Pipeline planning for personal success: a guide for sales leaders

Aligning personal development goals with consistent pipeline generation is crucial for your your team to achieve both personal growth and revenue success.

Without the carrot of the personal goals linked to pipeline generation, sales organisations run the risk of sellers paying lip service to pipeline targets, rather than seeing pipeline as the foundation of their future.

This blog explores ideas to coach your team members on linking their personal goals and their Pipeline Reconciliation Plans (PRPs) to link activity to success throughout the year.

Jump to:

• Coaching the link between personal and professional goals
• Aligning weekly activities with your overall strategy
• Measuring Leading indicators that matter

Coaching the link between personal and professional goals

For sales leaders, it is our job to coach our teams to success by offering insights and support to create this close link from pipeline theory to real action week on week:

1. Identify personal and professional goals:

Each team member is unique. They will have their own goals and motivations, specific to them.

The more personal the goals linked to pipeline creation, the greater the motivation to act. Simple yet often forgotten.

The uniqueness also applies to conversion rates. Whilst every company has coverage targets, each individual will have their own conversion rates. This should be factored into the plan.

2. Set SMART prospecting and campaigning goals:

Ensure that your goals are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-bound (SMART). This approach helps you create clear and actionable goals, week over week, that make pipeline progress and achievement easier to track. For example, instead of setting a vague goal like "improve sales," set a SMART goal like "increase sales by 20% in the next quarter by focusing on high-potential leads."

3. Breakdown goals with territory alignment:

Taking into consideration the type of territory, ensure you coach to drive coverage across the entire territory.

You’ll need to consider the average deal sizes of sellers to get a good mix of pipeline covering run rate, medium size deals and the large more high risk-reward deals.

4. Break down your goals into smaller "campaigning" tasks:

Breaking down your goals into smaller, manageable tasks makes them less overwhelming and more achievable.

The best way to coach your teams to do this is look at campaigns or sales plays which can be executed in waves. Ensure each campaign still has targets like identifying high-potential leads, scheduling meetings, and following up with prospects.

Aligning weekly activities with your overall strategy

To ensure that your pipeline goals are met, it's important to align your weekly activities with your overall strategy. Here are some tips to help you stay on track:

1. Set weekly targets:

Break down your pipeline goals into smaller, manageable weekly targets. This can help you stay focused and ensure that you’re consistently working towards your objectives. By setting weekly targets, you can create a sense of urgency and maintain momentum throughout the sales cycle. This approach also allows you to adjust as needed, ensuring that you’re always on track to meet your goals.

2. Review progress regularly:

Conduct regular pipeline reviews to assess your progress and make necessary adjustments. This can involve weekly or monthly meetings with your team to discuss the current state of the pipeline, identify any issues, and develop strategies to address them. Regular reviews can help ensure that you’re always aware of your progress and can make informed decisions about where to focus your efforts.

3. Optimise your activities:

Use the insights from your leading indicators (meetings set, opportunities created, and deals progressing to the next stage) to optimise your activities and focus on what works best. This can involve analysing your performance data to identify trends and patterns, and adjusting your strategies based on these insights. By continuously optimising your activities, you can ensure that you’re always working towards your goals in the most efficient and effective way possible.

Measuring Leading indicators that matter

When considering the progress of your teams, in their 121s it’s essential to measure key performance indicators (leading indicators) that matter. Here are our top tips on LIs:

1. Identify relevant leading indicators:

Start by identifying the leading indicators that are most relevant to the team’s goals and objectives. Typical LIs would be:

• New contacts identified, engaged, met
• New departments identified, engaged, met
• Number of new opportunities
• Number of discovery meeting
• Time between sales stages (i.e. pipeline and discovery)

2. Set benchmarks:

Establish benchmarks for each leading indicator to help you track the team’s progress. These benchmarks can be based on historical data, industry standards, or your own performance targets.

What do you expect from the team and each territory?

3. Track leading indicators in 121s:

Your sellers should be tracking the LIs and reporting back/discussing in their 121s. Ensure pipeline LIs get as much airtime as deal to avoid peaks in revenue closure.

Encourage use of the CRM as a single source of truth for the LIs, using the same dashboards and measuring mechanism across the whole team.

4. Analyse and adjust:

Analyse the leading indicator data to identify trends and patterns and make adjustments to your team’s strategy as needed.

New team members, products or markets will inform your strategy and may require a course correction throughout the year.

Conclusion

Aligning personal goals with pipeline success is essential for achieving consistent success in enterprise sales.

By setting clear and achievable goals and tracking and measuring relevant leading indicators, you and your teams drive the results needed for both personal growth and revenue growth.

Ready to take your pipeline generation to the next level? Join our comprehensive Pipeline Generation Planning course and learn how to structure your path to success. Sign up today and start achieving your sales goals!