B2B buying isn’t linear or predictable. But brands can grasp the nuances by dissecting consuming decision-making. Decode the nitty-gritty.

Studying consumer behavior, especially the psychological factors behind a purchase, is crucial to a business’s success. Selling to potential customers isn’t as easy as exposing them to products and services and hoping this ends in a purchase.

Businesses need to know how and why consumers buy particular solutions against others. While psychological factors are inherent in B2C and B2B buying structures, the motivations significantly differ. B2B buying decisions comprise companies with groups of individuals (buying committees) from different backgrounds and motivations.

However, understanding fundamental factors that drive decisions in the buying landscape can offer a better base for exploring purchasing motivations.

Sales-Free Experience and Buyer Challenges

According to a Gartner study, over 75% of buyers prefer a sales-free experience. These are the new-age consumers – highly aware and self-driven. But, Gartner’s research also asserts that self-service purchases online are also most likely to turn into regrets.

So, what is the actual root cause? A hiccup on the sellers’ part or the buyer’s difficulty in making a purchase?

“As hard as it has become to sell in today’s world, it has become that much more difficult to buy. The single biggest challenge of selling today is not selling, it’s actually our customers’ struggle to buy,” states Brent Adamson, the Distinguished VP at Advisory, Gartner.

The underlying motivation for a purchasing decision is – buyers want value.

However, complex and lengthy buying processes, uncertainty, and other disruptions overshadow potential customers from seeing it. These end up undermining buyers’ confidence and clarity.

Complexity of B2B Buying Committees

And in B2B, marketers sell to a whole group of decision-makers rather than individuals. There are so many layers to break down here. Even the group of decision-makers entails distinct levels of expertise, influence, and authority.

Thus, they influence the purchasing process differently. B2B buyers reflect a complex set of needs as compared to B2C ones. There are emotional and rational requirements that operate on two different levels – personal and organizational.

Even the alternatives available that buying committees can consider are increasing, owing to the fast pace with which the market is expanding. From new tech and startups to suppliers and services – the market has become an overflowing basket saturated with options.

How can a buying decision be simple when the choices aren’t?

As humans, we make conscious choices every step of our lives. We intuitively understand that we are making a choice, but psychologically, it’s not a straight road. It’s a cluster of decisions.

Making a decision or a choice is an amalgamation of alternative courses of action – ones preceding the final choice and carrying a sense of conflict and uncertainty.

This is prevalent in B2B buying processes.

Meanwhile, for B2B buyers, this decision-making process is a loop where they revisit certain decisions again. It comprises a lot of back-and-forth discussions, convincing decision-makers, re-strategizing, etc.

So, to say it’s unidirectional would be untrue.

The Six Buying “Jobs” in B2B Decision-Making

According to Gartner, there are six buying “jobs” in a decision-making process. Unlike “stages,” these don’t need a sequence or a fixed order.

Source: https://www.gartner.com.au/en/sales/insights/b2b-buying-journey

Gartner uses the term “jobs” to demonstrate the B2B buying process where each job has to be completed before moving on to the next one, irrespective of the order.

Identifying the problem:

The buying committee recognizes the pain points that lead to several online searches. During independent research, it’s easy to disagree on the actual concerns. Hence, regrouping and discussions become necessary.

Exploring different solutions: 

What could be the possible solutions? The buying group then surfs the net for whitepaper downloads, supplier website visits, form fill-ups, outreach, etc. During this stage, buyers may also consult external experts.

Building requirements:

What would the ideal solution look like? Here, the buying committee aligns its expectations and develops criteria for the solutions it seeks. From requesting proposals to scheduling meetings with potential suppliers, data is integral to deciding on a solution.

Selecting the solution:

Evaluating between sellers that ideally fit their defined criteria. It often includes buying committee discussions, requests for more sales information (such as case studies), legal flats, and capital review boards.

Validation or confirmation:

Is this the right choice for our business?

Creating a consensus:

A buying group has different stakeholders with their own expectations. Hence, an alignment between them is vital to finalize a decision. This is requisite at all stages because every decision requires approvals.

Decision-making is non-sequential and complex. So, the sequence of these six “buying jobs” isn’t set in stone. As disagreements or new information arises, the decision-makers visit each job numerous times.

It highly depends on the buyer’s satisfaction in completing each job so that they can move closer to making a purchase.

The Nature of Consumer Decision-Making

Overall, consumer decision-making isn’t about choosing between objects but specific behaviors or attitudes. From selecting a particular information source in their research phase and “when to make the purchase” to “from which business” and payment channels – every decision involves choice alternatives, as mentioned before.

These choice alternatives have transformed into a dizzying array. Market congestion has coerced buyers into extensive research and information processing so they could make informed decisions.

Decision-making is a paradox.

On one hand, buyers wish for control over their challenges, but they also want simplicity. In the age of tech paralysis, these two rarely go hand-in-hand. Every option is an added benefit to the buyers – if one doesn’t meet their requirements, the other might.

It’s still another choice buyers have to consider making. But how often do buyers know what they want?

Every decision is a series of behaviors that rely on contextual influences, such as economic factors, peer pressure, social roles, or cultural attributes. This underlying theory mirrors how every marketing strategy is a chain of actions intended toward a specific outcome.

In short, the choices are directly reliant on the context within which it takes place.

The ‘context’

The psychoanalytical consumer decision-making model asserts that buyers have underlying motives for a purchase – unconscious and conscious. They are driven by a mix of conscious and subconscious desires, which is why buyers might be drawn to specific products or brands without entirely understanding why.

Decision-making is rudimentarily influenced by external factors known as contextual influences. They highlight the information available to consumers and how they process it to make decisions.

In B2B, one of the crucial contexts required for purchasing decisions is collating necessary information.

Think of whitepaper downloads or case studies. Why are case studies such a vital step in sales? It’s value-proof, detailing how reliable, authentic, or an ideal fit a brand’s solution is. Additionally, such pieces of information are a support for decision-making.

Information is crucial at every step of B2B decision-making. This varies from tangible ones, such as pricing structure and meeting ethical standards, to intangible ones, such as brand awareness and reputation.

More often, a brand’s reputation is likely to take priority over price in high-risk purchasing situations. But if a decision is low-risk, cost and convenience take the front seat.

The ‘risk’ factor

In the B2B landscape, buyers are assumed to be more objective and focus on the purchase risk before making any decisions. Risk is a crucial determinant in choice decisions.

What will the business risk losing (adverse consequences) if it makes an incorrect decision?

Predicting the outcome of a decision or a choice is not easy – it’s never accurate. So, how can the buying committee navigate significant purchasing risks?

They focus on the importance and complexity of a purchase. Mapping the importance of a purchase for the organization helps ascertain its impact on the business goals. This facilitates buyers to focus on the brand with a positive reputation in sailing through potential problems.

