Is Your B2B Sales Pipeline Strong and Healthy?
Your B2B sales pipeline is key to your overall business success. When you understand you B2B sales pipeline, you open yourself up to growth and expansion. A typical problem with pipelines is that you can encounter clogs and blockages along the way. This is especially true when you start ramping up your lead generation efforts. The more people that come into the pipeline, the greater the chance that certain leads aren’t getting followed-up if they have been contacted at all.
What Causes Clogging?
Often, the main cause of your B2B pipeline getting clogged up is because you didn’t take the time to vet and sort them out in a meaningful way to begin with. A lack of organization when it comes to your processes can mean that someone gets missed along the way. The lack of qualification of your leads also means that you run the risk of sending repetitive emails or content that pushes clients away. So how do you effective unclog your pipeline?
Unite Your Sales Efforts and Re-Organize
Many of the problems that relate to your B2B pipeline are organizational in nature. That is, there is insufficient training or positioning when it comes to your sales team. If this is the case, it’s a simple matter of assigning the right person or people to do the jobs of organizing, qualifying, and placing the leads you have and will get in their appropriate spots in your sales and marketing funnel. This will readily do away with any blockages that you’ve been experiencing along the way.
Develop a Strong Internal System for Sales Team Growth
While you’re already in the process of building a strong sales management team with the key roles needed to de-clog your pipeline, you may as well develop an internal program that will improve your sales team’s performance. Many people tend to see salespeople as one-trick ponies in that they know what they know and stick to that. Expanding their base knowledge to encompass peripheral but key disciplines like marketing and leads generation.
Understand Your Market
Of course, you could have the best sales team in the world with the most organized leads list but still find your pipeline clogged up. If that’s the case, then you should also consider that there’s a lack of key understanding of your specific market. For one thing, you might be taking inleads that aren’t a fit for your ideal customer profile. For another, your messaging might not be suited to who you’re talking to. These issues can be resolved if you understand your market better—so do the research.
Respect Your Leads’ Time
So, you’ve got your sales team all trained up, your leads list is organized, and you completely get your market—you still can run the risk of experiencing a blockage in your pipeline if your approach doesn’t respect your leads’ time. Automation has been making it far easier to run marketing campaigns and follow-ups. The key to success will, however, always lie in the quality of material you put out. Make sure that the content you deliver is on-point, comprehensive, and—above all—relevant.
Get Quality Leads to Begin With
Of course, the single most effective solution to a clogged pipeline is to ensure that what’s going in is of top quality to begin with. Getting leads that perfectly match your ideal customer profile, have been verified and qualified, and are proven to have strong intent to purchase is the best starting point. Bonus points if they’re carefully segmented and organized along demographic, firmographic, and technographic lines—the better to customize your messaging with.
At Internal Results, we have our own list of over 60M B2B contacts—a list that grows every day. These contacts and leads are constantly validated for accuracy and suitability. We can provide you with a list that meets your ideal customer profile. We even provide you with intent data that helps you determine which leads are ready to buy. Avoid the problems of pipeline clogging from the get go and get quality leads today. Ask us how we can do that for you.
