On-demand webinar
Pipeline or pipe dream?
What you’ll learn :
- Why the right CRM is the one your salespeople will actually use, and why they belong in the decision
- The platform features that matter, from a Kanban view of your sales process to AI lead scoring that saved one coach almost ten hours a week
- How to tell a pipeline from a pipe dream, and why the truth often turns out to be a skinny pipeline
- The difference between a pipeline clean-up and a pipeline squeeze, and how often to run each
What's covered
Inside the session. Watch a clip, then get the full recording.
2024 was a year of indecision, yet some clients acted boldly and set up 2025. Jill shares how a manufacturer caught in a hire, lay off and rehire cycle improved its forecasting and margin by working its pipeline.
Tracy's rule: help plan the fight and they won't fight the plan. A CRM built around the accounting software, not the sales team, ended in a revolt.
A customisable sales process, colour coding, a Kanban view, probabilities that match your real data, and stage-to-stage analytics that show where each rep needs support.
Lead scoring, instant chatbot and email responses, deal prediction and duplicate clean-up. Jill estimates lead scoring saved her almost ten hours a week at the top of the funnel.
A client "well over fifty million" still running sales on spreadsheets, a stack of systems that don't talk to each other, and a pipeline stuffed like a wardrobe of clothes that no longer fit.
Pipeline or pipe dream? The truth is often a skinny pipeline. Painful to get to, but one sales manager called the clean-up liberating.
Clean up when the forecast is unreliable or the data is messy. Squeeze when you need a revenue push. Tracy's quick win: finally getting the CFO's name and a meeting on the calendar.
Why process should come before technology, where closed deals belong, and a final answer on how cleaning differs from squeezing.
Resources
Get the recording
Frequently asked questions
Common Questions
Pick the one your team will actually use, and involve the salespeople in the decision with a wish list of what they need. The panel looks for a customisable sales process, a Kanban view, probabilities you can match to your real data, and analytics on stage-to-stage ratios. In Q&A, Alex agreed you should understand and document your sales process before you buy.
A clean-up removes dead weight: deals that won't move forward, including closed ones. Do it when forecasting becomes unreliable, the team is wasting time on deals, or the data is messy. A squeeze looks at every active deal to see what can be pushed forward, or squeezed out, when you need a revenue push such as the end of a quarter.
It depends on your sales cycle. Jill suggests that with a short cycle of thirty to sixty days you should look at it weekly, while longer enterprise deals may only need a monthly squeeze. Alex ran a squeeze in a weekly one-on-one with every salesperson.
Yes. Jill points to AI lead scoring based on engagement and likelihood to convert, chatbots and email responders that engage leads straight away, pattern spotting to predict which deals will close, and removing duplicate or outdated records. She estimates lead scoring saved her almost ten hours a week. A human is still needed.
No. Leaving them in distorts your forecast. Move them into account management so the relationship keeps being nurtured and you can keep growing share of wallet, while the sales team focuses on new opportunities.
Because a lot of what sat there was wishful thinking. The truth might be a skinny pipeline, which can scare salespeople who want to hold on to every opportunity. It also tells you exactly where to put your effort, and deals marked as soft losses can be revisited later from a good CRM.
The next step
Stop running on heroics. Start engineering revenue.
Whichever way you work with us, the same proven Revenue OS runs underneath. Book a growth session and we’ll show you where to start.