Whereas, with the lesser complexity and higher sophistication of the purchasing process, the decision-makers are likely to oblige. In complex or excruciatingly long sales cycles, buyers find it tasking to weigh the choices or even predict the offerings’ performance.

This increase in ambiguity might also lead to significant risks, compelling the buyers to move on.

Today, B2B is commoditized. This has embedded specific tangible (price and scalability) and intangible (cultural fit and aesthetics) elements in brand offerings, fostering choice paralysis.

Thus, B2B buyers must engage in complex decision-making processes to grasp brand offerings. Subsequently, it’s the brand’s responsibility to offer sufficient cues that highlight the intangible attributes.

In simpler terms, decision-making crucially depends on the brand information communicated to the buying centers. It permeates the overall process, but to what extent? This is questionable.

With market saturation, complexity in decision-making has become the norm.

It’s about predicting what, as buyers, we truly want from weighing the choice alternatives and evaluating the information in our hands.

But, the truth of organizational buying is that even the most thought-out decision-making processes are susceptible to errors.

For example, too much information can derail the purchase, overwhelming the decision-makers. This overload could result in poorer decisions or purchases by increasing deliberation, complicating the processes further.

In B2B, every decision-making process involves six to 10 decision-makers. These hold their own sets of information and contextual cues for the different solutions available in the market.

While the modern buyer is self-driven, they still require brand support. Instead, this disjointed and fragmented buying environment demands a shift to a more relationship-focused alignment between prospective buyers, sales, and marketing.

Organizations need to keep up with the times. Adopt parallel and channel-agnostic roadmaps and execute buyer enablement strategies.  

Strategies are based on asking the right questions. Any successful business leader understands that inquiry in the right direction opens channels for a positive outcome.

But, framing the correct questions can be challenging, as is the norm for strategy. There are a lot of considerations a business and its teams must understand to enquire in the right direction. For SaaS companies that mainly work on a B2B model, asking the right question means the difference between success and failure.

After all, lead generation is anticipating problems (questions) of potential buyers and presenting solutions for them. And a major roadblock for most teams is prospects that go nowhere.

Why does this occur?

There is a good chance that the leads your teams are chasing might be losing points in the qualifying round.

The Role of Qualification in the Sales Funnel

Here, the value of asking the right questions is apparent. From marketing to sales teams, your campaigns should be designed to qualify your leads and push them through the sales funnel.

Frameworks such as BANT, MEDDIC, and ANUM help sales teams qualify their prospects. And it is necessary to implement them to help sales teams close more deals.

But there is a caveat: sales prospects also go beyond these basic frameworks to tailor their pitch for the prospect.

And that begins by listening.

Qualifying Frameworks Overview

BANT and other frameworks that help sales teams close more deals.

Qualifiers are vital for a lead generation strategy to work. A rich sales pipeline is based on the quality of leads generated.

But all leads are not the same. While some leads may be window shopping, others might not be relevant at all. MQLs can be generated in quantity, but if they are not up to the mark on quality, they will hamper future sales and profits. For any organization, that is a blow.

Marketing and sales are the gatekeepers of an organization’s success. These two teams are in charge of the qualifying questions.

As we know, there are a few methodologies that organizations should use to qualify the prospect.

Understanding the Key Sales Qualification Frameworks

First, let us touch on the basics. These frameworks are: –

What is BANT?

BANT is the most famous framework. It is a simple yet powerful concept developed by the sales team at IBM in the 50s. Sales teams can quickly identify if their lead meets the criteria. And it is easy to remember. For those who do not know, BANT stands for: –

1. B- Budget
2. A- Authority
3. N-Need
4. T-Time

It helps an SDR understand if: –

1. an organization can afford its product
2. the person they are speaking to has the authority needed to buy
3. the organization has a need
4. and if the requirement matches both organizations’ timeframes.

It is an exceptional and old qualifier, still used today and accepted by large organizations as a gold standard. All other qualifying frameworks are variations of BANT.

What is MEDDIC?

MEDDIC is a newer framework that adds more dimensions based on the BANT framework. It helps sales teams open up more possibilities for inquiry.

It stands for: –

1. M- Metrics.
2. E- Economic Buyer.
3. D-Decision Criteria
4. D- Decision Process
5. I- Identifying Pain
6. C- Champion

The MEDDIC framework goes a step beyond understanding the buyer with more depth. Essentially, it helps your SDR identify: –

1. The KPIs the buyer wants to meet and if your product can align with that vision.
2. Is the prospect you are talking to an economic buyer (or decision-maker)?
3. What are the make-or-break decision criteria for the buyer?
4. The decision process of the buyer and the people involved in the buying
5. A champion within the organization. Someone to vouch for you inside the target account.

MEDDIC offers a view into a different structure of asking questions. SDRs and Chief Sales Officers have realized the value of asking varied questions.

As the buying process becomes more complex, the need for such frameworks has become necessary.

What is NOTE?

Another effective yet simple framework is the NOTE. Coined by Sean Burke, this method takes on an empathetic role in selling.

It stands for: –

1. N – Need
2. O- Opportunity
3. T- Team
4. E- Effect

The NOTE framework helps SDRs by identifying-

1. If the buyer need our services at this point?
2. What are the potential opportunities and growth levers that your product will offer?
3. Who or which teams will be affected by the integration of the product?
4. What are the effects (economic) of this strategic partnership?

The NOTE framework presents a shift in the dynamic between SaaS organizations. Towards a more customer-centric approach. The market has been shifting towards the customer’s side for a while now.

And it will continue to do so as buyers self-direct themselves through the buying journey. Complexities are a norm in the SaaS market. The saturated snapshot of the current landscape has made the buyer cautious.

They cannot help but be overwhelmed by the choice. Frameworks are integral for SDR success. But what happens when the number of qualified leads drops, and sales teams find that MQLs will not go anywhere?

It is time for marketing to step up.

Marketing’s role in sales

High-quality content is said to be the biggest draw-in for a potential buyer. Yet, according to HubSpot’s 2024 sales report, SDRs have reported low-quality leads as their biggest problem.

MQLs are not up to the mark. Or the nurtured leads were not properly qualified before being handed into sales.

Marketing teams must improve their attribution if they see success. It means going beyond the basics and understanding the intent behind prospects’ behavior.

While CDPs and marketing automation tools have become beneficial in doing so. There are three things marketing teams must do:

1. Orchestrate buyer experiences to attract a relevant audience
2. Identify the behavior of most likely candidates by analyzing past behavior
3. Defining a lead with sales.

Sales and marketing alignment has been a buzzword for a long time. The two teams cannot work in silos anymore. It is expected of sales teams to listen to the buyer, and that has given them an edge over marketing.

