Coaching Opportunities
Posted: Sat Apr 05, 2025 5:18 am
Activity has to produce outcomes, and the major outcomes that need measured are opportunities created and opportunities advanced. You can see the outcomes in the sales pipeline.
One of the three primary disciplines of a sales manager is to ensure that they have a healthy pipeline. That means that the pipeline has to be inspected and managed with a fervor that borders on religious.
Without enough opportunities, you cannot make your number. Without the right opportunities, you also can’t make your number. Poor deal velocity (slow moving opportunities) will also derail your ability to make your number. A healthy pipeline is critical and it will inoculate you from many risks.
Ensuring that the pipeline is healthy and that it will produce the results you need is a discipline. You have to continually inspect the pipeline to ensure that your sales team is producing and managing the opportunities you need to succeed.
Discipline #2
It would be wonderful if opportunities moved smoothly from target spam database to close, but they don’t. Along the way, they get stuck, they stall, and they sometimes die.
There are literally countless reasons why opportunities don’t make it smoothly from the top of the funnel to the small opening that some deals flow through.
Coaching these opportunities is a primary discipline of a sales manager. Thus, coaching opportunities is a discipline that must be done continuously.
Sometimes the salesperson’s own actions—or lack thereof—are an obstacle to winning an opportunity. Sometimes the salesperson’s dream client produces obstacles that they must overcome, like unique and complex needs that require new ideas.
One of the three primary disciplines of a sales manager is to ensure that they have a healthy pipeline. That means that the pipeline has to be inspected and managed with a fervor that borders on religious.
Without enough opportunities, you cannot make your number. Without the right opportunities, you also can’t make your number. Poor deal velocity (slow moving opportunities) will also derail your ability to make your number. A healthy pipeline is critical and it will inoculate you from many risks.
Ensuring that the pipeline is healthy and that it will produce the results you need is a discipline. You have to continually inspect the pipeline to ensure that your sales team is producing and managing the opportunities you need to succeed.
Discipline #2
It would be wonderful if opportunities moved smoothly from target spam database to close, but they don’t. Along the way, they get stuck, they stall, and they sometimes die.
There are literally countless reasons why opportunities don’t make it smoothly from the top of the funnel to the small opening that some deals flow through.
Coaching these opportunities is a primary discipline of a sales manager. Thus, coaching opportunities is a discipline that must be done continuously.
Sometimes the salesperson’s own actions—or lack thereof—are an obstacle to winning an opportunity. Sometimes the salesperson’s dream client produces obstacles that they must overcome, like unique and complex needs that require new ideas.