Zach Selch explains why a sales funnel beats a traditional pipeline. A pipeline treats all deals the same, but a funnel mirrors reality: many prospects enter at the top, fewer convert, and timelines vary. His funnel approach achieved 95% forecast accuracy versus 65% with a pipeline.
Chapters
So I'm in downtown Brussels, one of my favorite cities. I've been doing business here for just about 30 years, and I wanted to take today and talk a little bit about the difference between a pipeline and a funnel. There are cat people and dog people, and there are pipeline people and funnel people. I happen to be a dog person and a funnel person. Why? Why? And I'll go into depth. I like to keep these short, so I'm not going to talk too long about it. But let me, let me talk a little bit about why I prefer a funnel over a pipeline. So take a look at the pipeline. First of all, it's the same diameter at the front and at the bottom. And the assumption would be that whatever goes in comes out. It's going to go in and come out in the same order. So first in, first out. There are going to be no changes and everything's going to take about the same amount of time. That is nothing like sales. On the other hand, with a funnel, it's a lot bigger at the top than it is at the bottom. So if you're saying pipeline, I have 100 things going in, I have 100 things coming out, it's all going to take the same amount of time. But when you're taking a look at a funnel, you say, okay, I have 100 things going in, I have 25 coming out, maybe it's going to take a little bit different amount of time for the different things. Maybe You know, they're, they're, they're, they're gonna switch up their order. These type of things happen, and that's the reality of a funnel. That's the reality of our sales. So I like to use the funnel as a model, and from my perspective, everything I do, everything I do with my team, everything I do with my distributors is based around the funnel. So we do funnel reviews, we do funnel reports, we do funnel audits, those type of things. And I'm constantly aware of where everybody's funnel is. and how that's going to impact sales. Just to put that in perspective and to give you an idea of why I prefer the funnel over the pipeline. In my last company, my peer, the domestic VP of Sales, his ability to forecast was about 65% using a pipeline system. My ability to forecast was about 95% accuracy using a funnel system. And that was the primary difference of a paradigm in terms of how we looked at things. Okay. It gave me much better control, much better accuracy over what I was doing. Remember, when you're ready to grow your international sales, reach out to us. We can help.
When you decide it's time to grow your international sales, call us.