Marketing teams must listen, too. And not just for sales but also for the buyer. When decision-makers interact on socials and on content, what do they look for?

For marketing teams, the best qualifier is their gated content and the rich history of data use. Data will reveal whether a buyer will qualify. Lead scoring can go a long way in helping marketing and sales align their goals together.

The main question here is: What matters?

Asking the right questions is crucial.

What are the right questions? Once marketing and sales teams have aligned and understood the buyer, they will have questions beyond the obvious.

The questions only come by enquiring into the industry they are selling to and learning everything possible about their ICPs.

One of the most important questions we have identified is: In their opinion, has their organization reached its potential?

It opens up all possibilities because every organization has room for further growth and improvement. And it lets you know where the organization is headed in terms of leadership and vision.

A potent indicator of growth.

With the right questions, SDRs can craft a personalized pitch for the right buyer and save time from the irrelevant ones.

On the other hand, marketing teams can craft market-resonating messages by asking the right questions and understanding the audience they are providing content.

Sales and Marketing is about listening.

BANT, MEDDIC, and NOTE are all designed to listen. The buyer has their needs and wants a remedy or risk-mitigating solution that will empower them to avoid risk in the market.

This need for growth can be fueled by marketing and sales teams listening to their ICPs and providing the right questions for them. By asking the right questions, marketing and sales teams will create intrigue in the buyers’ minds and help them break free of analysis paralysis.

By using the frameworks, sales, and marketing open up possibilities that go beyond the obvious.

The industry is facing a brand-new problem: the oversaturation of data points and an overreliance on that data. While the B2B SaaS train chugs on, is it time to rethink the marketing principles?

The SaaS marketing playbook is outdated.

Jon Miller, the co-founder of Marketo, was a pioneer in the SaaS field. Most of the common principles that the marketing world takes for granted today were perfected by him if not outright created. And he says something known for quite some time: the old playbooks and methods of SaaS marketing will not work.

If that’s a surprise to anyone, it’s time to take note of it. But what’s not working about the old playbooks? It’s the over-reliance on measurable and linear tactics. Many in marketing believe that what is working today will continue to work tomorrow.

But, historically, that hasn’t been true. From the days of Salesforce, SaaS marketing has been a disruptor. Humans crave novel experiences that help them reinforce something about themselves.

It is a very personal endeavor that speaks to our tribality. Marketing is evolving—or rather, it’s returning to its original form: forming communities around solutions and identifying markers of trust.

The marketing principles should be based on today’s culture.

Tribes and Communities

Brand building is a form of identification. But why is this brand-building necessary in the first place? First, it is to distinguish and differentiate. Apple is not Samsung. Trello is not Asana.

Second, it is to build trust. Asana has something Trello doesn’t, and vice versa. But why would someone choose one over the other? That begins by identifying with the mission and what that mission brings to the table.

Think of your own experiences. Maybe it’s a finance or marketing solution that solved your pain point—you will defend that solution. You will tell people why this solution is the best because it makes you feel heard and improves your life.

When it comes to SaaS, this identification is vital—it will keep the buyer asking for more. Anecdotally, many marketing teams have preferences for what tools they use. Maybe it’s Slack for communication (amazing community-building by them, by the way), Notion for brainstorming and writing, or even the Pomodoro timer for getting into the zone. And they swear by it.

It is in our nature to defend the things that help us—if nothing else, for the ease of it all.

Marketing teams must understand that while generating MQLs is a priority, marketing is evolving into a more organic way of communication between two parties: the customer and the vendor.

Problem-Solving

Problem-solving is something all marketers have done and continue to do daily:

1. Addressing their ICP’s pain points
2. Creating a campaign
3. Working around the budget
4. Brainstorming unique ways of reaching the audience
5. Crafting subject lines for emails
6. Writing unique content for blogs
7. Composing copy that speaks to the buyer
8. Directing the journey
9. And so on

The foremost marketing principle is realizing that every marketer, at their core, is a strategic problem solver. And while neither strategy nor problem-solving is measurable, their impact can be. The process requires deep reflection and thinking in novel ways.

This comes from experimentation and patience—two abstract concepts that might be drifting further away in our “always-on” world.

The Attention Economy

In this “always-on” world, attention is a resource that cannot be overlooked. But that doesn’t mean bombarding prospects with indefinite messages.

Attention can be gained through creativity.

But that may not seem actionable enough to some. What does being creative mean? While it involves thinking in novel ways, many creatives start by connecting two different ideas.

Think of handwritten notes and the B2B SaaS industry. Wouldn’t that get your attention? Of course, which is why there’s a B2B company that does it: https://www.scribeless.co/.

B2C industries have it easier—human connection and impulse buying are at the forefront, and a more casual approach often works. However, gaining the attention of the SaaS buying committee can sound daunting. Every decision they make has to lead somewhere. The cost must justify what it does.

Luckily, in the workplace, leaders and even employees are looking for solutions that can ease their work. From the boom in AI-powered virtual assistants, it is evident that we want tools that save time. The challenge lies in finding the correct channels and identifying stakeholders for attention-grabbing ABM campaigns.

The marketing principle viable for the modern B2B buyer’s journey

Customer-centricity will drive the future. With an increase in automation, the need for thoughtful messages will keep increasing.

Content, marketing experiences, and everything in between serve two purposes:

1. To build trust
2. And eventually turn prospects into paying customers

But the buyer’s journey has evolved. Its non-linearity and long buying cycles point to the problem of having too many solutions in the market. Your competitors have the same tech stacks and the same information as you.

So, what can you do when everything else seems stacked against you?

Well, there are two ways:

1. CMOs must lean heavily into storytelling and create an identity for the SaaS product.
2. Get to know the buyer like you would your closest friend, and reach them in empathetic ways.

Trust your SaaS product and articulate what it does. The buyer is no longer someone who doesn’t understand the implications of tech. Tell them what it does, and do it consistently. Promise them a frictionless life and deliver on that promise.

Once you do that, you’ll realize every marketing principle says: connect, attract, and retain.

Expanding your pipeline growth with quality leads is the primary goal of your sales team. But how do you determine the performance efficiency?

Sales has a lot to do with numbers— Every day, your sales team sorts through a large database and works diligently towards meeting the targets. But without a system in place, it is tough to keep track of the sales performance. The concept of sales analysis revolves around simply reviewing data periodically and incorporating statistical tools when the need arises. When you gain insights into the numbers, it helps you improve your strategy and boost your sales cycle. Monitoring sales data provides trends and patterns that support better decision-making.

The best way to approach sales analysis is to utilize software that automates data processing and produces a visual representation of the analysis. It is critical to understand the revenue-driving metrics to make informed decisions and design sales strategies. Sales metrics are key to helping you evaluate numbers, growth, sales mix, and trends.

