

The sales pipeline stubbornly remains one of the most frustratingly inaccurate inputs to any company's business strategy. The results of this uncertainty can be, and often are dramatic. Huge amounts of resource and direct costs wasted on lost bids, uncountable lost opportunity cost from bids which should have been bid, yet weren't, and worse, it seems that despite stringent MIS & CRM systems that are put in place to provide increased granularity of view and improved focus on the pipeline process, nothing seems to work.
Most of the problem stems from the fact that companies look at the 'pipeline problem' from the wrong perspective. If instead of trying to manage the process better, companies invested the same sort of resource and cash into understanding their customers better and through this knowledge, were better able to understand and position the Value they created, the 'pipeline problem' would be significantly improved.
The earlier an opportunity can be properly qualified, the better a business performs. Why? Because less cash is squandered on lost bids, more resource is available to bid on those opportunities most likely to be won, and more of the right type of opportunities can be bid. The result, more highly qualified opportunities in the pipeline, more resource to invest in winning them, and less cost per bid.
ICDL has developed a number of workshops (available in both Private and Public Sector formats) to enable companies to effectively develop and manage their sales pipelines. Click on the links below to find out more:
Click on the links below to see how ICDL can start to help your organisation today:
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