Revenue leaders Mark Tanner, Jonathon Blackburn, and Kendra Berner argue that chasing pipeline volume backfires. They advocate for rigorous deal reviews that surface strong champions and clear timing signals. Kendra shares how adding an executive sponsor secured a signature date in a financial deal.
Chapters
1, 2, 3, 4.
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Know where you win, super important. The next most important thing, and Gina, if you could flip us along, is pipeline. JB, take it away.
Yeah. So I think, as you mentioned, like knowing the deals you win, knowing where you win, knowing how you win, really important. If you just kind of follow that a little bit further down, I think the next kind of Maybe obvious, maybe not so obvious question is, cool, so now we know where we win. How much pipeline do I actually need to hit my goal and to hit quota? I think there's a standard, take your win rate and then divide that or multiply that to actually understand how much pipeline you need. So if you win 50% of your deals, you have a quota of $100K, you need $200K of quota to hit goal, basic sales math. But at a time like this, I think that question doesn't become as standard and as obvious, especially when the environment is shifting. I think the default playbook for most companies and leaders to use is kind of a volume-based approach, which is some version of like, hey, if we're expecting more deals will push and our win rates will probably decrease or drop, then we need to have more pipeline and more deals in the pipeline, I should say, to actually account for this, which is fair. But while I wouldn't say that increasing volume is wrong, I think the right answer, at least from my perspective, is probably a little bit more nuanced than kind of a blanket approach of how much pipeline do we need? Answer, more. Which kind of goes back to deals that were actually working. But before I kind of go further on this and give my insights and all that, I'd actually love to hear from Kendra and Antti on this. Kendra and Antti, excuse me. Kendra, I'm actually kind of curious, how are you thinking about like your own pipeline and your own deals right now in terms of what you're working, what's working, how much, all that kind of good stuff?
Yeah, I know this brings me back to when we used to do pipeline reviews together, but yeah, I think most reps are feeling this right now, right? Your pipeline probably looks slimmer than it has over the past couple of quarters, and oftentimes it's we start to act out of scarcity versus thinking like abundance mindset and really, you know, how can we generate more pipeline that's quality versus quantity that might actually not be real pipeline, right? So for myself as a rep, I mean, I'm doing a lot more deal reviews with other team members or just really thinking about, you know, what deals are in my pipeline, which ones need the highest priority or which ones have maybe the most likelihood of really moving forward and converting and really ensuring that I'm doing every single small step to continue to move it forward. Thinking about in your pipeline, you know, where are your strongest champions and the best business case, and really ensuring that the right timing exists to change instead of seeing, you know, things like sticking with the status quo or no change actually happening. A story that I have for one deal that we actually had earlier this year is we had a great champion that really just had strong clout at a financial company, and she, you know, was really sharing that she can make change happen. But we learned later on in the deal that she had already recruited another executive sponsor besides our main executive sponsor to push the deal with Lattice. And I think that was a huge part of why we were able to stick to the right timing, stick to an agreed-upon signature date, and avoid some hiccups that can naturally happen is because we had multiple exec sponsorships. So thinking about that with even your number one deal for the quarter and your top 3 deals for the quarter and how you can continue to really test your champion, but cultivate a great one too.
Yeah, thank you for sharing that story. That's a great story. I think it's easy to kind of get into a bit of a scarcity mindset, especially when things get a little bit tougher, to kind of start hoarding, for lack of a better phrase, hoarding opportunities, having more in the pipeline to make you feel more secure and more comfortable. The reality is, I think in that type of mindset, most people can't realistically work a significant amount of deals or more than what their average actually is. So it gets harder. And I think you end up getting into this spiral, or you can get into the spiral where it gets harder to know where to spend your time. So I think that totally makes sense. Appreciate the story. And T, I'm actually curious your thoughts on this.
Yeah, man. So I'm just raring to go. I think so. I think on my side, like one of the things, and this sort of ties back to knowing where you win, like even if you know where you win and you sort of look back over the last few years and you sort of say like, hey, you know, we win these deals at, you know, let's sort of say like a really high rate, like we win these deals like a 40%, you know, rate, something like that. You know, it's a very strong area. That's, that's going to go down, right? Like, so it's still, it still might be the best win rate, but that, that in all likelihood, that's probably still going to go down. And I would, I would say that And this is not to sound like a jerk or anything, but I would say that in good times, it's easy to let bad habits in or to be a little bit lazy on some deals and be like, oh, that one's going to be fine now. And you have to forget about that. And I would say that being very intentional and thoughtful about following all the right steps, all the right process, trying to sort of go through this and really treat every deal that you think is a real winner with care and love and water that plant, et cetera. I think that sort of really matters. And I would say that, again, with this pipeline thing, there is that inclination of like, oh, we just need more pipe. We need way more pipeline in here. And I totally understand that. But I think that the reality is that deals that, let's say that a deal You know, used to take you— I'm pulling numbers out of the air here, but used to take you 20 hours of work for this deal or 10 hours. I'll say 10 just to pick a number out there. It took 10 hours of work to sort of get this deal done. Maybe that deal now needs like 15 and for the same sort of win rate. And that kind of means that you, if you play that game of just, you know, taking your pipeline from, again, pull number out of the air, you know, 20 deals in your pipeline to 40, Like, it actually can be harder to really give the effort and energy to like really make sure those good deals come through and get closed at a good rate. And I think that that's, you know, again, that can sort of work against you if you go down that pipeline stuffing path or you hang on to deals for too long, like a cluttered pipeline. It's just hard to be focused on what actually matters, like what is real, what matters. And I think that, you know, I think you do, like, it's hard. Like, this isn't like easy stuff. This is like where, again, like the really like excellent sellers show themselves and prove themselves. But it's not by, you know, cheating. It's not by being lazy. It's not all, you know, there's no sort of, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, this, if you came to this webinar expecting like this simple hack is gonna change your life, we're not here in tweet thread land where in reality, And yeah, I think that that's the sort of the reality you do need to be mindful of is if you do have too much pipeline, in a funny way, it can work against you. And just to sort of be mindful and thoughtful around that.
Yeah, I think it really kind of ties back to what you mentioned before, which is maybe a better question to ask is like, how much of the quote unquote right pipeline do you actually have? And having a really clear idea, again, of like where you win, how much of that you win and making sure that you're ruthlessly prioritizing your time on the right deals, I think does a lot more. Again, it's easy to fall into the trap of, I have 4x, 5x, 8x, 10x quota of pipeline. I think—
I'm so rich in pipeline. I'm so rich in pipeline.
Pipeline for days. I think it's so easy to fall into that trap, but I think what's more important is Again, be honest with yourself about what deals you have that you feel like you can actually close and make sure you're spending time in the right places. And if that happens to be 1.5x or 2x, whatever number that happens to be, as opposed to the number that it feels better to have at a time like this, I think that's more important. And as a revenue leader, I think it's also important to take that approach with your team to make sure that you're not just looking for that volume-based approach to make the numbers look nice, to look fluffy, But you're being honest and you're being real with what you have and where time is being spent.
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