You started the year with your pipeline predicting a strong 1st quarter. But with two months of the quarter in the rear view mirror, sales are down, close dates have moved into the future, and making your number by the end of the quarter will require herculean effort. If this sounds like what you go through quarter after quarter then you might be suffering from a serious sales disease called Pipeline bloat!

Every business owner and sales manager knows that a robust pipeline is the key to future revenue growth. However, the pipeline must be accurate and reliable so that appropriate business decisions can be made. Pipeline bloat occurs when sales people fail to qualify prospects before entering them in the pipeline. They use their own judgment to determine who is qualified and who is not. Business owners contribute to pipeline bloat by putting pressure on salespeople to find new prospects without having objective criteria to define who is qualified. Here are 4 things you can do to expand your pipeline and eliminate pipeline bloat:

• INCREASE PROSPECTING – The Optimal Salesperson® prospects consistently but most salespeople don’t do enough prospecting. You must know how many cold calls you need to generate the number of prospects which will yield the sales you need to meet your goal. Far too often I see sales organizations go into the end of a period needing to close 50% of the pipeline to make their goal, which seems reasonable except that historically they only close 20%. In this case the problem isn’t the closing rate; the problem is not enough prospecting.
• FOCUS ON QUALIFYING PROSPECTS – Many salespeople put any and every prospect in the pipeline. The Optimal Salesperson® knows that prospects should only be in your pipeline if they meet certain minimum criteria you establish. I believe as a minimum no prospect should be counted on if you haven’t talked to the client; uncovered a compelling reason to buy from you; and have had a discussion about money.
• END PURSUITS SOONER – Hope is not a strategy. Be honest with yourself. As soon as The Optimal Salesperson® determines that the prospect is focused on someone else, she ends the pursuit. There is no use in staying in the game just to keep the other guy honest.
• IMPROVE SELLING SKILLS – Learn to get better referrals. Learn how to get to higher levels in the organization. Learn how to ask better questions. Learn how to uncover the client’s budget. Identify your own self-limiting beliefs and work to overcome them. It’s a new economy, new skills are required. Optimal Salespeople® know that they are either getting better or falling behind.

You can’t be truly successful in sales unless you prospect consistently. Many people will disagree believing that as long as they get their number by the end of the quarter or the end of the year it doesn’t matter when it comes … or how it comes … or at what expense.

The struggling salesperson makes a lot of calls one day but then gets wrapped up chasing one or more deals and then doesn’t prospect for a few days or weeks. They are busy writing a proposal that is “critical”. Or they are engaged in solving a problem for a client (which they personally just HAVE to handle) or they are catching up on some paperwork. And there is always a golf outing to attend. Whatever the excuse (and they are ALL excuses) prospecting is sporadic at best and the pipeline ends up having some major holes in it. For a three month sales cycle, lack of prospecting in April leads to lack of sales in July and there is very little you can do about it in July to fix it. The optimal salesperson® prospects every day and, no matter what is happening, does not a let a week go by without hitting their prospecting numbers. They realize that like a tomato farmer who can’t harvest in July what he didn’t plant in April they can’t close in July what they didn’t add to the pipeline in April. Even if the struggling sales person is successful in pulling a rabbit out of a hat at the end of the quarter time after time, it takes a toll. He will attract lots of adult supervision by his manager, he will be under constant stress personally, and his family will feel the effects of his lack of consistency as he has to spend extra time selling and be unavailable to them. Or worse, they will feel the stress.

The Optimal Salesperson® realizes that prospecting has a very high priority every day and every week no matter what else is happening. She realizes that the early part of the sales cycle doesn’t actually take that much time. The initial call to set up an appointment, even if it is a cold call, will only last a few minutes. The calls that don’t connect take a minute or less. So even 30 calls that only connect with 5 people should only take a couple of hours per week. No one is so busy that they can’t find a couple of hours per week. One trick is to do the prospecting first then fit the other stuff in around it. Everyone knows that proposals and paperwork fill up whatever time you give it. So give it less time. Success in sales is achieved by consistent daily activity not wild periods of activity interspersed with long periods of prospecting dormancy. So prospect consistently. Remember, nothing less than your family’s standard of living depends on it.

I may not refer you to my colleagues even if I think highly of you because I am unsure of whether my colleague is open to having you call. I may not be sure of what you will say and I do not want either to be embarrassed. However, if you let me call my colleague in advance, and see if they would be interested in talking to you and have problem you can fix, it is a win for everyone involved. it is a win the colleague because he gets a recommendation to a trusted source; it is a win for you because you will close half of this type of introduction; and it is a win for me because I helped two people I care about. Change your beliefs about introductions and watch your production soar while your prospecting time shrinks.