Why Pipeline Size Increase May Not Always Be A Good Thing

Let’s assume that your organization’s active Pipeline has increased significantly (let’s say 50% to 75%) over a period of six months…

You haven’t added salespeople, sales leaders, or sales support resources during the same period. There are more and more prominent deals, and your sales cycle is 6–12 months.

What type of problems do you have? Maybe your issues are good ones to have, right? Perhaps so. 

I want to suggest that there is one problem that is not good to have, and you may not be paying attention to it at the right time, which is now, rather than later.

Here’s the rub: 

Influxes of large, new logo and strategic deals into a pipeline are exciting to pursue. Still, they consume a disproportionate amount of resources from the organization at all levels, particularly from your core sales support resources. 

We often see support resources consumed with the influx of large deals at the expense of other “good” and “good size” deals. The risk is that a surge of large strategic deals with new logo deals typically has a much lower win rate than those with existing customers and less strategic or complex transactions.

Here’s Why Pipeline Size Increase May Not Always Be A Good Thing:

Unless you find a way to supplement your sales support resources for the surge…

1. You may end up with lower than expected sales results if your big deals don’t come through.

    

2. You may lose under-supported deals that your team could have won.

Maybe you haven’t run across this situation in your organization or career. We have seen it many times, and the typical response is that “we will qualify better and work harder.” 

In our experience, the option to bring on additional sales support resources delivers more revenue across a broader set of deals and clients, and you don’t have to burn out your sales support people in the process. 

If you need ideas to source incremental sales support resources for your company, please reach out to me, and I’ll suggest some options.

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