What is sales pipeline visibility?
No nasty surprises, no unpredicted outcomes
Sales pipeline is a great indicator of a company’s health. It can show you the money (that you are going to make in the coming months). Manage your pipeline well and you’ll stay well organized and feel more in control of your sales figures.
Why sales pipeline visibility?
In sales, one of the biggest stress factors lies in the uncertainty around whether you'll hit your targets. Every salesperson in the world has had to deal with "The Fear” at some point in their career. While there's no tool or trick that will ever make sales 100% predictable, visibility into your pipeline – and the insight it provides – will help you take the guesswork out of sales forecasting, by giving you three things to build success on: insight, action and prediction.
Insight: Making sense of what you see
We know you probably already have a process for selling, but what is it based on? If you're only analyzing your business success by looking at sales revenue, you're missing the big picture. By contrast, the ability to see into each stage of your pipeline, gives you a real-time, holistic view of your business' health.
What’s more, you get this during the sales cycle, rather than after-the-fact. You will learn to tell when your pipeline needs attention, and which deal, or even which stage, has issues to be fixed. If you have a tendency to fall asleep at the wheel, visibility is the wake up call your business desperately needs.
Action: Now you're in control
Armed with insight, it’s now time to take action. If you’ve identified an important sale that is stalling, you can give it a jumpstart. If you see that prospects fail to convert at a particular point in the sales cycle, the action you need to take may involve gathering more insight. Either way, you can now direct your team's focus to problems, and coming up with solutions.
We know that in sales you can't control the outcome of deals; the only thing you do control are the actions that ensure the maximum probability of deals closing. Through pipeline visibility you can also see which actions drive deals through the pipeline and which ones are a waste of time.
Prediction: Avoid the unexpected
Nothing in sales is ever a “sure thing”, but pipeline visibility will help you create sales forecasts you could pin your reputation on. If you know you've taken actions that in the past have led to a 20% close rate, and all other factors are unchanged, you should feel confident about replicating that rate with the same actions.
With the power to predict, you can make your sales meetings more productive, and focus on the actions your team needs to take, rather than gathering information that everyone should already have access to.
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As a long time user of SFDC and other CRMs, I love the simplicity and intuitive nature of Pipedrive. My favorite feature is the automated pop-up forcing the next step.
Pipedrive mixes features and design that allows our team to streamline our operations. It was very easy to get up and running with Pipedrive compared to SalesForce.
It has made our sales department more effective and efficient. It's easy to use and it's constantly updated.
Pipedrive: Built on visibility
- Develop a clear overall sense of how you are doing
- Make sure your team's focus is on the right things
- Learn how to recognize a healthy pipeline
- Make your sales meetings and planning more effective
- Forecast with complete confidence
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