HOW AN A-PLAYER VIEWS PIPELINE AND PRIORITIES IN B2B SALES

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Have you noticed any ups and downs with pipeline and emotions and priorities in your career? Just a few.

Just a few. It seems like The pipeline is always a hot discussion, no matter what company I was at or whatever sales role I was in. And it was always somewhat of a roller coaster. It was crazy. You think everything's looking bleak at some point, and then all of a sudden you get a big deal and you're feeling great, and then you get punched in the face again. So a lot of ups and downs, a lot of things that go into it. And trying to forecast the pipeline accurately is a whole discussion in itself because there's a lot of games being played from the sales reps, from the managers, from the leadership, and everyone's playing some type of game with the pipeline. So trying to make it accurate is not very easy, that's for sure.

And I find it crazy because pipeline, it's subjective.

Okay.

And I hear this marketing guy talk about high intent pipeline and they put a number to it and I go, where'd you get that number? They made it up. And okay, so you made it up. So is that a fact or is that an opinion? It's an opinion, right? You made it up.

Yep.

That's right. If I ask you, how much do you weigh? And you don't have access to a scale, you guess. And I bet you guess in favor of what impression you want to give. So this pipeline and this metric ideally is good. We all want pipeline. We want deals that we're working on. And, but when you put a number to it, you're putting that number to it for your ego, your manager, your comfort level. But is it a fact?

And that's what it came down to is that the pipeline is never accurate. And which isn't, which isn't good for, for anybody for, because then you start believing it yourself. You're looking at it so much, you start believing it. But yeah, I've always, I mean, I definitely use some type of pipeline CRM. I use kind of my own methods just with old school kind of Google Sheets, Excel documents, just to keep the top priority straight. But I mean, I always try to start off strong at the beginning of the year and try not to be complacent going into the end of the year. So I kind of have like a heightened sense of urgency in the back half trying to plan for the following year. That way you're not always scrambling to catch up and then you can be more realistic with it. Because if you're, if you're playing catch up with, with the pipeline or you're already behind at the beginning of the year, it's just a recipe for a lot of stress, a lot of burnout, a lot of jumping through hoops and pushing too hard when you really Shouldn't be doing that. So I think if you have a sense of urgency and not get complacent and really focus on whatever you need to do to get things to the top of the pipeline, like right now in the, you know, in the back half or whatever time of year it is, then that's the way to do it. And that's been successful in all the great companies I've worked for. They had this sense of urgency of like, so even when things were going well, it almost felt like the numbers weren't good because they just wanted to keep keep doing that. So that's sort of my mentality, which can be probably a little pressure, too much pressure sometimes. But I think that helps with the pipeline at the end of the day.

Yeah. And I think it really clearly depends on the type of sale you have and how big deals are and how much time is required to close out the existing deals. Because it takes a lot of effort to build pipeline. You know, there's the stuff that comes to you, that's easy, but the stuff that you have to go out and nurture, build, hunt or harvest or nurture takes a lot of time and it's consistent time. And I think too many sales reps are just reactive. They Man, the manager says you need 300% of your quota in pipe to feel comfortable. Well, you can do that in 10 seconds. You know, just triple the size of the deals that you graded them on in the CRM. But that doesn't change anything in reality other than you get the manager off your butt back. What you really need to do is like, how do you proportion your time, your effort, and your energy Into a collection of possibilities. And there's very few reps who have that balance. Most of the best reps I've seen, they close the quarter, they go on vacation, and then they start all over again. But they're the ones who typically have great territories and pipeline isn't really a problem. And then there are other people who just keep putting stuff in the pipeline but don't close anything. Because it's easy to put it in pipeline. There's no asset test to it.

Yeah. Then you look great at the QBR. So you're the rock star at the QBR. It's like, oh man, Brian's got $4 million in the pipeline. Looks great. And then it's the same story every time, but nothing ever closes. But yeah, you need a system behind whatever you're doing. So everybody has some form of CRM that they have to use most likely. Whether it's HubSpot or Salesforce. I was never a huge fan of using that for my own pipeline, but I had to at certain times. But you know, how many meetings do you have to have realistically a week if you don't have a ton of inbound? It'd be great if you have a ton of inbound, but most salespeople don't have a ton of inbound. So how many meetings do you need to create a week? How many deals do you need to close a quarter? What's, what's the average deal size? I mean, all that stuff. If you don't If you don't know the numbers behind it, then you're just kind of flying blind a little bit and you don't know where you're going. So I try— what's that?

