Workshop: Sales Process and Pipeline Management

Sales organizations improve performance by using formalized sales processes. But many firms’ attempts to instill sales process discipline fall far short of expectation. These shortcomings often surface when managers attempt to understand sales pipelines, or to gain insight into the status of pending opportunities.

These two activities, sales process and sales pipeline management, are considered essential management disciplines in most sales organizations; they are closely related, interdependent, and frequently bungled.

In this extended workshop, presenters Jason Jordan and Bob Kelly examine why typical approaches to sales process and pipeline management often fail. Drawing on more than 10 years of Sales Management Association research, they revisit their 2015 HBR article on sales process management and update a set of best practices employed by leading sales organizations.

The session also reviews first principles associated with instilling process discipline in sales organizations; these principles give sales leaders a sound foundation for skill development in sales process and pipeline management.

Topics include:

• Process discipline’s role in scaling and regulating selling effort
• Sales process design fundamentals, best practices, and emerging trends
• Pipeline management approaches: what really works
• Best practices in structuring and conducting pipeline reviews
• Rethinking pipeline KPIs