The Pipeline Meeting

The Pipeline Meeting- As summer comes to an end I’ve been reflecting on getting things back in shape and ready for “busy season” aka fall, and the pipeline meeting is a common opportunity for improvement. Read on for my POV on how to make the most out of this meeting. Full disclosure, a few years of fractional perspective makes this feel much more clear so please don’t feel badly if you’re busy reacting and putting out fires and haven’t invested in this meeting in the past- there is no time like the present so you can start now!

Purpose:

The pipeline meeting ideally serves a number of purposes, but first and foremost it ensures everyone knows where we are as a team relative to  our goals. Most often this meeting will focus on the quarterly revenue target as the primary goal with secondary goals including signing specific accounts, closing a certain number of deals, or maintaining a unit rate (ex; you could have a goal to keep avg unit rate within 20% of rack rate). It is also an opportunity to learn what is and isn’t working in moving deals through the pipeline. 

Tools (Reports):

Reports are super helpful and most CRMs have sales and pipeline reports pre-built that you can use. For example you certainly want to visualize deal value and quantity in each stage of the pipeline. It will also be helpful to see which deals have moved sales stages from week to week. To round things out, another helpful tool is opportunities created. This way we’re covering our bases, including: how is the pipeline growing, how are deals moving through it, and what has to be true in order for us to meet our revenue target. (Ie how many deals in the negotiation stage need to be signed by EOQ).

Reports to use:

1. Pipeline Summary - which shows the number of deals, the value of those deals, and the corresponding pipeline stage.

2. Pipeline Movement - this report will show all deals that have moved stage since the last meeting and where they went (ie did we lose 10 deals, or have a few moved to negotiation, and 1 move to closed won?!)

3. New Opportunities Created - since the last meeting what opportunities have been created, who has created them and are they from inbound or outbound efforts?

Meeting Format:

You’ll want to open the meeting with either an icebreaker or a highlight (I prefer highlight because .. tbh I think icebreakers are annoying : /) but the point of this opening is to get people excited, engaged, and ready to participate. Next you’ll run through the reports. You’ll want to have pulled them the day before to prep for the meeting so you have a good sense of where to focus the rest of the time. This will also be really helpful in planning for your 1:1s but if there are trends that you can extrapolate this is a great time to share them with the team. Be ready to explain your takeaways from the reports and also what you think needs to be improved prior to the next meeting. Ex; “We’re on track toward our goal, that’s excellent but we have a lot of deals that are still in earlier stages so I’d like to see at least half of the deals in negotiation move to contracting by our next meeting.” The next part of the meeting is major: the “WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM ME AND THE TEAM” section.

“WHAT DO YOU NEED FROM ME AND THE TEAM”

Show your sellers that you trust them and that you’re here to unblock them and that you are a team and you win together. I could do a whole other post on the importance of momentum and collaboration so please please don’t forget the power of the team! 

You’ll want each seller to walk you through their plan for the week. Where they are excited about momentum, and where they need help. Ideally they have 1-3 things they want to talk about and they’ve also come prepared. Maybe it's a specific deal that they want to brainstorm on how to move forward, maybe it’s something new they tried that they are really excited about (maybe new outbound messaging that resulted in a full schedule last week.) And it SHOULD be that they need something (pricing approval, attendance from the c-suite at a really important meeting, the OK to go see a prospect.) 

As your team gets into the swing of this format it’s helpful to provide a template for their allotted time; 

Highlight: (What was the most motivating part of your week?)

Momentum: What do they think is working well, extra points for being specific (certain messaging, how they are running closing calls, email campaigns, proposal templates??)

Ask: What is the number one thing you need from me or the team this week?

For deal specific updates they expect to close this quarter:

What happened last and what’s the next step?

What are potential blockers?

How can the team help?

Is the deal competitive- if so who is the competition?

What is the prospect’s decision making criteria?

Who is involved from the prospect’s side (eng, bd, c-suite?, who else?)

What is the real value of the deal and how did they come to that value?

When do they expect it to be signed?

Housekeeping: to wrap up the meeting again re-state any trends you’ve noticed from the meeting so folks know you’re listening to them “hey team, I hear you that we’re getting a ton of push back on pricing right now, I’m going to spend some time working on a better tool for you to show value and let’s review it in our 1:1s and as a group next week once you’ve had some time to test it out!” Finally let them know where you are in the quarter- “reminder we have 3 more weeks in the quarter so this is crunch time!” and what’s coming up- ie conferences, performance reviews, all hands, etc. 

Have someone in the meeting writing notes for action items that come up and send a recap of those action items, with owners along with any materials (including reports) used in the meeting. 

…….

Where pipeline meetings go wrong: Often these meetings can devolve into check-ins for the sake of checking in. Each seller gives a brief overview of their actions for the week but you don’t get much depth and the meeting doesn’t do much to move the team forward.

Hypothetical Example-

A company with 2 or 3 sellers and a CEO (seller,) they come to the meeting (often times late! – this is a tangent but if you don’t respect or value the meeting you will come late so I always take note of this - actions speak louder than words) they give vague summary of every meeting they had that week using adjectives like good or decent instead of a detailed report. An excel/google sheet or the CRM is open but the screen doesn’t have any valuable info, maybe just shows what stage it's in or what value it's been set at so far. Everyone gives their “updates”, maybe there are a couple action items ~ “I’ll be following up with them this week” and everyone leaves in the same place they were when they got to the meeting.

Leadership leaves with what may be a false sense of comfort, things are moving, people seem like they are working, but they don’t have a clear sense of where they are toward their goal, is pricing finalized, are close dates accurate, etc? 

Believe me, I’ve run meetings that fit in this camp and I get that things get busy but the more you put in to make them better the more you’ll get out. Ping me if you’d like to discuss further or want a copy of a template deck! Happy Selling!