The purpose of sales analysis is to improve your decision-making to optimize revenue and overall growth. It takes into account all aspects of a pipeline and provides insights, such as top-performing, underperforming services, and customer retention. Your sales targets can also influence the frequency of performing the analysis. It involves tracking overarching metrics like deal size and looking into emails on a short-term basis.

Key Benefits of Sales Analysis

There are several advantages of employing sales analysis software in your marketing plan. Let’s understand why you need to leverage this process.

Analyze sales trends

Tapping into historical sales data offers valuable insights into patterns and expected outcomes. It is a good idea to familiarize yourself with the rising or declining trends, allowing you to modify the sales strategy to align with the desired results. If the trends are dropping, then you need to dig deeper and understand how to reverse the trend.

Forecast future sales 

Another advantage of identifying sales trends is the opportunity to forecast future trends. Although predicted outcomes may not be 100% accurate, you get an estimate that helps with planning. For example, you can predict the expected ROI turnover for the next quarter based on the sales cycle and trends.

Optimize sales pipeline

Looking into every phase of a sales funnel is a crucial step to revealing gaps or inefficiencies.  You can achieve a streamlined cycle based on data-driven insights to implement action-oriented strategies. Such calibration greatly levels up your teams’ performance efficiency.

Peak performance

Analyzing the sales cycle releases data to efficiently manage your sales reps, teams, channels, and marketing campaigns. Setting benchmarks for high performance and goal-based outcomes is the cornerstone of continuously improving your sales numbers.

Understand customer behavior

Tracking all aspects of your buyer’s journey is a starting point to enhance engagement with your customers. When you are aware of the buyer’s behavior and what resonates with them, you are able to curate the content delivery accordingly. A detailed sales analysis provides insights into your buyer’s journey, providing resources to help your sales teams design an effective strategy for increasing customer interactions.

Increase revenue

The ultimate objective of these analyses is to accelerate your sales cycle and increase the ROI returns. You can achieve this by identifying elements involved in a sales funnel that require optimizing the activities to scale your brand’s sales pipeline.

Make data-driven decisions

The performance of a sales cycle is an important determinant in informed decision-making. Every aspect of the pipeline requires flexibility to adapt to the evolving market dynamics. This could be in response to customer feedback or not meeting the sales targets. Whatever the circumstances, your sales team must be willing to accommodate the shift in their approach. The data to support such changes and decision-making needs to be carefully sourced, keeping in mind the gaps and the targets to be met.

Types of Sales Analysis

Let’s take a look at the three common types of sales analysis:

Sales Forecasting

This type of analysis predicts future sales and is done internally by companies. For instance, if you want to estimate the expected revenue this year, you can forecast based on historical data. You can then compare these predictions with the actual results achieved.

Sales Management

It is the process of managing current sales to ensure that your team is on the right track to meeting your targets. Companies like yours can identify areas where the buyer’s journey requires improvement to accelerate the sales pipeline. If the numbers are not as expected, efficient sales management allows you to adjust prices, add new products, or gain a competitive advantage with tools and strategies to optimize the process.  

Sales Reporting

Summarize information about sales to track the progress and communicate with your investors. In this step, you need to report monthly sales figures to the shareholders. The idea is to give them an overview of the results of investments.

Top Sales Analysis Metrics

Sales analysis is the driving force behind every brand’s success. It gives you the bigger picture of what’s working and what requires improvement. Here are the best metrics for measuring sales performance:

Revenue

It’s the heart of a sales team, the metric that indicates the success or scope for improvement. Revenue generation is by far the straightforward and important KPI of sales analysis. Multiplying the number of offerings sold by the price per unit will give you the total revenue generated. While accounting for the finances, you need to determine the net profit margin by estimating the proportion of total profits to revenue.

Gross Profit Margin

Also known as the gross margin, this metric gives you an idea of your brand’s efficiency at converting orders into revenue. It represents a financial ratio that estimates the percentage of revenue exceeding the costs of offerings. This KPI is crucial for understanding your brand performance, expressed as costs or profits.

Customer Lifetime Value (LTV)

The longer customers continue to choose your products/services, the more valuable they become to your brand. The LTV metric measures this value as the number of customers who are in it for the long haul. It is calculated by multiplying the average order size by the customer’s retention rate.

Churn Rate

Not all customers may continue in the long run with your brand. And that’s where this metric comes into the picture. The churn rate offers insights into the frequency of customers canceling their accounts. The results are derived by dividing this number by the total number of active users.

Retention Rate

This KPI gives you an idea of the period or timeline customers choose to stay after signing a deal. It is calculated simply by dividing the active users by new ones.

Sales Analysis Tools

These tools provide an overview of your data, allowing you to focus on specific aspects or types of information. Here’s a list of the common analytical components:

Reports:  offer insights such as total sales, average order size, and top-selling products or services.

Dashboards: gives a detailed overview of your sales data, consisting of information such as customer types, location, and sales by channel.

Performance analysis:  enables you to monitor and enhance your sales performance through information like win/loss ratios and conversion rates.

Pipeline analysis: allows you to manage your sales pipeline by supplying details, such as lead conversion rates and deal size.

Customer profile analysis: designed to help you understand your customers better, typically by providing information such as customer types, buying habits, and demographic information.

Steps to ace your sales analysis

We have prepared a 5-step roadmap for an effective sales analysis:

1. Identify the objective

Defining the purpose of your sales analysis is the point where you begin this journey. Gaining clarity about the gaps and limits allows you to identify the opportunity it will address. Such transparency establishes alignment and prevents unnecessary analytical work.

2. Determine the metrics 

Sales and analyses are all about data, however, there are only certain types of information that will serve your purpose. Acquiring data and assimilating them is time-consuming. Therefore, it is best that you focus on relevant touch points, or else your analysis may derail from the goals.

3. Crunch the numbers

After you have the necessary data at hand, the next step is to organize them, interpret and draw inferences. You can fulfill this milestone by managing data and integrating a suitable tool to attain the numbers.

4. Gather other perspectives 

The quality of a draft report is better with valuable input from trusted team members who understand the problem. This allows you to identify blindspots your analysis may have, or any opportunity to add clarity to your results. The added insights bring more credibility and confidence to your final report. 

5. Present your findings & Recommend actions

Your sales team probably comes across reports and analyses all the time, which makes it possible for some of them to get lost in the noise. This can be avoided by maintaining reports that are easy to act upon. Before presenting them, you must ensure that the core findings are precise. Add specific action items and provide access to raw data or other relevant information.