Have you ever seen that math work?

The meetings and— well, I mean, just getting a rough idea of how many deals you need to close and like the average deal size. The meetings, it's debatable what— how many of the meetings actually turn into something.

Yeah. I mean, that math comes out every January. Since I've been in sales, no matter who sends it out, it looks identical. And I kept, and I bought into it for the longest time. And then I go, well, is this working for anyone? Because the deal either closes or it doesn't close. And I think it's a real judgment call on evaluating a deal. And pipeline can be a real pacifier for you as well. If you've got a $1 million quota and $3 million in pipeline, it feels good, doesn't it?

Yeah. You're ahead of the curve.

Yeah. Until you miss the number in Q1, but oh, pipeline went to $4 million. I'm doing better. I think it really comes down to, you You need a pipeline. How much do you need is kind of your judgment call. How do you balance your time and what type of rep are you? Are you the type of rep that you can get a B deal and turn it into an A deal? Or are you the type of person, the B deal, the best you can get is a B deal out of it? A lot of people, the best reps are like, okay, it's a $50K deal. I could probably get it to $150K if I spend time on it. It's probably worth doing because that's easier than generating 3 more of these deals to get to the same $150,000.

Yeah, I mean, typically the best reps are always going deeper with less accounts with those bigger deal opportunities. So if you can just try to figure out what are the traits and tendencies of those really big deals or those positive opportunities and kind of Compartmentalize that in your head, and then you can go deeper with 5 deals versus trying to scramble for 15 deals and run around and not getting much done. So yeah, in theory, you could have $1.5 million in the pipeline, but you close 80% of that, which is a great percentage, right? So that would be good. And I think if you can keep track of what makes the deal successful and where you can go deeper strategically, then that makes a ton of sense. It's not always going to work out Perfect. But once you have momentum with an account, if you already close something, maybe there's add-on things you can do later. And how do you kind of keep building that snowball? Because once you've already built up your brand and they like you and you've proven yourself, it's much easier to get more things done. So instead of the glamorous, oh, a completely brand new customer, brand new opportunity, companies are always trying to get brand new customers, which is really hard to do. If you could double that with existing customers and it's profitable business, why not do that? And you're gonna be working less and you're not gonna drive yourself crazy and your boss will probably still be happy with you as well.

Yeah. And I think too many people just look at pipeline as this golden opportunity, this magical thing. And it's like, well, you made it up first of all, because You don't know what size it is. It could be a big company, but a small person within the big company or a tiny division. And people think there's this one person at that big company that cares about this and they make a decision and it's going to go everywhere. And I think too many people fall into the metrics of it, like win rate, you know, because that comes up with the equation as well. How many deals do you have to work on? Well, that depends on your win rate. Well, you know how to increase your win rate real fast? Work on less deals.

Yeah.

You know, you don't need anything more than like 8th grade math to outsmart these metrics. And I love when people put up win rate, help you increase your win rate. Well, that's real easy to do. Work on less deals. The win rate will naturally go up. And here's the terrible part about a pipeline. The more you put in there or the more individual deals, your win rate's gonna go down because you're working on more deals by definition.

Yeah.

Some of them aren't as good as the other ones. And all of a sudden the managers now flip around on this. It's like, well, Pipeline's good, win rate's down though. And people buy into this BS instead of, okay, do you get comped on either win rate or pipeline?

No. No.

No. You don't.

Nope.

So caring too much about it is not caring about what matters. You get paid on deals that are closed. You know, Whether it's an existing account or a new logo, they might have a bump in the comp plan for new logos. Company loves new logos like you stated, but upsell is a whole lot easier than new sell.

