lead Generation

Lead generation is the first step in the sales process, requiring a deep understanding of the target market and customer profiles. Sales teams must consistently evaluate lead sources, optimize lead generation efforts, and align them with target customer profiles. By utilizing a combination of inbound and outbound marketing techniques, such as content marketing, social media advertising, search engine optimization, and email marketing, businesses can generate a consistent stream of leads.

Deal Progression

Deal progression is the movement of opportunities through the sales pipeline. Effective pipeline management involves closely monitoring deal progress, identifying potential roadblocks, and taking necessary actions to keep deals moving forward.

Sales teams should establish clear criteria for each stage of the pipeline. This enables accurate tracking and timely deal progression, allowing sales representatives to focus their efforts on advancing deals. Sales representatives should also engage in meaningful conversations, address any concerns or objections, and provide the necessary information to move the deal forward. Lastly, they can leverage technology tools, such as customer relationship management (CRM) systems, to track and manage deal progression. These systems provide a centralized platform for storing customer data, tracking interactions, and monitoring the status of deals.

Sales Forecasting

Sales forecasting is a critical aspect of pipeline management, as it allows businesses to predict future revenue and plan accordingly. Accurate sales forecasting provides valuable insights into the health of the sales pipeline and helps businesses allocate resources effectively. It enables sales teams to set realistic targets, allocate sales quotas, and identify areas for improvement.

For instance, advanced analytics tools can assist in sales forecasting by analyzing historical sales data, market trends, and customer behavior. These tools provide sales leaders with actionable insights, enabling them to make informed decisions and adjust sales strategies accordingly. Also, sales forecasting can help businesses identify potential risks and take proactive measures to mitigate them. By identifying potential bottlenecks or gaps in the sales pipeline, sales teams can implement strategies to address these issues and ensure a smooth sales process.

Best Practices for Optimizing Your Sales Pipeline

Now that we've covered the key components, let's delve into some best practices for optimizing your sales pipeline.

Regular Pipeline Reviews

One of the most effective ways to optimize your sales pipeline is to conduct regular pipeline reviews. These reviews allow you to assess the health of the pipeline, identify areas for improvement, and address any potential issues. By reviewing the pipeline on a consistent basis, you can monitor progress, evaluate conversion rates, and adjust strategies as needed.

During these reviews, it's important to analyze various metrics such as the number of leads generated, the conversion rate at each stage, and the average deal size. This data provides valuable insights into the effectiveness of your sales process and helps you identify bottlenecks or areas where improvements can be made.

Additionally, regular pipeline reviews provide an opportunity to collaborate with your sales team. By involving them in the review process, you can gather their input, gain a better understanding of their challenges, and collectively brainstorm solutions. This collaborative approach fosters a sense of ownership and accountability within the team, leading to improved performance and results.

Prioritizing Deals Based on Potential Value

Not all deals are equal, and prioritizing them based on their potential value is crucial. By focusing on high-value opportunities, you can allocate resources effectively and increase your chances of closing deals with significant impact. It's essential to assess the potential return on investment for each deal and prioritize those with the highest value.

When prioritizing deals, consider factors such as the size of the deal, the customer's long-term value, and the likelihood of closing the sale. By evaluating these aspects, you can identify the deals that are most likely to contribute to your overall revenue goals. This approach allows you to optimize your sales efforts and maximize your sales team's productivity.

Also prioritizing deals based on potential value enables you to focus on building strong relationships with high-value customers. By investing time and resources into these relationships, you can nurture them and increase the likelihood of repeat business or referrals in the future. This long-term approach to sales not only boosts revenue but also strengthens your brand reputation.

Maintaining a Balanced Pipeline

A balanced pipeline is key to sustaining consistent revenue growth. Sales teams should focus on maintaining a healthy mix of deals across different stages of the pipeline. This ensures a steady flow of opportunities and reduces the risk of relying too heavily on a few big deals. Periodically assess the distribution of deals within the pipeline and adjust strategies to maintain a balance.

When assessing the balance of your pipeline, consider the number of deals in each stage, the average time it takes to move from one stage to another, and the conversion rates at each stage. This analysis helps you identify any potential gaps or bottlenecks in your sales process. By addressing these issues, you can ensure a smooth flow of deals and minimize the risk of stagnation or missed opportunities.

In addition, it's important to consider the diversity of your customer base. Relying too heavily on a few key clients can be risky, as their changing needs or business circumstances may impact your revenue. By diversifying your customer portfolio, you can mitigate this risk and create a more stable foundation for growth.

