Enhance your sales opportunity pipeline in Canada

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I'm a natal Erica with Mary T growth and this is the difference between a sales opportunity huddle and a pipeline review and why you need both many sales leaders considered pipeline reviews and opportunity Huddle's to be synonymous these are two terms that are often used interchangeably to describe one-on-one meetings that managers have with their reps but I view these as two different and equally important meetings a pipeline review isn't an inspection of every single deal in the pipeline it's an inspection of the overall health of the pipeline including benchmarks and trends how many opportunities are being opened what stages are the opportunities in how long they've been in those stages sale cycle clothes loss reasons and aggregate etc an opportunity huddle isn't an inspection of the pipeline it's a review and discussion of specific deals in the pipeline it's the meeting to talk deal strategy and sales process and specifics of key opportunities like their business need and purchase intent etc if you have a small team perhaps six or fewer reps you can do both types of meetings one-on-one with each rep do them both in the same meeting if you must but I really prefer them as two separate meetings they each require a different way of looking at the pipeline and I think it's important to give attention to both here's an example of the difference of these two meetings in a pipeline review you might be saying 20 percent of your pipeline is set to close this month but many of those deals are still sitting in evaluation stage talk to me about that in an opportunity huddle it's more like Acme widgets is set to close this month but it's still sitting in the evaluation stage and has been parked there for 45 days what's happening right now with this deal what has to happen on their side and ours to move them to the next stage what evidence do you have that this deal will close this month talk to me about their procurement process etc hop on over to the blog for even more examples like that of the difference of the two four pipeline inspections I always start with overall size of pipe velocity agent stages I look for big variances against team benchmarks too and then I can see what needs to be focused on in that meeting for opportunity Huddle's I want to focus more on deal strategy and monthly deal commitments so I like to look at deals that are at risk or dive further into deal sitting in stages that seem to be in trouble and in terms of how often to hold these meetings with newer reps do them pretty frequently I recommend a pipeline review every two weeks and an opportunity huddle once a week I know that seems like a lot but newer reps really need the FaceTime with you as you get to know each other and you need to keep your finger on the pulse of how they're doing as they get their feet under them once a rep is fully ramped though you can do a pipeline review once a month and an opportunity huddle every two weeks I'm not a fan of spreading them out further than that and finally I just encourage you to remember that the point of the meetings is to help your reps meet and beat quota and for your company to hit their targets these these one on meeting should be positive and proactive and action-oriented stay on point and be direct these meetings aren't to retrain on your sales process or debate the merits of messaging or pontificate on new sales strategies these meetings are about helping your reps build and maintain qualified pipe and close great deals so that's it thanks for watching good luck and keep me posted on how these meetings go for you