Sales Coaching: Focus on the Early Stages of the Business Pipeline

Posted by James Fennessy

The real emphasis of this characteristic of world-class sales forces is spending more time looking at the early stages of the pipeline than the late stages. That is because the opportunity to create value rests in the early stages. In the case of average companies, the language of management towards its sales force is always thus: When is the deal going to close? When are we going to submit the proposal? When are we going to get the contract? When are we going to get the order? When are we going to send the invoice? When are we going to get paid?

The fact is, by the later stages of the pipeline, when the orientation is on closing the deal and tying up loose ends, it is too late. There are very few degrees of freedom left to create value. And by focusing on the later stages, average companies are inadvertently defining themselves as transactional companies selling a commodity. Now, to be sure, there is nothing wrong with these late stage questions, but they have to be counterweighted with much more attention at the early stages of the pipeline, where great sales coaches begin asking questions like: What unrecognised problem can we help this client see? What unforeseen opportunity can we help this client identify? And so on.

The management in a world-class company spends at least as much time – and our research would argue twice as much time – focusing on that front end of the sales pipeline where the funnel is wide and the degrees of freedom are numerous to be able to create value. Again, there is nothing wrong with asking the late stage questions, but if that’s the only focus, the company is being focused in a transactional way. Companies that inadvertently become transactional by not focusing on the early stages of the pipeline, and then turn around and ask their sellers to be consultative, will find themselves in a quandary. If the only questions being asked are the late-stage questions, salespeople will soon realise that they have no need to be consultative because what is measured is what gets done. The most powerful form of measurement is what the sales manager asks about. And if a manager only asks the late-stage questions, he is simply saying: Make business happen. Superior sales coaches get involved early in the sales cycle, where there is most opportunity to create value. They ask the questions that help to create value and drive progressive outcomes.

The prerequisite for focusing on the early stages of the business pipeline is that sellers have to understand the phases that buyers go through in making a decision, and how to recognize where they are in the cycle. The organisation can then embrace the early stages of that cycle.