If there’s one phrase in a B2B company that could spark a drinking game, it’s ‘B2B sales pipeline.’ From the go-to-market team to engineering and product, everyone’s thoughts revolve around it. Most decisions and trade-offs that teams make while planning their work boil down to one question: how will this impact the B2B sales pipeline?
What is a B2B sales pipeline, and how do you build one? This article breaks it all down for you.
What is a B2B sales pipeline
A B2B sales pipeline is a visual summary that captures the journey from the moment a lead is generated to the point it is converted into a customer. It helps track how a lead progresses, and identify which stage or phases a lead is in, so you can get an overview of the deals that might convert into customers and can forecast revenues. Your sales pipeline helps you track and manage leads as they move through different stages of the buying journey.
A B2B sales pipeline is a real-time view of the active or potential customers rather than a theoretical framework or the sales funnel that a lead is expected to go through, and helps understand what is happening in the sales and marketing function in your organization.
Core components of a successful sales pipeline
While the components of a sales pipeline vary across businesses, a typical pipeline has the following core components:
- Prospecting - finding and reaching out to potential customers who match your ideal customer profile
- Lead qualification - the process of identifying if a lead you have is a right fit for your business and are likely to convert in the immediate or near future
- Lead nurturing - establishing and building relationships with the leads to educate them about your product or brand, and establish credibility so they convert into paying customers
- Demo - meet the lead in person or virtually to give them a demo of your product and take them through the use cases or solutions that will help them scale their business
- Proposal - presenting prospective customers with the terms of engagement including details of the competitive advantage, features, functionalities, professional services, and pricing
- Negotiation - finalizing the terms of the agreement and contract and scope of work
- Deal closed - Signing the contract and completing the payment
- Onboarding and implementation - getting the customer and their team to sign up to the product, get acquainted with the features and functionalities, migrating their data from the existing system to the new one, and configuring the product for use.
Key differences between sales pipeline and sales funnel
A sales funnel and a sales pipeline are often mentioned together, but they represent two different perspectives in the sales process.
- Sales funnel: This is customer-focused and maps the buyer’s journey, moving through stages like awareness, interest, consideration, intent, evaluation, and purchase. It shows what leads need at each step of their journey to make a decision, highlighting how many leads are present at each stage and how they progress. The funnel is about understanding and nurturing the buyer’s experience.
- Sales pipeline: This focuses more on the vendor or the company building and selling the product. It maps the salesperson’s actions and tasks at each stage of the sales cycle, such as prospecting, cold outreach, qualification, meetings, proposals, closing, and follow-ups. The pipeline gives a view of the deals in progress, how close they are to closing, and the potential revenue tied to each stage.
While the sales funnel emphasizes the lead’s journey and their progression, the sales pipeline focuses on the activities and opportunities that sales teams need to manage to close deals.
Role in sales process management
Sales process management refers to the process of orchestrating and handling the sales process to optimize the sales and GTM team’s operations. A B2B sales pipeline is essential for managing the sales process effectively. Here’s the role it plays in sales process management:
- Provides visibility into sales activities
- Helps with accurate forecasting
- Enables sales, marketing, and customer success teams to collaborate better
- Focus on prioritizing high-value leads
Essential Stages of a B2B Sales Pipeline
Every lead or account goes through multiple stages or phases from the time they enter the sales pipeline in an organization. These are typically the stages of a B2B sales pipeline:
Stage 1: Prospecting and Lead Generation
Prospecting is how the lead or contact enters the B2B sales pipeline. It is the process of finding potential customers who are a good fit for your business.
This stage of the sales pipeline requires a lot of research about the contact or lead, enriching the contact, and reaching out to them to explore potential sales opportunities.
Companies usually operate with an account book with a list of target accounts, and have their sales development representatives (SDRs) prospect and reach out to the ICP contacts at these accounts.
Tools like Highperformr help automate prospecting by providing sales teams with signals and intent data that can be used to prioritize contacts and leads they reach out to, and help with spearfishing high-potential prospects and drive sales efficiency. Prospecting should by no means be a spray-and-pray activity as it affects efficiency and could lead to waste.