Summing up

Sales analysis is the backbone for your business growth, helping you understand the efficacy of strategies and tactics. It is like your diagnostic tool, allowing identification of the scope for improvement within the sales pipeline. When you harness the power of data and use it to your advantage, it makes it easier to make informed decisions, promoting long-term sustainability. Tracking the correct information is an essential element to measure your sales pipeline performance. All this data empowers you to tailor your sales strategies for fulfiling the specific needs of your target audience. Embrace the analysis to set your brand on the path of customer satisfaction and increased revenue.

In the marketing landscape, MOFU is an opportunity to build meaningful relationships, increasing lead conversion. How can you make the most of this phase?

With the ongoing digitization, the buyer’s journey continues to shift and evolve. When you are at the MOFU phase, your potential customers have gone past the initial awareness stage. They are now at a point where they are seriously considering purchasing your offerings. In this middle stage between TOFU and BOFU, potential prospects know your brand and have shown interest in your product or service. But they are looking at various options to make the best purchase. It is also the phase where they perform a comparative analysis with the competitors. For this reason, MOFU is known as the consideration phase of the sales funnel.  

At this point, supplying some information that will help them make an informed decision. Your marketing strategy targeting the mid-funnel must balance a solid foundation with flexible strategies.

Utilizing the potential of middle-of-the-funnel

The key ingredient of acing MOFU marketing comprises delivering content that conveys the right solution to your prospects. You need to provide them with detailed information about your offerings, or some added value to engage them. Amplify your mid-funnel content by making it more helpful and informative, without being too sales-y. Your target audience must feel like your offerings are providing some value. And it’s not some aggressive sales pitch. When you launch relevant and value-rich content, prospects are likely to respond positively to them.

While providing useful data, focus on building relationships with potential customers. You can achieve this through personalized emails or social media messages. Using these initiatives, you want your prospects to become excited or motivated to read the messages or posts. Building strong relationships with your prospects cultivates trust in your brand, making them more likely to purchase your offerings.

Mid-funnel buyers involve more thorough research from the prospects’ end before they go ahead and leap into that final decision to buy. Utilize this crucial point to stand out from the other brands, so the prospects choose you over the competitors. The mid-funnel content should revolve around delivering solutions that address the audience’s pain points. You should be able to help the MOFU buyers find the right solution through your content.

MOFU Marketing Tactics

Prospects entering the middle-of-the-funnel may not be familiar with your products or services. So, your main objective here is to enhance customer-brand relationships. By implementing this approach, your team can establish its authority in the market. The mid-funnel phase is also the perfect time for you to start nurturing leads who may not be ready for a sales discussion yet. Implementing a robust content marketing strategy can be a great tool to showcase the value of your brand. To accomplish this, your marketing strategy should be research-based and involve educational content, thought leadership, and case studies.

An effective MOFU content marketing helps you close the gap between the initial curiosity the audience feels when they engage with a brand’s content and the final sale. The leads you have at this stage are in the consideration phase of the customer journey. Your marketing team needs to produce educational content that engages the audience to your brand, increasing the lead conversion.

Key Elements of Successful Mid-Funnel Content

An effective mid-funnel content must be educational and highly persuasive while being target-specific. When you create materials with all these components, there is a better chance that your customers will resonate with your brand, causing them to convert into leads. Let’s look at each of these elements more closely.

Educational and brand-specific

Considering the prospects in your MOFU, they already have a solid understanding of your brand and its offerings. But what they need to dive into is how your company is different from the competitors and why they should go for your product/service. That is why, when creating content, make sure it is more sophisticated and informative, discussing your USPs.

Highly-Targeted Content

At its core, middle-of-the-funnel is your chance to add prospects in your sales cycle who are already interested in your offerings. Utilize this aspect of the sales process as an opportunity to drive more organic traffic to your site through engaging content. However, there is a stark difference between actionable insights and consumers casually seeking a solution. To garner customers likely to convert into paying accounts, you will want to create targeted content, supplying them with specific information that adds value and addresses a problem faced. 

Engaging Content

In the MOFU phase, your content needs to hook prospects for the long haul, inviting them to explore more about your company and its products or services. When developing your content plan for the mid-funnel phase, ensure that you provide enough data that gives them confidence in your brand to solve their problems. Showcase your unique capabilities and publish various forms of content demonstrating your expertise. A gentle push is all you need at this stage to convert into leads.

Types of content for effective MOFU marketing

Middle-of-the-funnel marketing requires certain forms of content to create an impact. These are some examples to educate your audience with the resources they need.

Case Studies

Through case studies, you can offer insightful explanations of how your offerings will make a difference and what new it is providing that other brands are now. You can highlight success stories or discuss applications of your products or services. This will let potential customers understand how you helped their existing clients achieve business goals. When creating case studies, demonstrate data such that your customers feel connected. They will want to see how the success of other brands can relate to them.

White Papers

The core mission of launching whitepapers is to draw light on a specific pain point and promote an approach you used to overcome the hurdle. As a brand that wants to stand out, you must publish white papers on your website and share them in your email campaigns. You must ensure they contain valuable, concrete facts, and statistical data that give your offerings a steady skeleton. If engrained with the right ingredients, white papers allow your prospects to grasp first-hand the benefits of your solutions.

Email Campaigns

Target-specific email campaigns provide an easy and effective route to reach many prospects. For instance, if you can garner more email open rates, it implies that your email marketing campaigns are making an impression to lead to actions. You can also look into email newsletters to compile value-added information to provide details about your brand. These campaigns can be curated to provide insights to move leads further into the funnel. The standout feature of emailers is they allow you to send multiple messages in one go.

Blog Posts

Whether you are a new brand or have established your brand voice strongly in the market, blogs are a useful catalyst to amp up your sales funnel. You can curate articles as per your audience, trying out different lengths and formats while you do so. Each blog is customizable plus easy to consume. The best part of blogs is updating informational content that your prospects will consume. If your blogs have unique insights, they also give you a cutting edge. Enrich your blogs by adding more SEO keywords and relevant links to increase search rates.

News Articles

Publishing curated news pieces could open another doorway of communication with your target audience. While launching this content form, obtain a content license from a trusted source that helps you share timely and reliable updates. In this way, you can enhance brand credibility among your prospects.

Summing up,

The middle-of-the-funnel is one step ahead in the sales funnel. Your prospects have surpassed the getting-acquainted-with-your-brand phase and are seriously considering choosing your brand. This phase is all about them researching and comparing across competitors to decipher which brand makes the best fit for them. The way for your brand to shine in this stage is to provide content that enlightens them on how your brand’s offerings will solve their pain point. You can retain more leads past the MOFU phase by launching value-rich content that highlights your services and offerings. It is a great stage in the funnel to increase lead conversion by planning and delivering content that matters.

Weaknesses in your sales pipeline are detrimental. Can the right sales pipeline metrics help elevate the buyer’s journey?

Numbers and data, when isolated from each other, are meaningless. They exist within specific contexts.

