There are many organizations that expect their sales team to maintain a 6X pipeline of prospects. As a former senior executive and former board member I understand the concept of having this requirement for sales people.  The thought process behind the 6X concept is that sales is a numbers game, the more swings at the bat the better chance of getting a hit. It is hard to argue the logic behind that thinking. But it is fair to ask the question, is the 6X or 5 X pipeline requirements helping or hurting the need to grow your revenues?

One of the issues I see over and over again when conducting our Quid Pro Quo Sales Training courses is that sales people pursue unqualified opportunities. Sales is absolutely a numbers game, but it is a quality numbers game.   The value of filling your pipeline full of unqualified prospects just to satisfy a corporate requirement is dangerous and expensive. It’s dangerous because often times due to the lack of real prospects, sales people will start a sales cycle with unqualified prospects.  Consider how many of your sales pursuits this year or last have shown no fruit for the labor.  If multiple people are required to be involved with prospects, you have to consider the hard costs of travel, meals, hotels, entertainment, etc.  Unfortunately, the most expensive thing is the lost time of prospecting to find a real opportunity you can actually close.  Sales people confide in me and tell me that for the most part, anything beyond 1X their pipeline is just window dressing. They hate the requirement, but know how to play the game so they find names to fill up in their CRM system just to make someone feel secure there is plenty of activity going on.

If an organization has a 6X requirement, another fair question would be why is this needed? The answer, I get more times than not is that many studies have been done on their sales team and it takes 6 times the quota in the pipeline for a given sales person to achieve their quota. I would humbly suggest if this is the case for your organization, Sales Builders needs to help you with your sales approach and processes.  The most important part of any sales cycle is qualification. Regardless of how good your product might be and despite of how great a closer any given sales person might be, you will never win business from an unqualified prospect.

Demanding huge pipeline expectations from your sales force will be distracting to them, costly to the organization, and at the end of the day will encumber your ability to achieve the growth targets you need and want.