As CEO of InsightSquared, I am extremely excited to share that Mediafly, the leader in sales enablement, is acquiring InsightSquared, creating a world-class revenue intelligence and enablement experience for B2B teams. Having spent three decades in sales and marketing leadership roles and been fortunate to witness several significant disruptions driven by technology, I am convinced of three things: We are on the cusp of advancements that will change the game within the revenue functions of B2B companies. Activity and engagement analytics are the keys to assessing the health of a deal and the strength of the overall pipeline. There will…
The RevOps Experts Weigh In
Todd Abbott, CEO of InsightSquared, and Tanner Mezel, VP of Sales and Marketing at DSG, recently hosted the webinar, “Improving Funnel Throughput with Analytics & Coaching.” Together, the experts gave a detailed guide on how sales leaders can improve their company’s funnel throughput with analytics and coaching. From assessing risk to pinpointing the coaching window, this webinar is a can’t miss for anyone who wants to accelerate revenue. Had a conflict? Check out the recording here.
Ready to put your sales team’s funnel on the fast path to success?
Three Tips to Help Improve Your Funnel Throughput
1. Pipeline Hygiene is Paramount
The quality of a sales pipeline and funnel throughput is largely dependent on the data that is captured by the CRM platform, and we all know the cost poor sales visibility has on a company. The more timely, quality data that is captured, the more accurate your visibility is. Knowing the true state of your pipeline gives you the ability to spot risk and coaching opportunities. It’s critical to assessing funnel progression and the path towards goal attainment.
The challenge is, CRMs were not designed for the rep. They require massive amounts of time to update—time that should be spent staying in front of their prospects and customers, building relationships and facilitating deals. Fortunately, there are now a number of activity capture tools on the market that automate this process. Check out the Activity Capture Buyer’s Guide to learn more.
2. Avoid Pipeline Shortfalls & Interrogations with Machine Learning
Some of the toughest conversations sales leaders have with their teams are the weekly pipeline reviews. These meetings are necessary, but the approach needs a refresh to avoid that weekly interrogation between manager and rep, which benefits no one.
According to Gartner, less than 50% of sales leaders and sellers have high confidence in their organization’s forecasting accuracy. Starting with trusted data through activity capture means you can walk into those pipeline meetings with an accurate pulse on actual deal activity. Suddenly, you turn interrogation into true coaching. It’s a win-win for everyone.
Using machine learning, you can validate human inputs against historical wins and losses and take the cumbersome guesswork out of pipeline management. This step helps you spot coaching opportunities so you can improve deal progression and overall funnel throughput.
3. The Ideal Coaching Window
When it comes to coaching, it’s not just how you coach, but when you coach that matters.
Maximizing your coaching impact starts with identifying the ideal moment—the period in time when a coach can positively affect overall outcomes, i.e., what Tanner Mezel calls the sales managers’ “coaching window.” Identifying this period in your sales cycle is critical and one that few companies nail.
Traditionally, sales managers wait to ramp up coaching until the end of the quarter, when deals are on the cusp of being pushed over the finish line. However, more often, the greatest ability to influence their team is actually at the early stages of the sales cycle.
Personalized coaching is one of the top requests from sales reps. When managers pair this crucial window of time with machine learning-backed data on their team’s engagement, conversions, and inflection points, they can deliver the coaching insights that allow the entire sales team to drive better results.
Improving Funnel Throughput is all about analytics and coaching.
To learn more about implementing a Sales Leadership System and Building a Coaching Culture visit: https://www.dsgteam.com/sales-coaching
And to learn more about using machine learning to determine your sales inflection points, check out the Ultimate Guide to Advanced Sales Math.
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