We turn them into a quantifiable metric by tracking, analyzing, and comparing them to churn out meaning. This is how metrics help us gauge the effectiveness of a method.

Across the marketing and sales landscape, metrics help us assess and measure performance or production. It quantifies your marketing efforts to measure their effectiveness in boosting conversion rates and lead sales velocity.

Sales pipeline metrics operate in the same manner.

Sales pipeline: The basic understanding.

Sales pipeline is a visual representation of how your prospects move through the different stages in the funnel, i.e., from initial contact to closing a deal. Simply put, it helps analyze the overall buyer journey – what’s causing the drop-offs or why it’s taking so long to close a deal.

Sales pipelines are unique for every business and industry. What it generally looks like depends on the buyer’s journey, depending on their interests, preferences, priorities, and research.

Each buyer moves distinctly to accommodate the pipeline according to their journey, i.e., personalizing and making it effective. More than being sturdy, the pipeline is elastic and adapts to the prospective movements.

It generally includes three processes: lead generation, lead nurturing, and deal closing.

And, these are broader stages covered within the sales pipeline:

Prospecting ⇒ Lead qualification ⇒ Initial contact ⇒ Official proposal ⇒ Negotiation ⇒ Closing the deal

The most crucial objective here is that the pipeline should be able to handle the volume of leads without compromising the engagement quality or performance. If your brand is witnessing low conversion rates, certain challenges within your pipeline should be addressed.

Some of the common challenges your sales and marketing team may encounter include:

• Lack of historical data on closed deals
• Off-market target audience guiding leads off-base
• Absence of measurable targets
• Lack of visibility or knowledge regarding the status of the sales pipeline
• No use of effective CRM tools to track leads
• Not following up on cold leads
• Inadequate conversion status updates
• Neglected workable and high-quality leads

These are the potential weak spots of your sales pipeline.

So, how do we overcome them?

The Importance of Sales Pipeline Metrics in Driving Success

Certain metrics let us assess how to alleviate these concerns and improve the different stages across the sales journey.

Pipeline metrics are crucial.

Each team member should familiarize themselves with tracking them regularly. Even if the sales pipeline metrics vary for businesses, some general ones should still be tracked by your team.

Understanding what drives your prospects to close a deal in a win or what makes them drop off midway through these metrics also offers significant opportunities for improvement.

This is why choosing the relevant metrics takes precedence.

How can you choose the right sales pipeline metrics that align with your business goals?

1. Align metrics with the business goal you wish to achieve.

Don’t just track numbers; ensure that these numbers boost you closer to your business goals. This data, when siloed, doesn’t mean anything. But within the right context, they mark your progress towards your objectives.

For example, if your goal is to elevate the organization’s market share, then total revenue wouldn’t offer you the nuanced picture. Here, tracking the share of wallet and sales per territory makes more sense.

The crucial factor here is taking a granular approach. If you are dominating the market, how do you ensure that it remains ten years down the line?

2. Leverage a balanced approach.

Identifying bottlenecks is as vital as predicting the success of your sales strategies. To get a more molecular insight into where the lacks and gaps are most prevalent, you can’t just focus on certain metrics while dismissing the rest.

It’s true that the approach must revamp in today’s modern sales landscape. But traditionally relevant metrics take as much precedence as implementing new ones.

This means taking a balanced approach to choosing the right metrics.

Your strategic framework should entail a mix of lagging and leading indicators – one that demonstrates the past performance (closed deals) and ones that forecast (qualified leads).

A balance between them can help your marketing and sales teams to revisit, review, strategize, and analyze accurately.

3. Assess periodically and update your metrics.

One of the most strategic means of selecting the right sales pipeline metrics is assessing what’s working and what isn’t, and updating the list.

It’s crucial to start from somewhere. Each data point can give you the slightest idea into what your sales strategy needs to rework on.

What worked before might not work today. Don’t let the stale metrics prove your efforts ineffective. So, review them periodically to ascertain that they align with the current business challenges and requirements.

4. Get a comprehensive understanding of the entire customer journey.

Numbers wouldn’t always tell you where the rupture is. Most often, sales hit the wall while making a sale or post it.

This is because most only focus on pre-sale metrics and interactions. This damages the customer experience and leads to missed opportunities.

To avoid this, it’s necessary to track the customer experience, too. Metrics, such as sales cycle length, can offer you a 360-degree insight into what’s truly going wrong.

The bottom line?

The sales pipeline metrics you end up choosing must be actionable. If they aren’t, it poses a significant obstacle for you.

These metrics should illustrate a specific behavior – what is happening, what has changed, and what can be done about this.

The right sales metrics don’t merely offer postmortem pipeline analysis. They allow you to proactively make informed decisions and offer clarity into nuggets that often go unnoticed.

Don’t measure everything. Focus on those that align with your goals.

Fundamental sales pipeline metrics to amplify your efforts

Opportunities

The total number of opportunities matters because it portrays the results of your lead generation efforts. Your lead generation efforts should target prospects fitting the ICP, i.e., the ideal customer profile.

What factors qualify prospects as opportunities? There are some criteria that most businesses focus on.

• Demographics – age, gender, income, family structure, education, occupation, etc.
• Firmographics – company size, ownership, market share, location, sales cycle stage, financial performance, etc.
• Psychographics – value proposition, goals, interests, lifestyle choices, etc.

A prospect does not have to follow each criterion, as they vary according to the organization.

To track this, teams must prioritize lead quality because it aptly demonstrates which leads are the most valuable and can easily convert into opportunities.

By analyzing which accounts you count as an opportunity, your team can optimize its marketing efforts and improve lead-nurturing processes to keep them engaged as they move through the pipeline.

How can we assess lead quality?

To simplify this, your sales team can use the BANT or MEDICC lead qualification framework.

The opportunities should be tracked and assessed weekly, monthly, or bimonthly, depending on the preferences of your company. However, it can also be done regularly in case of rapid market fluctuations, multiplying lead volumes, or during push season due to an event.

New Leads

The number of new leads entering your pipeline offers an overview of the success of your marketing campaigns. Additionally, it helps outline your brand’s market reach and offers quantifiable data to back your efforts.

It is necessary to highlight these new leads to establish whether your lead generation strategies are efficient.

Once in a while, we should question whether we are chasing hollow leads with no future potential and wasting our resources.

The end solution follows a comprehensive tracking system and establishes a timeframe depending on the pace and volume of generated leads. Document the number of leads, segment them, analyze the trends, and then compare the different lead-gen efforts to help optimize your strategies.

Overall, lead quality reflects your sales and marketing efforts – how effective they are. But it could largely differ from business size to industry to marketing strategies.

Hence, there’s nothing as simple as “good” or “bad” leads.

By documenting the acquired leads regularly against how many of them actually convert, the results will automatically indicate the performance of your strategies.

