Fix Your Pipeline - Honest Forecasting
Forecasts aren’t about hope—they’re about honesty. In this final video, I show how accurate forecasting builds credibility and confidence in your results.
Check out all four parts of the Fix Your Pipeline series:
1. Pipeline Clarity
2. Consistency Wins
3. Metrics that Matter
4. Honest Forecasting
For more strategies like this, check out my sales tip video library on YouTube...
If you prefer to read - here is the transcript:
Welcome to the fourth and final installment in our video series about improving pipeline metrics. And this one is about filling your pipeline with more opportunities. If you don't have enough opportunities in the pipeline, you need to go to work at rebuilding those numbers.
So first of all, you need to talk to your customers, all your customers. And you do this for two reasons to fill the pipeline. One, to ask your referrals if they're happy customers. But two also to see if there's other things that you could be helping them with. Right? Remember, your pipeline doesn't just have to be filled with net new customers, it can be filled with new opportunities inside existing customers. And if you haven't talked to your customers in a while, you might not have any idea if they've bought new companies or expanded or added capabilities that you can now service. So talk to your customers.
Number two, commit to yourself to making one more call or sending one more email every day. I always like the rule that you never go home. You never close up your computer if you're already at home and end your day without doing one more thing to fill the pipeline, make one more call. Send one more email, send one more text. Make one more LinkedIn connection. It's doing one more thing every single day will constantly ensure you have this new flow of pipeline into your funnel.
Number three, really make sure you're using multiple media. Far too many salespeople rely on a single prospecting method. They only make physical cold calls. They only make telephone phone calls. They only go to live networking events. And in this marketplace, a diversified media strategy is really the best approach.
By all means, if you still need to make cold calls, make them. But don't sacrifice that for building your presence in your brand on social media. Don't hesitate to send emails. Don't hesitate if there are live networking events or trade shows to go to those events. But also make sure you're measuring the result.
Yesterday, a client told me that they went to a huge trade show that they go to every year, and they probably sent maybe the whole sales team went. Maybe there was 40 of them. They came home with one lead. And I said to them, so how many people are you sending this year? And he wisely said, we're cutting way back, We're setting goals for the trade show and profitability targets and setting up meetings in advance. And that's the way to do a live event.
Live networking events are your most expensive from a time in a money standpoint. They've got to be worth it. So don't wing it.
I urge you that if you are going to trade shows, conferences or events to set a goal for yourself. The goal might not always be simply in the number of leads you're going to come home with, but it could be in the number of connections, the number of people you meet, the number of referrals you get. It could be about a speaking target or about meeting someone in particular if you know they're going to be there. But make sure you're using that diversified media strategy. In that way you're capturing the broadest net as possible inside your territory.
So those are three strategies that you can use four, I guess if you count referrals, as well as expanding your share wallet inside a certain customer inside a specific customer to grow your pipeline. I urge you to take a look at this video series, all four of them, and pick one thing a month that you can improve on. Moving that small hinge is ultimately going to swing a big door, meaning you will exceed your pipeline and your sales goals this year.