Furthermore, a balanced pipeline allows you to allocate resources effectively. By having deals at various stages, you can allocate your sales team's time and effort based on the urgency and potential value of each deal. This strategic resource allocation ensures that you are maximizing your team's productivity and optimizing your overall sales performance.

Colleagues working in a room — Photo by Jason Goodman on Unsplash

Overcoming Common Challenges in Pipeline Management

While pipeline management is essential, it comes with its fair share of challenges. Let's explore some common challenges and how to overcome them.

Inaccurate Sales Forecasting

Inaccurate sales forecasting can lead to missed targets and flawed business decisions. This challenge often arises due to insufficient data accuracy. To overcome this challenge, maintain data accuracy by regularly updating the pipeline and validating the stage of each deal. By implementing robust reporting mechanisms and leveraging technology to automate data collection and analysis, organizations can improve the accuracy of their sales forecasting. This, in turn, enables them to make more informed decisions and set realistic targets.

What's more, businesses can consider implementing predictive analytics tools that utilize historical data and advanced algorithms to forecast sales more accurately. These tools can identify patterns and trends, enabling sales teams to anticipate customer behavior and adjust their strategies accordingly. By leveraging technology and data-driven insights, organizations can minimize the risk of inaccurate sales forecasting and increase their chances of meeting or even exceeding their sales targets.

Stagnant Deals

Stagnant deals are those that get stuck at a particular stage of the pipeline, hindering overall progress. This challenge can be frustrating for sales teams and can significantly impact revenue generation. To address this challenge, proactively identify potential bottlenecks and implement strategies to overcome them.

One effective strategy is to provide sales teams with the necessary tools and resources to engage with prospects, address concerns, and move deals forward. This can include training programs to enhance sales skills, access to product experts who can provide additional information or support, and the implementation of efficient communication channels to facilitate timely and effective collaboration between sales representatives and prospects.

Additionally, try implementing a structured deal review process. This process involves regularly reviewing stagnant deals with the sales team to identify the root causes of the stagnation and develop action plans to address them. By analyzing the reasons behind stagnant deals, organizations can identify common patterns or issues and implement preventive measures to avoid similar situations in the future.

Inefficient Lead Management

Inefficient lead management can result in missed opportunities and wasted resources. This challenge often arises due to a lack of clear processes and effective tracking mechanisms. To improve lead management, establish a clear process for lead qualification and nurturing.

Implementing a customer relationship management (CRM) system can be instrumental in effectively tracking and managing leads. A CRM system allows organizations to centralize lead information, track interactions with prospects, and automate lead nurturing activities. By utilizing a CRM system, organizations can ensure that no lead falls through the cracks and that each lead receives the appropriate attention and follow-up.

Regularly reviewing lead sources is another crucial aspect of efficient lead management. Organizations should evaluate the effectiveness of different lead sources and optimize their lead generation efforts accordingly. This can mean reallocating resources to the most successful lead sources, refining targeting strategies, or exploring new lead generation channels.

Lastlty, organizations can leverage marketing automation tools to streamline lead management processes. These tools can automate lead scoring, lead nurturing campaigns, and lead qualification, allowing sales teams to focus their efforts on the most promising leads.

Move Deals Forward with Wrike

Implementing best practices for pipeline management to move deals forward is like efficiently navigating a river. It ensures that your sales efforts are directed and that prospects move effectively towards a sale. However, managing these pipelines across multiple sales teams can be complex.

This is where Wrike steps in. Within Wrike, you can easily create folders for each sales team or pipeline stage. These folders can serve as a place where you can store prospect details, stage goals, and even your sales strategies. This structured approach brings direction and effectiveness to your sales journey, much like efficiently navigating a river.

And when it comes to the other documents and workflows your business needs — whether it's customer communication or sales reporting — Wrike has you covered with robust project management features and ready-to-use templates. Ready to move deals forward? Start your free trial of Wrike today.

Note: This article was created with the assistance of an AI engine. It has been reviewed and revised by our team of experts to ensure accuracy and quality.

Wrike Team

Occasionally we write blog posts where multiple people contribute. Since our idea of having a gladiator arena where contributors would fight to the death to win total authorship wasn’t approved by HR, this was the compromise.