During this stage, the SDRs or sales people will reach out to these prospects and educate them about your company and how the product can solve a problem for them and help them grow their business.
Signals and social insight help with enriching the basic contact information and providing the sales teams with insight that will help them personalize their conversation starters and tailor the pitch to increase chances of conversion.
Stage 2: Lead Qualification (MQL/SQL)
Qualifying the leads in your B2B sales pipeline is the process of whittling down your leads to the ones most likely to purchase your product or service.
In most B2B companies, leads are generated by the marketing team and are then passed on to the sales team. These leads first go through a process of qualification, and these marketing qualified leads (MQL) are then passed to the sales team for further qualification. The sales qualified leads (SQL) are then handed to sales development representatives (SDRs) for outreach.
An MQL is one that the marketing team believes has potential to become a customer, but the lead becomes an SQL only after it is certain that the lead is willing to actually consider buying the product in the near future. Even if an MQL doesn't turn into an SQL, most organizations continue to nurture these leads so they might buy in the future.
Lead qualification is an important step in the sales funnel. It comes between the phase when the company has an extensive list of raw leads, and the phase when the list is cleaned up to only have leads that are more likely to convert into customers in the near future. This is essential to make sure your sales team operates efficiently and focuses all efforts on high-potential leads.
Stage 3: Discovery and Needs Assessment
The discovery stage is where you determine if there’s a mutual fit. This is done by conducting a needs assessment, which involves asking thoughtful questions and offering insights that inspire buyers to think differently. The focus in this stage is not pitching your solution, but asking open-ended questions to understand the potential customers’ challenges and earn their trust. The discovery call is made to discuss their priorities, pain points, and aspirations.
Sellers who tell compelling stories and offer tailored insights can shape buyer needs and inspire them to consider unfamiliar solutions. This approach allows your team to map your offering to the prospect's unique challenges, and show them how it aligns with their goals. The conversations and the underlying messaging from your sales team has to resonate with the prospective customers.
Stage 4: Solution Presentation or Product Demo
The product demo stage of the B2B sales pipeline is where you bring your solution to life for the prospect. Most buyers need to see your product and perhaps even play around with it before they buy. A demo also gives you the chance to showcase your product’s real-world functionality and use cases.
Before diving into the demo, spend time understanding the key decision makers in the buying committee. Learn about their roles, pain points, and requirements. This research will help you customize and tailor the demo presentation and ensure that it resonates with your audience.
Rather than making a generic spiel, be specific and genuine about how your solution solves their specific challenges, improves their processes or operations, and helps them gain an edge over competitors. A personalized approach builds trust and makes the demo memorable. Highlight the value of your product while also subtly addressing competitors’ drawbacks or gaps in the market.
Stage 5: Negotiation and Proposal
The negotiation stage of the B2B sales pipeline is when the terms of engagement, pricing plans, and contracts are finalized.
To ensure a productive negotiation, focus on showcasing the benefits of your offering. Demonstrate the ROI using data, customer stories and case studies. Instead of focusing the entire conversation only on costs, take the time to discuss the scope of work, value of the product, terms of engagement, etc. Be sure that the entire team is clear about the concessions you're willing to make, and set the right expectations.
Most often, this stage of the B2B sales pipeline involves a lot of back and forth and multiple discussions.
Stage 6: Deal Closing and Contract
Closing is the biggest and most exciting stage of the B2B sales pipeline. This is when the prospect decides to either move forward with your tool or opt for an alternative.
Being proactive and giving the prospective customer a sense that your company and team will assist them and work with them collaboratively can help instill confidence in your solution and assure them that you’re invested in their success.
If the deal isn’t closed, be sure to collect detailed feedback on why the decision was made and use these insights to improve your processes and product. Also make sure that you retain these contacts in your CRM and nurture them for conversion in the future.
Stage 7: Post-Sale Management and Customer Success
The post-sale stage of the B2B sales pipeline is where the focus shifts to delivering maximum value to the customer. This is critical for driving long-term success, nurturing relationships, and growing the account.