MQL to SQL Conversion Rates

This conversion rate calculates the number of marketing-qualified leads who convert into sales-qualified leads. They show interest, sign up, provide their contact info, and subscribe for a demo period to further inspect the solutions offered to them.

These metrics highlight the performance of your lead qualification strategies.

An effective lead-nurturing process will eventually illustrate high engagement results, which may translate to high conversion rates. This indicates a healthy alignment between the sales and marketing teams.

How often do we assess MQL to SQL conversion rates?

Calculate MQL to SQL conversion rates monthly. With this, you will allow the lead qualification processes to work at their own pace, enabling you to make adjustments and understand if they are returning the desired outcomes.

The acceptable range for this conversion rate depends on the industry, business objectives, and past performance – your MQL-SQL conversion rate benchmarks.

Lead Velocity Rate

Velocity measures whether an object is accelerating or decelerating. This applies to a sales pipeline. The lead velocity rate compares the leads generated in the current business period to the previous one.

The velocity rate calculates qualified leads, helping you analyze whether your lead-generation efforts are fruitful and effective. It aids in strategic resource allocation and sales processes, amplifying your efforts.

This metric is crucial to understanding your business revenue growth.

If the number of generated leads for the latest sales cycle remains similar or lower than the previous sales cycle, you know you’re doing something wrong. Thus, it should be assessed monthly or quarterly, depending on your company’s needs.

There is no acceptable velocity rate.

It depends on the industry and your business. Remember, you are your biggest competition.

In every sales cycle, the target should be to generate more leads through improved strategies compared to the previous one.

Average Deal Size

Average deal size is another significant factor that measures the health of your sales pipeline. It represents the monetary value ascribed to a sale.

Tracking the average deal size your business is partaking in helps with sales and demand forecasting.

In the long term, regularly tracking average deal sizes can assist in optimizing and streamlining strategies for marketing and sales initiatives. It is important to reach your brand targets and meet broader market conditions.

Sales Cycle Duration

Analyzing the monetary value of a sale is as significant as calculating the duration of the deal. This metric focuses on the details. It offers an insight into how a deal got stuck and why, with ways to improve it.

Sales cycle duration is the average time a deal spends at every specific stage of the sales cycle. Tracking minute errors resulting in potential delays is easier by calculating the sales cycle duration.

Additionally, this provides crucial insight into the sales cycle length, i.e., the time it takes from the initial contact to the lead being closed. This is also one of the sales pipeline metrics to track.

After all, this also affects the time a deal takes to close.

There are three metrics that we are addressing – average sales cycle duration, sales cycle length, and time taken to close.

These three metrics also help sales forecasting, so your brand can establish practical targets.

A long sales duration can cause a huddle in your pipeline, resulting in relatively high lost deals or drop-offs.

Both these metrics depend on diverse factors, such as the complexity of the product or service. The sales cycles across the B2B landscape are generally longer due to the several decision-makers in the buying committee. And this might delay the purchase as each of them holds their interests and pain points.

You should curate your marketing techniques based on your target market to overcome such hiccups.

• Establish priority and build trust regarding the prospects.
• Conduct customer research and feedback programs.
• Provide social proof through value propositions that align with the prospect’s preferences and pain points.
• Time-sensitive offers that urge prospects to take action.
• Streamline and integrate your lead nurturing and sales enablement strategies to retarget interested leads and stay on their tail.

These sales pipeline KPIs are mutually dependent on each other to some extent. But their goal remains the same, i.e., measuring how efficiently your sales and marketing efforts convert leads into paying customers.

Number of Deals Won

This pipeline metric tracks the number of successful deals. This is relative to the total number of opportunities during a specific period.

Conversion rates are crucial to drive business growth.

The higher the conversion rates, the faster your business can attain its goals. This is why conversion rates are one of the most crucial sales metrics.

If the conversion rates are low or don’t align with industry benchmarks, you can outline fresher roadmaps by identifying the areas of improvement.

What factors contribute to a successful deal? What have you done differently to win a deal than the one dropped off?

These are the questions you ask your sales and marketing team while analyzing the conversion rates and other trends in your data.

Most often, the opportunities may be high, but the win rates are low, signifying a major lack in the closing stages of the pipeline.

Age of a Deal

This is one of the effective and simple metrics you can use when a deal is taking an unnecessarily long time to move through the pipeline, or the prospect themselves are taking too long to make a decision.

With an increasingly long decision-making period, it is less likely that a prospect converts.

You need to assess why the lead didn’t convert and where they got stuck.

How do you avoid this? – Identify the bottlenecks, remove them, and boost the sales velocity.

To move this forward, your company should equip the sales representatives with the right resources and sales enablement or acceleration tools to drive the purchasing process.

By accelerating the sales processes, the age of the deal will automatically reduce, offering space for more successful closes.

Sales Rep Activity

This metric offers insight into the sales team members’ sales performance. Measuring this helps foster team productivity and takes team accountability.

It outlines how your sales team performs through outreach emails sent, the number of calls made, and the meetings booked by each sales representative. Track the sales and categorize them based on factors such as rep, team, region, product/service(s), etc. using efficient CRM tools.

Through the results, your team can assess whether the sales rep is compensated for their contributions. And once analyzed, underperformers can be equipped with more resources and support from their superiors.

How do you improve the number of top performers, boost sales rep activity, and amplify sales?

The lack of correct skills and knowledge is a huge obstacle. To improve this, offering regular training and coaching sessions to newbies is a way to go.

The training should include actively engaging with prospects and staying updated with industry trends. Actively assessing and improving individual sales per rep will help boost the sales team’s productivity.

Total Pipeline Value

This sales pipeline metric measures the total value of deals in your pipeline. The total pipeline value depends on the value of the sales opportunity, the pipeline stage, and the time taken to close it.

By tracking the value of the current opportunity, it is possible to measure the total forecasted business revenue. Hence, it is a valuable metric for sales forecasting.

If you compare your total pipeline value with your win rates, it can help you forecast how much sales revenue could be generated at the end of the sales cycle. If combined with the sales cycle length, it can help analyze the total revenue potential.

To calculate TPV, each opportunity is provided with a specific monetary value, helping to estimate the total sales amount.

Customer Churn Rate

Also known as the customer turnover rate, it’s the number of customers you’re losing or drop-off from the purchasing journey.

This can be quite a requisite KPI for businesses, as it indicates customers are losing interest in your product or service.

However, this might not be the actual case.

Drop-off rates are as important as win rates. It becomes difficult to identify the improvement areas without highlighting the weak points.

Customer churn rate is a necessary metric in subscription business models.

It calculates the customer percentage that doesn’t renew and cancels their subscription services within a month or a year. Hence, this pipeline metric is significant for companies that rely on a recurring pricing model like SaaS or subscription services.