So it's easy to get, yeah, it's easy to get enamored with, I guess, the mirage of the pipeline and get distracted. And the reality is most of it's not real anyway. So I think And then you start seeing big numbers too, and that can be distracting as well, where it seems overwhelming that you have to close $2 million in the pipeline, whatever the numbers are. So I think it just, everything always seems to come back to habits and what are you doing daily to get yourself there and just kind of have a system and keep it simple and just keep kind of chopping away at what you want to do. And that may be working with less customers and going deeper, which is a great way to do it. But I think you just get so enamored with these big numbers and Everyone feels good about it. It's rah rah after the sales kickoff, to your point, and then you're not really focused on the stuff that's going to get you there and actually thinking about what will get you there versus just looking good in a CRM or whatever. So I think it just comes back to habits and what you're doing daily and really mapping out your territory and understanding where the opportunities are and just getting rid of the noise and not— if you can get to those other smaller deals that pop up or they may be in the B or C pipeline, great. But otherwise focus on the stuff that's going to get you paid.

Yeah. And I think you have to become good at managing a lot of things because if you have to do 10 deals a quarter, you probably have to be working on 20 or 30 deals and you have to be a good judge of what to invest your time into. And that comes down to you. You can't say, oh, my manager wanted me to work on this deal, or they seem so interested. You have to determine, is that real interest or is it just curiosity? Or are they just lonely and just want to learn about the new market? And boy, you're a fun guy to talk to. You have to be the judge. Is the problem big enough? Do they care enough? Are they taking action? You know, gotta have that. Judgment skill of being able to evaluate and triage your pipeline. And I don't think too many people are that good at that. They look at the CRM and they see a huge list of possible deals and they feel comfortable until they start calling those people and it's like, yeah, I just wanted the ebook or yeah, I just wanted the iPad at the webinar.

That's why I converted. Yeah. I mean, it, it's not easy. It's not easy, man. It, there's definitely some trial and error over the years. And until you really start thinking deep about it, like this conversation, you're going to keep falling into the same mistakes from the past. And, and it's easy to treat everything equal. And I think that's probably what happens a lot with the numbers game and all these different things out there. But what, what are the common themes of deals that are successful and how have you hit the numbers in the past too? So is that existing customers? Is that when you do a trial or a pilot? Is that when they have some deadline because they have a budget cutoff at the end of the year? All those things that go into it. And then if you can start to see some commonalities and then look for that and go deeper. So, but there was definitely times where I was treating everything equal and that's just, you're just going to get burnt out. You're gonna get stressed out. It's not, you may be able to hit your numbers, For a decent amount of time and still do well, but it's just not sustainable. So the best salespeople also don't tend to, I mean, they still work hard, don't get me wrong, but they're not working 80 hours a week. They're probably working 50 and getting a lot more done. And then you have the people that are just, which I have moments of this where I was working 60 plus all the time, working on everything and still getting things done and making it happen, but it was not good for the health or good for The burnout and stress part of it. So yeah, that's something too that I see is if you can be more effective and work on less, those are the people that always have the biggest sales numbers and always at the top of the leaderboard.

Yeah, because think about what percentage of the people in your CRM are ever going to buy, probably less than 1%. And that numbers game that you were talking about, you know, number of Prospecting activities, average deal size, win rate. Inverse that. Ask yourself, how many inbound leads do we get per week, per month, whatever? Then, okay, that represents 10, just for the math to be easy. Then think of what market share do you own compared to all the alternatives? Let's say it's 10%. That means that there's 100 people this month that are reaching out, that are inbound, warm inbound, that have active interest. Then let's say there's 10 times that, that have, that haven't reached out yet. They're right between recognizing the problem but haven't reached out. So now there's 1,000 companies in the whole world What's the likelihood that you're gonna find that 1,000 companies out of a million possible in your total addressable market using finding interest prospecting, which is what everyone's doing? No one's in the create interest prospecting.

That's not very high. It's extremely low. It's probably negative percent for that.

Yeah. I mean, if you do the math, it's like, okay, well, say there's a million companies and there's 1,000 that are at the right sweet spot. Okay. So that's what, 1%?

Mm-hmm.

Okay.

Yep.

That's a lot of dialing and spamming that you have to do to find that person.