#Productivity Advice #Marketing Teams

Project Management 5 min read

Secrets to Getting Projects Done in Less Time

The secret of efficiency in project management is pretty simple: You don't need to do everything; you need to do everything that's important. But with tight deadlines, lots of people and multiple projects, planning your time can be very tricky. Matt has first-hand knowledge of what it means to manage multiple project groups with their own goals, priorities and working habits. He knows precisely how crucial it is to have a clear picture of all projects to allocate resources between them, especially when you plan hundreds of tasks for a really large team. "At some point, we decided to bring all that to a system, rather than continue trying to work through the Outlook Calendar," comments Matt Bullock. In less than three months of using Wrike, Matt systematized all his team's tasks and projects in one place. After that, he implemented four project management rules that dramatically changed project planning for Base Camp Franchising and allowed the team to do more in less time with better quality. If you feel overloaded with tasks and stressed out by deadlines, Matt's experience can really help you out. These four rules revolutionized project management in Base Camp Franchising. If you face the same challenges of running multiple projects simultaneously, they might be helpful for your business, too. Here's what Matt advises: 1. Coordinate your team's efforts This may seem obvious, but in reality, too often people are overloaded with unstructured information when new tasks spontaneously appear from everywhere - via e-mails, phone, Skype, etc. Employees rarely see the whole picture of the project, so they're not aware of where the team's priorities stand, or their own definition of capacity in business. Consequently, they get out of sync in collaboration. We all have faced situations when, say, it took three days to complete a task, while there were only three people working on it for an hour each. When a worker isn't in the loop with what his peer does, he might have a wrong vision of priorities. People work on things that seem to be the most important for them, but the priorities may be different on the level of an entire project. To avoid misalignment in his team's efforts, Matt implemented Wrike project management software, which made collaboration in Base Camp Franchising absolutely transparent: "There are two things I like about Wrike. First, it gives me a list of to-dos within each project any time I need it. Secondly, it automatically sends notifications, so that not only me, but all other project contributors are always aware of what they need to accomplish and when." 2. There can't be too many experts We got used to the idea that too many cooks spoil the broth. However, with the impact of technology, this proverb doesn't really match modern collaboration. If your team is able to share information and communicate efficiently, involving experts can help you discover mistakes on earlier stages and avoid losing time on unpromising projects. "We have an outsourcing coder, and I'm able to pull in other subject matter experts on each particular project. We all work in the same environment in Wrike and thus manage to keep everyone in the loop. We involve more people and produce a better product because of that." (Matt Bullock) 3. Use technologies that save time Try to minimize the time you spend on collecting status updates and spreading the information between all collaborators. Instead, focus on the activities that add real value to the results you deliver to your customers. Matt highlights: "Instead of having long meetings in order to know how is the project going, in Wrike, it's like in Facebook, where you post a status on a task when something is happening, and you always know when something has changed or needs to be changed. That helps a lot!" 4. Be precise; it really helps! Project management is not only about managing projects, but also about managing opportunities. You should be ready to estimate your resources immediately when a new idea comes up. This way, you don't risk jumping into something that you are unable to accomplish before the deadline. Matt believes that the Gantt chart is the most efficient tool for making this tip work: "We use the Gantt chart, where we can easily see how much time we have and decide whether we are able to add a new feature or not. I can set task dependencies and milestones, so it's easy to plan to see how changes might influence everything." ___ Applying these methods to its project management practices, Base Camp Franchising improved its time planning and made collaboration more efficient. As a consequence, no change can knock the team off the course – it's now able to react way faster than before. Matt admits that Wrike has greatly influenced these improvements and supports his business a lot on the way to achievements. We welcome you to join one of our FREE Webinar, where you'll learn how Wrike can make your business more successful, too!

Project Management 10 min read

What Soft Skills do Project Managers Need?

