How to Optimize and Convert Your Sales Pipeline Coverage for Maximum Revenue

Unlock the secret to turning your pipeline coverage into a revenue-generating machine with these proven strategies.

For decades, sales leaders have demanded their salespeople generate more opportunities than needed to reach their goals. It started with doubling the number of deals. When that didn’t work, sales leaders doubled it again or even quadrupled their quotas. When that failed, one sales manager upped his team’s coverage to a ludicrous 8X their pipeline coverage. As pipeline numbers have grown over time, quota attainment has fallen off a cliff.

It is important to know that pipeline coverage makes no contribution to your revenue or your quota attainment. Part of the reason pipeline coverage doesn’t help with targets and sales goals is that your sales reps spend time prospecting to acquire something that is less than a viable opportunity. Because the sales organization demands these fake, false, and unqualified prospects, salespeople load up their pipeline, logging every first meeting in their CRM.

If this strategy worked, it would already be providing the results you need. It is a mistake to continue using a strategy that fails to produce your desired outcomes. If a salesperson can’t reach their goal, it isn’t because they don’t have enough coverage; they have too few wins. If you believe sales is a numbers game, you are living in the past. The number that dominates your ability to reach your goal is your win rate.

What follows here is a plan to convert your pipeline coverage.

1. Prioritize quality leads over quantity: The first action you should take is to focus on quality over quantity. Instead of trying to increase the number of opportunities, you should prioritize the quality of the deals you allow into your pipeline. Anything else is a plan to lose a large number of prospective clients. If you are not going to convert a client, don’t allow your sales force to clutter up what should be a pristine pipeline.
2. Maintain a clean sales pipeline: If you require your sales force to log an opportunity in your CRM after a first meeting, what your team adds to your pipeline is not anything close to an opportunity. To improve your ability to convert more of the opportunities, don’t allow your sales team to log an opportunity until after a second meeting. A first meeting is not enough to call it an opportunity.
3. Enhance your qualifying process: If you want to win more of the opportunities in your pipeline, spend more time qualifying the opportunities in your pipeline. A small number of questions can help you to know what opportunities have a high possibility of being won, and the opportunities that have a very low chance of winning. By asking about who is engaged, why they are motivated to change now, how much time they spend with the salesperson, and how much effort the client is exerting.
4. Target high-value prospects: Instead of leads, you can improve your ability to convert more of your pipeline by targeting the companies you know spend heavily on what you sell. A list of 60 dream clients you know you can help will do much more than a random company that doesn’t have the same need as a target.
5. Focus on high-probability sales opportunities: You have a choice to make. You can have your salesperson spend a lot of time adding to their pipeline, or you can have them spend more time with the opportunities you believe have the highest probability of crossing the finish line. By sitting down and determining what opportunities you want a salesperson to prioritize, starting with the deals that have a high probability instead of adding another low-probability opportunity that isn’t going to be won.
6. Coach your sales team on high-probability deals: If you want to help your sales force convert more deals, coach the sales force on the high-probability deals in your sales pipeline. By helping your salespeople identify what they need to do to ensure they win the client. In surveys, salespeople want more coaching from their sales managers.
7. Remove stagnant opportunities from the pipeline: If an opportunity isn’t moving forward, you may remove these low-probability opportunities. When they time out due to no movement, you are safe to remove them from your pipeline and require the salesperson to create a better opportunity.
8. Increase sales win rates: For many years, we have counseled sales leaders and sales managers to prioritize sales effectiveness. This is the best strategy for reaching your goals, as the only number that counts are the deals your sales force wins. The coverage that is sitting in your pipeline contributes nothing to your revenue or your quota. If 2X isn’t enough to allow you to succeed, it isn’t because you need more low-probability deals, it’s because your win rate is too low.

You may need to work on two things to improve your win rates and convert more of your pipeline. First, if your sales approach is outdated, moving to a modern, value-creating methodology will improve your win rates. The second thing you may need is B2B sales training.

Win Rates over Pipeline Coverage

Win rates are more important than pipeline coverage. Anything you can do to develop your sales force’s effectiveness in deal pursuits will provide you with a greater ability to hit your targets and your sales goals.

After reading this article, open up your CRM and look at the deals that have had no forward movement. The longer an opportunity has gone without advancing, the more certain you are safe to remove it from your pipeline.