This is when you should focus on onboarding the customer and their team, implementing the product, and ensuring that the shift from their existing/previous product to yours is seamless and swift.
You should also proactively find ways to help the customer get the most out of your product. This means understanding the customer’s evolving needs and planning for strategic account development. This will help you grow the account, create opportunities for cross-selling or upselling, and block competitors from gaining traction.
B2B Sales Pipeline Management Best Practices
Sales pipeline management is the process of empowering your sales team with everything they need to have enough active deals at various stages of the pipeline.
Managing a B2B sales pipeline effectively is essential for driving revenue, improving efficiency, and building long-term customer relationships. There are a few basics and best practices you need to follow while executing your go-to-market strategy and putting your sales process/workflow in place. Here are some best practices to enhance your sales pipeline management:
- Clearly define pipeline stages
Establish clear and distinct stages in your sales process, such as lead generation, qualification, proposal, negotiation, and closing. This clarity helps sales teams understand where each prospect stands and what actions are needed to advance them. - Use lead scoring and lead qualification frameworks
Implement a lead qualification and scoring system to prioritize high-potential leads. Assign scores based on engagement, ICP match, signals, and intent data. This ensures your sales team focuses on leads most likely to convert. Highperformr provides you with signals and data that help you identify the leads that are most likely to convert. - Ensure your data is updated in real-time
As you enrich your leads and update your CRM, ensure that the information about leads in every stage of the B2B sales pipeline is accurate and accurate. Regular updates improve forecasting, enable timely follow-ups, and reduce errors or delays. - Enrich contacts with signals
Invest time in understanding your clients' needs and challenges. Enrich contact information with relevant data to personalize your approach and build stronger relationships. - Qualify leads accurately using signals
Use specific indicators, such as recent social activity and buying intent, to assess the quality of leads. Accurate qualification ensures that sales efforts are directed toward prospects with the highest likelihood of conversion. Highperformr provides you with real-time intent signals that help know your leads better and prioritize outreach. - Optimize pipeline velocity
Set up processes to help with reducing friction at each stage of the pipeline to accelerate deals. Automate workflows and use AI for tasks such as ICP match filtering, lead enrichment, signals, etc. - Enhance data management and CRM integration
Make sure that you sync all your data to your system of record and keep the data accurate and up-to-date. Highperformr enables you to orchestrate your GTM workflows easily on one platform, and sync your lead and contact information to your CRM smoothly. - Ensure alignment between sales and marketing teams
Align your sales, marketing, and customer success teams to ensure consistency in messaging and approach. There should also be clarity on the responsibilities of each team, and smooth team collaboration so there are no gaps or missed opportunities when a lead moves from one stage of the B2B sales pipeline to the next. - Regularly review and update the pipeline
Review the pipeline periodically to spot opportunities, identify stalled deals, and refine the approach taken by the sales team to convert the lead to a customer. - Monitor pipeline metrics
Keep track of metrics like pipeline value, deal win rates, and average deal size to evaluate performance and optimize conversion.
B2B Sales Pipeline: Key Metrics to Track
Tracking and analyzing key metrics is essential to understanding the health of your B2B sales pipeline and making data-driven decisions. Here are some of the metrics you should monitor:
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC)
This tracks how much a company spends to convert a lead into a customer. This includes spending on SDR teams, sales and marketing tools, marketing and leadgen spends, etc. A high CAC could signal inefficiencies in your process, while a low CAC and revenue growth shows you're maximizing ROI.
Pipeline Velocity
This refers to how fast and how smoothly leads move through the different stages of the B2B sales pipeline. High velocity indicates an efficient sales process, where leads move from opportunities to customers in quick time, while slower velocity could indicate inefficiencies in the sales process.
Conversion Rates
Conversion rate measures how well and how often you convert leads into opportunities and customers.
Average Deal Size
This looks at how much revenue, on average, is generated from each customer. The average deal size is calculated by dividing the total value of all deals by the number of deals won.