Implement CRM tools to determine how to boost the workings of your subscription models. And highlight the number of paying customers currently compared to the beginning.

⇒ Customer churn rate formula = (the number of customers lost/total customers at the beginning of the period) *100

For the broader picture, the customer churn rate helps highlight the forecasted revenue, improve customer loyalty, prioritize customer success, and enhance marketing strategies.

Average Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)

Customer acquisition cost signifies the company’s expenditure on acquiring new customers. It includes marketing and sales expenses, salaries, overheads, commissions, bonuses, etc.

However, CAC in marketing implies something different.

The main expenses entail the content, training, software, and other overhead costs. The goal is to prioritize investments that generate regular returns with minimum maintenance costs, such as curating content-specific blog posts.

It helps you assess the profitability, i.e., the amount you spend on a customer compared to the profit you make from selling your services to the customer.

This metric helps with resource allocation, making your customer acquisition process efficient and simpler. Simply put, there is no significant need to focus too long on this process. Sometimes, an expensive customer might not mean that they are equally profitable.

Your sales and marketing teams should incorporate smart and streamlined strategies. An uncommonly high CAC might mean inefficiencies that require vigilance to enable long-term stability.

Remember to research your target audience. Host automated testing regularly to maximize your ROI using the existing customer acquisition efforts.

How can you calculate the customer acquisition cost?

First, add all the sales and marketing expenses. Then, divide this total by the number of new customers.

⇒ CAC = (sales expenses + marketing expenses)/total number of new customers

Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)

After spending an ample amount on your cost acquisition efforts, how do you assess whether it is profitable?

Through customer lifetime value.

This metric calculates the value the customer brings to your business, including the amount they spend on your services, their time as customers, and their purchase frequencies.

By taking individual CLV into account, you can analyze the value of your entire customer base. It will offer insight into how much effort you should spend on customer acquisition.

To enhance CLV, focus on customer retention.

Implement new customer service strategies promptly, addressing their concerns to build a strong professional relationship. When the customers are satisfied and happy, they are likely to remain loyal and purchase your services.

The most significant strategy for driving customer lifetime value is improving customer service, personalized recommendations, discount offers, user-friendly websites, etc.

So, finding a solution based on the metrics can help you improve your sales and marketing strategies. One of which would be to reduce the stages in the sales funnel that are unnecessarily time-consuming.

Now that we have listed the most significant and common sales pipeline KPIs, why is it important to track the right pipeline metrics?

Because even the slightest mistakes can render their efforts ineffective, hampering the ROI, and congesting the pipeline.

Fundamental mistakes teams make while tracking sales pipeline metrics

We’ve established that the right sales pipeline metrics go beyond conversion rates and total revenue. The actual challenge lies in aligning the metrics with business needs and the growth stage.

A majority of teams overlook the nuances, leading to a conundrum. This creates obvious mistakes that fester, especially due to a significant knowledge gap.

What are some of the fundamental ones?

• Isolated focus on vanity metrics: Even today, businesses continue to prioritize numbers that look good in theory but don’t represent the actual performance. This could create a false sense of progress, while deeper performance issues remain overlooked. And even mislead or confuse the stakeholders.

• Misaligned or irrelevant metrics: Most teams don’t take the time to understand the broader objectives and how they align with sales performance. This can easily derail your focus, not making any significant contributions to your business’s current priorities. And SDRs might end up pushing low-margin deals, delaying crucial shifts.

• Overlooking the context: It’s context that takes precedence over raw numbers. Metrics should be segmented by channel type, customer profiles, etc., to spotlight performance gaps. An inaccurate picture can lead to strategies that only work for a specific segment. Marketing and sales must fine-tune their approach accordingly.

Each of the above mistakes can have a compounding effect while tracking your sales pipeline metrics. They distort the overall assessment that impacts how the resources are allocated and how strategies are executed.

But there’s an antidote: intentional, agile, and goal-aligned metrics that align with the evolving sales and growth model.

A healthy sales pipeline is like a cocktail glass.

Jeff Hoffman, an entrepreneur and sales executive, argues that a sales pipeline is a cocktail glass rather than a funnel, stating that the latter is inaccurate. Most prospect drop-offs happen near the top in the first stage when the lead comes across a demo, trial, or sign-up.

After passing through this milestone, the opportunity pool should remain approximately the same, and the probability that the opportunity is won is highly likely. This is the make-up of a healthy sales pipeline.

To some extent, we may think about how the shape of the sales pipeline aligns with reality.

The stages and shape of this movement vary according to the buyers, industry, and sales processes.

Why is sales pipeline analysis crucial? To optimize your sales performance, client experience, and drive business growth.

Maintaining a simple and efficient sales pipeline is healthy for your business and sales revenue. But how do we know what “healthy” looks like?

FAQs

1. How can you effectively assess your sales pipeline?

A. Assessing your sales pipeline isn’t about counting closed deals or appointments booked. It’s about deal velocity and step-by-step conversion rate, among others.

To effectively assess its health, your teams must dive into comprehensive reports to spotlight bottlenecks and performance gaps. And segregate the metrics’ analysis by deal type or client profiles, or lead source, etc., to identify hidden ruptures.

2. What are sales pipeline metrics?

A. Sales pipeline metrics are qualitative and quantitative values that track the number and quality of created opportunities. These are crucial to demonstrate the health of your sales pipeline – whether your sales strategies are bearing the desired outcomes.

The common metrics are pipeline value, customer acquisition cost, customer churn rate, deal age, number of deals won, etc. A mix of both lagging and leading metrics provides a curious insight into what’s happening and the revenue potential.

3. How can you track sales pipeline metrics?

A. Generally, sales pipeline metrics can be tracked through your CRM systems through detailed reports and comprehensive dashboards. Your focus should be directed towards updating the deal progression, individual sales rep performance, sales cycle length, etc, ones that actually align with your core business goals.

Regularly tracking these metrics can help you tweak your sales strategies to elevate their effectiveness. And improve revenue forecasting.

4. What benchmarks or industry standards should I compare my sales funnel metrics with?

Industry benchmarks such as a 25-30% win rate and a 3x pipeline coverage ratio can add an advantageous starting point for you. And one of the most relevant benchmarks to compare with is your organization’s historical data.

While focusing on the competitor can help you outline a strategic edge, prioritizing your internal metrics can highlight what needs tweaking, whether it’s cross-departmental alignment or an update in infrastructure.

5. What are the most common pitfalls businesses face in tracking sales funnel metrics?

One of the most common pitfalls is depending on inaccurate data that doesn’t offer any useful insights. They can be misleading for your teams as well as stakeholders. Additionally, most businesses make the mistake of tracking the wrong metrics, overlooking segmentation, or merely focusing on lagging metrics.