Yeah. And then you have to prioritize if you do have inbound, if you're lucky to have inbound, which not everybody does. I mean, that's obviously gonna go filter to the top of the, top of the list of opportunities and that's gonna make your life easier. You know, you get some confidence with that, but then the completely cold is gonna be a different conversation. But everyone's just pitching right now to, to put more stuff in their pipeline. But that's, they probably have one conversation with someone, then they throw something in the pipeline that I mean, just because they talked to them and now it's in the pipeline for $50K and that person wasn't even interested or didn't even understand the problem and they just got pitched something. So yeah, it's, you also have to prioritize the inbound. What's an A opportunity? These completely cold ones, even if your company wants to take market share, how realistic is that? So you have to kind of play that game to let them know that you're doing that a little bit, but then focus on the stuff that's actually gonna close. But Yeah, there's a lot of, a lot of spam, a lot of, a lot of spam to try to get the pipeline built up, I guess, is sort of what's happening out there with all the cadences and pitch slaps and what have you.

And you also got to say, like, in my market, do people reach out or come inbound the month they're ready to buy, or is it 6 months before they're ready to buy, or a year before they're ready to buy? You know, like when you buy a new car, when do you start thinking about buying a new car?

Decent in advance. I mean, probably a couple months or so, something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

So don't you think that's how other people do it? I'm like years, you know, when I go buy a car, it's a year. I mean, I drive by the dealership a good year or 2. I'm the sales rep's nightmare because it's like, oh, do I need it? Do I want it?

Do I?

Who cares, right? All the bullshit that the sales reps have to hear. But what do we think when somebody comes and converts this quarter? Is that because of their need or our need? It's our need.

Our need. Yep.

And then we think, wow, we're not doing our job if it slips to next quarter. Or a time bomb discount won't close it. So you really have to empathize with what does the market do in your space. Like a lot of the SaaS space or renewal space, it's contingent on that renewal date unless you're willing to finance the gap. And so if the renewal date is 6 months away, That's probably when they're going to buy and they're going to evaluate in the next 3 to 4 months. And if you try and cram it, are you helping yourself or you're hurting yourself?

Definitely hurting yourself.

Yeah. And but that's what everybody wants to do because they need deals.

Timing is a huge part of it. So, I mean, summer is typically slower. People are out of town all the time. If you don't get something done before Thanksgiving, It's highly unlikely with the holidays to get something done at those last month and a half. There's what you're talking about with SaaS and the timelines. I know government and healthcare sometimes will have deadlines and budgets. When I dealt with Home Depot, they were planning for Q4 because that's a big— where they sell massive amounts. So they have to ship stuff 6 or 9 months out. So yeah, there's a lot of that. And if you don't understand that process and you're trying to create too much of a sense of urgency, it's gonna bite you on that. So I think you, you need to understand the seasonality of your business so that way if it's really heavy in Q1 or Q4, you're prepared for that because you're not gonna be able to make it up in those other quarters depending on what, what type of products you're selling for sure.

And, and plus you've gotta understand how do they manage territories on the yearly boundary? Let's say it's calendar year. You go into Q4 and you don't know how they do it. Most likely a lot of the prospecting you do in Q4, you'll never ever get the benefit from.

Because they're gonna chop up the territories.

They're gonna chop up the territories.

Yeah.

The better, yeah, the better you do, the more they chop up your territory so you don't have as much there.

So let's say they've geographically focused and you've got Atlanta. Sure, you got to prospect, but you probably want to prospect in your geography. You don't want to prospect in Charlotte or Tampa. You got to kind of ask yourself, what are they most likely going to take away? Because all that prospecting in Charlotte and Tampa is for your new best friend who starts January 2nd, right?

Yep.

It's gonna be, hey Dustin, just transfer that money into my bank account. Thank you.

Yeah, not a good feeling. It's definitely happened to me before, especially the bigger companies. The bigger companies, they, they claim that they want everyone to make a certain amount of money, but they actually chop up the territories that way they only can make a certain amount and they're capped out at $250K or $300K. So it's pretty consistent. From what I've seen from the industries, if they're really big company, they're trying to chop up the territories because they think, they claim it brings new business, but they're really just trying to cap what people make is what I think at least.

Yeah. Well, I mean, you do need more people, but why not give them a greenfield territory? Oh, well, to attract them, we've gotta give them some pipeline. And it's like, it's a, it's a shell game because you can take it away from quota. Right? So let's say you have a $2 million quota, you get half your territory taken away. Did they reduce it to $1 million? No, they just take it away instead of, okay, well, if we take it away, they should take the quota for it away. But they never do that. And this is why I've seen reps so many times working on deals that I know is going to get pulled from them in January. And they're trying to do anything they can and they spend their whole Q4 on a lot of deals that they're going to lose or anticipate losing. And it's like, well, you know, it's a stretch already. And how are you going to feel in January if you don't get the deal and you lose the account? So you did all the work, you're going to get paid zero on it. Maybe stick to your territory, right?