Customer Conversion Rate
This metric is important as it shows the percentage of leads that progress through the pipeline to make a purchase. It helps identify the phases where the shift from one stage to the other is smooth, and highlight the stages where prospects drop off.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
CLV measures the total revenue a business can expect from a customer. It is a forecast or a long-term view that helps plan the customer success initiatives and forecast revenues accordingly.
Pipeline Value
Pipeline value represents the total potential revenue from the deals currently in the pipeline. It provides an overview of revenue opportunities.
Common Challenges and Solutions
Pipeline Leakage
Pipeline leakage occurs when sales opportunities are missed or not followed up on due to poor tracking of customer data, lack of clear communication between teams, or inaccurate lead qualification.
To address pipeline leakage and ensure a robust sales process:
- Periodically analyze data in every stage of the B2B sales pipeline to identify inefficiencies or gaps.
- Use AI and advanced technology to identify and plug gaps.
- Continuously monitor and optimize your pipeline to maintain its efficiency and effectiveness.
Long Sales Cycles
Lengthy sales cycles are becoming common as companies offer more complex and integrated solutions. This slows down pipeline velocity and increases the time taken to close deals.
To manage this:
- Automate workflows for tasks like lead enrichment, prospecting, and crafting personalized conversation starters to save time. Use AI tools like Highperformr to increase speed and efficiency of tasks and reduce the sales cycle as much as possible.
Lead Qualification Issues
Effective lead qualification is critical for pushing leads through the sales pipeline. Inaccuracy in qualifying leads can result in pipeline leakage, wasted resources, and delays in meeting revenue targets.
You can easily avoid this by:
- Supplementing manual qualification processes with AI tools like Highperformr to handle lead enrichment, ICP match verification, and real-time prospecting.
- Taking quick and effective action on qualified leads to increase conversion rates.
Resource Allocation
Inefficient allocation of resources across the sales pipeline can hamper overall sales effectiveness.
The solution to this challenge:
- Allocate human resources to high-priority tasks such as discovery calls and deal closing and automate tasks like lead enrichment and qualification using tools like Highperformr.
- Focus efforts where they deliver the highest ROI to maximize resource utilization.
Pipeline Optimization Strategies
A B2B sales pipeline is something that always has scope for improvement, irrespective of how good the processes are. Here are a few ways you can optimize your pipeline:
Sales and marketing alignment
Companies where the sales and marketing teams collectively execute the GTM strategy will be far more efficient at managing their B2B sales pipeline. When these teams work together, they are in a position to take ownership of the tasks in the different stages of the sales pipeline, deliver personalized experiences to the prospects, and establish strong relationships. For example, agreeing on and collaborating on activities such as defining and qualifying marketing-qualified leads (MQLs) and sales-qualified leads (SQLs), ensures that your pipeline isn’t cluttered with bad leads.
Content mapping for pipeline stages
Content mapping refers to strategically tailoring sales enablement content or marketing content to the buyer’s journey, so that the lead gets the right kind of information at the right time. This ensures prospects receive content and collateral that address their specific needs, guiding them through the different stages of the B2B sales pipeline effectively.
For instance, after a discovery call, customize follow-up email content to address the pain points discussed. Whether it’s a presentation tailored to their challenges or a proposal in their language, personalizing content can nudge prospects toward the next stage.
Using automation, AI and sales enablement tools
Using AI tools like Highperformr can enhance your GTM workflows and sales pipeline management. These tools streamline processes such as lead qualification, personalized outreach, and targeted prospecting, so you can use real-time intent signals to spearfish leads rather than take the spray-and-pray approach to prospecting. Automation also frees up your sales teams’ time so they can focus on closing deals.
Future Trends and Innovations
AI and automation in pipeline management
Over the last year or so, a lot of AI products have been built to assist sales teams with automating some of the basic, manual tasks that need to be done at every stage of the B2B sales pipeline.
Products such as Highperformr use AI for tasks such as lead generation, lead enrichment, lead qualification, ICP match, and workflow automation. Building and scaling your B2B sales pipeline can be simplified and made more efficient using such GTM AI tools.
Highperformr eliminates GTM inefficiencies and unifies signals, intelligence, and automation to help build and manage a B2B sales pipeline. Sign up for a demo today to see it in action!
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