As a project manager, you oversee projects from beginning to end. You walk the project through its entire lifecycle, from initiation to closure. It’s a big job, and there are various skills and tasks involved that help you get there. Sure, you’ve got a toolbox full of hard skills (also known as technical skills) in your back pocket — things like risk management, budgeting, and project planning, to name a few. But those competencies aren’t enough. You need soft skills, otherwise known as interpersonal skills, to help you successfully cross the finish line. Here, we’ll break down what soft skills are, why every project manager needs them, and provide some of the top project manager soft skills you’ll need to be the best project manager you can be. Let’s dive in. What are soft skills? What exactly are soft skills? Soft skills are the interpersonal behavior skills that allow you to work well with other people and do your job successfully. These skills are often transferable, meaning they apply and add value no matter what role or industry you’re in. While hard skills help you do your specific job (in this case, project management), soft skills help you address the people side of things. You might hear soft skills referred to as interpersonal skills, non-technical skills, or transferable skills. Frequently mentioned soft skills include communication, leadership, problem-solving, teamwork, and creativity. Many job postings include a handful of soft skills in the requirements, and so should your resume. According to recent research by Monster, the four top skills that employers are looking for in 2021 are actually all soft skills: dependability, teamwork/collaboration, problem-solving, and flexibility. While technical skills are necessary and important for managing projects, soft skills are crucial too — especially when you’ll be collaborating and communicating with so many different people on a project team. What are hard skills for project managers? Hard skills, or technical skills, are the aspects of your role as a project manager that often include tangible deliverables that can be quantified. Hard skills in project management speak to the tools, techniques, and methodologies you can apply in your work. One way to demonstrate your hard skills as a project manager is through certifications such as the Project Management Professional (PMP) or the Certified Associate in Project Management (CAPM). Other hard skills include mastering project management methodologies like Agile, Kanban, and Scrum. Hard skills for project managers also include project planning, budgeting, risk management, documentation development, and project control, to name a few. Without these skills, it would be challenging to fulfill your role as a project manager, right? But pair these with your soft skills and you will not only lead a project from start to finish — you’ll do it successfully. Can a soft skill become a hard skill? Soft skills and hard skills are different by nature. Remember that soft skills are transferable, interpersonal, and allow you to work well with other people. Hard skills are developed through experience and education and are generally more technical. So no, soft skills can’t necessarily become hard skills, but they do work well together. For example, documentation development is a hard skill that you may want to improve. This includes drafting project briefs, task templates, communication plans, checklists — you name it. Proper documentation requires that you know how much to share without missing information or adding too many details. What’s the soft skill that can help you improve your documentation development? You guessed it: communication. While communication skills are a key component of documentation development, the hard skill goes beyond merely knowing how to communicate. See? Those skills work well together but aren’t one and the same. What is the importance of soft skills in project management? Project management is never just about getting the project done. Human interaction and communication are the core to effective project management. Think of a project manager as a symphony conductor or the maestro leading an orchestra. To get the symphony to play beautifully, a combination of leading, mentoring, communicating, and musical planning is needed. It wouldn’t be enough for the symphony to simply know how to make music on their own. This analogy speaks to the importance of soft skills in project management. As the leader, these soft skills — even when they take place behind the scenes — help steer the team toward effective execution. Leading others and guiding them through the project lifecycle comes with a level of responsibility that requires soft skills. If you can’t effectively communicate with your team, you may put the project at risk. Without problem-solving skills, the project timeline may be impacted negatively. In short, without soft skills, your project is at risk of failing. Top soft skills for project managers So, what soft skills matter most? Here are just a few of the soft skills required for a project manager. Add these must-learn project manager soft skills to your list: 1. Leadership As a project manager, you are the one in the driver’s seat. You need to have a clear vision and the ability to influence the project team. Effective leadership skills will inspire your team members to trust you as an authority and buy into your ideas for each project. It’s important to understand that leadership and management are different. Being a leader isn’t merely getting people to listen to you and do what you want. Leadership is about empowering others, being viewed as a strong source of authority and knowledge, and guiding and teaching others along the way. 2. Communication Communication skills, both written and verbal, are crucial in every role, but particularly for project managers. Would you be able to manage a project from start to finish without any communication? Not a chance. Solid communication skills help your project team do their best work, ensure stakeholders are adequately informed, and help you keep all parties on the same page. Email updates, project documentation, and stakeholder presentations are all areas you can hone your communication to become a more effective project manager. 3. Problem-solving Every project has a level of risk associated with it — whether scope creep occurs, you go over budget, or you miss a deadline. Eliminating risks entirely isn’t necessary; knowing how to problem solve and mitigate them is. As a project manager, you need to be quick on your feet and solve any problem that might arise throughout the project lifecycle. The truth is, every project will bring its own challenges. You need to have the problem-solving skills necessary to address and solve those challenges to keep things moving. 4. Teamwork The success of the project doesn’t depend on the project manager alone. Rather, the success of the project is driven by the project team. That means teamwork and being able to steer many toward a common goal and output is critical. When you facilitate teamwork as a project manager, you’ll contribute to the project being completed on time, individual team members feeling more satisfied, and maintaining a positive work environment with high morale. 5. Conflict resolution As a project manager, you will routinely deal with conflict. Whether it’s a conflict amongst your project team, with key stakeholders, or with other external sources, knowing how to address and handle conflict is crucial for your role. With varying personalities, perspectives, goals, and values, conflict is often unavoidable, and there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach to resolving those issues. Fortunately, there are a number of resolution strategies that can be deployed to effectively manage conflict within the project environment. What soft skills are needed for project management, even if you’re not a project manager? Maybe you aren’t an official project manager, but engage and participate in some level of project management in your role. In addition to the soft skills mentioned above, some additional soft skills needed for project management worth focusing on are active listening and time management. Working with other team members with different working styles and personalities warrants strong active listening skills. Active listening is an important project management soft skill because it requires focusing on what the speaker is saying to fully understand their message. No matter what member of the project team you are or what type of project you’re running, active listening is essential. Being able to assess and manage your time, prioritize tasks by order of importance to the project, and meet deadlines are all key components of success in project management. Time management is all about working efficiently, saving time, and managing your workload to deliver quality results at the end of the project. How Wrike can help project managers Effective project management is no easy task, but having the right soft skills can help you run projects with more strategy and less stress. Dive into the list of skills we provided and take your role as a project manager to the next level. Want to put your communication and teamwork skills to use? Start your free trial of Wrike to see how it can help you centralize communication and work collaboratively with your project team.