Yeah. I mean, the only people I've seen be able to combat that are the very top performers that have been crushing it for years and they have so much brand equity and personal brand that they can negotiate and they're always the last people to get their territories chopped up. But that's easier said than done. Not everyone can be at the very, very top 1 or 2 spots, but that's the only time I've seen people be able to negotiate it. Otherwise you're just, somewhat of a commodity and they're gonna, if they're gonna chop it up, the territory, they're gonna chop it up. So you have to kind of know exactly what you're talking about.

But I mean, there's a few exceptions.

Yeah.

You know, a holdout, but you have to have that type of rapport with the manager.

Exactly. Right.

So if you, oh, I want Bank of America in Charlotte and I don't know what's big in Tampa anymore. But you could play that game, but then you're gonna lose it eventually. So you gotta understand, what can I hold onto for the longest? Because you don't want to be building up someone else's pipeline. It's hard enough to build up your own.

And I've played the game where I tried to negotiate that with the manager that I had a good rapport with, but there was so much politics on the back end because the company was so big and it was It was just a— it just was never going to happen no matter how hard I tried or how much he wanted to do it for me. It just, because of the politics, it just wasn't going to happen. So, but yeah, you are building up other people's pipelines, so you have to be aware of that. And if you are going to negotiate it, start early. Don't wait till November because they most likely are approving everything in November. So you need to start a few months prior to that if you actually want to have a puncher's chance of getting it done. So, but yeah, I mean, the pipeline side of it too, there's some situations where you're building up other people's pipeline and that's not a fun place to be. I mean, it's always no issue helping people out, but if you're on commission, it's, I mean, that can get a little dangerous if you're helping a lot of other people and then sacrificing your own time. Because I've been there a little bit in the past too.

Yeah. And I've been there and I've seen the deal close and all the accolades go to the person who closed it, not the person who started it, nurtured it for a year or two. It's the person who closes it that gets all the credit and the pay.

And the money. The money.

Yeah. And you're sitting there going, what?

What?

Remember me? I was the guy who got this thing going. Been on the forecast. Yeah. You're complaining how long it took. And it looks like whining. Oh, be a team player. Okay. Where's the team? I want to play. And this is one of the elements of sales that is both hard to adjust to and hard to manage.

There's a lot of things on your plate as a salesperson. So if you don't prioritize the pipeline and make it realistic, you're gonna be running around with your head cut off. So you have to really think about it strategically, kind of like this conversation.

And to become great at sales, the best way is to model somebody who already has become good at sales and to hear other people who have become great at sales and the journey that they're going through, the false beliefs, the misnomers, the mindset issues, all of this stuff that gets in our way between where we are in And the income that we want. Let's face it, we're in sales because we're money motivated, we're competitive, we want to be better every day than we were yesterday. And how do we do that? Hmm, just really, you know, read a book, listen to a podcast. That's good. Good start. I like it. But then you have to take action. And then you want both tactical and strategic ideas. You want mindset. You want strategy. You want to understand how companies buy. You want really deep content and examples, case studies, so that you can learn from other people's mistakes.

That's what I'm here for.

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Really?

Yeah. The difference between where you are today— let's say you're making $150,000. Decent, decent income. But you know, there's other people in your industry making $300K, $400K, $500K. Well, how are you going to do that? You all think it's just about getting a better job, a better territory, a better manager. They can help. Go do that. Then what happens? It's still you there with those leads, trying to close those deals. And Do you have the game? Few people do. Everyone thinks they do. Why not prove it? The market tells you what you're worth. Accept it. Now become better. And the way to become better is to improve every day. Really make a daily routine of learning and developing because it's not at the knowledge level. You have to become unconsciously competent at these skills, which takes time, repetition, and emotion. And I show you how to do it, how I did it, how I've taught hundreds of people to do it. But you have to want to because I can't force you. A lot of people wish I could. So do I, but I can't. So sign up today. We'll see you next time.