Project Management 5 min read

Project Schedules, Hamster Wheels, and Your Team's Hidden Superpower

"Failing to plan is planning to fail," - some sources attribute this saying to Winston Churchill, while others refer to Benjamin Franklin, or Alan Lakein, author on time management. Whoever the author really was, his succinct wisdom could help many project managers avoid costly mistakes. It seems that there are many project teams who suffer from inaccurate plans and their consequences. In fact, this challenge ranked as no.3 in the list of the biggest productivity killers, according to our recent survey. In this post, I'll observe some ways to keep your team safe from this threat and make sure your project's timeline is accurate. Note: This is the third post in a series on fighting productivity killers. In case you’ve only plugged into this discussion, don’t miss the two previous productivity battles against interruptions and procrastination. Keeping project plans up-to-date is especially difficult if you’re the sole hub for collecting updates from the team and then communicating the changes to them. The more agile your project management approach is, paired with a volatile outside environment, the more challenging this job is. Trying to slow down the outside world will not be any more helpful than trying to ask the weather to be more predictable. The work isn't much fun if by the time you finish merging the latest updates into the plan and send it out, it's already outdated. One option is to manage your project with outdated plans, which is detrimental to the business and potentially your career. The other option is trying to use current plans but really you are running a hamster wheel marathon of pulling updates non-stop and still getting nowhere. Is there something else? You bet. The moment you chose to read this blog post over a Dilbert cartoon, you knew there has to be an answer, a jiu-jitsu move that embraces the facts as they are, and turns what could be a problem into an advantage. The bigger your team is, the more status updates you have, which makes your job harder. However the larger your team is, the more minds and hands are at your service to keep track of it all. As with many other things in management, the answer is in delegation. Work out a setting where instead of you being the hub and bottleneck of all project updates, pass the role of the hub to a tool, like a collaborative planning software or a board on the wall (well, I don't really recommend writing on physical walls in the era of smartphones and global teams, but I had to give you the choice, right?). So now, with that central hub available to all team members 24x7, if a person has an update, they don't have to pass it through you. Instead, the person can deliver it directly to the hub and others have direct access to this latest info, for when they need it. You still need to keep an eye on work progress, as well as coordinate, lead and teach, but leading and doing everything yourself are very different roles. The former is a critical factor in project success, and the latter is a bottleneck to all and a stress-generating machine to you. Delegating planning to your team members has a powerful effect on the psychological side. If the deadlines weren't imposed by the manager, but the employee set them on his own, he naturally feels more responsibility and more motivation for getting it done on time. Now, as with many other great things in life, it's easier said than done. Collaborative planning not only requires you to change your habits, but also the habits of your team. A team habit that is essential for collaborative planning is the culture of sharing. For more detailed insights into how to build this culture, check out my recent post dedicated to this topic. Also, if you are looking for some tips on how to introduce a new habit to your team, there was a post about that, as well. If you have adopted the centralized hub for planning, but your plans are still outdated, the problem is either with the tool or with its adoption amongst your team. You could use some jiu-jitsu in this area as well - instead of fighting with existing habits, you can sometimes leverage them in a creative way. For example, at Wrike we built convenient email add-ons that let your team update tasks right from Outlook/Mac Mail/Gmail. This uses email to your (and everyone's) benefit and helps with keeping project planning up-to-date. Another example of a creative approach is turning your "project hub" from a passive store for information into an acting agent (now you see why software is better than walls) - it can ping your team when they need to work on something, it can generate reports for you, it can even buzz a mobile phone or send a message when something interesting has changed. That does not just save your time, but it also helps to engage everyone. What are your thoughts? What other productivity enemies did you face in your team and how did you fight them off?

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Moving Deals Forward: Best Practices for Pipeline Management