No sales team has ever had the complaint that they have too many prospects, or their pipeline is too full. Every business is looking to fill its pipeline further because it’s critical for business success.

Businesses that are successful in developing an enterprise sales pipeline have some key differences from those that aren’t. These include qualifying (or disqualifying) early, focusing on value-based selling, and enlisting the help of a Business Value Consultant to improve the quality of your pipeline.

Start With Your Goals

Not every Sales Pipeline should look the same. Some steps may be similar, but you won’t be seeing the same qualifications as an enterprise organization that a smaller business would.

Business Value Consulting provides the business owner or manager with an objective perspective on managing their business strategy. As BVCs work with sales teams to provide them with this insight, it is always helpful for the sales team to come prepared not only with goals but also clear objectives for what success looks like from their side of things. Then, together, BVCs and sales teams can work to identify the steps necessary to achieve these targets.

Disqualify Early

Your sales team should be finding the right people at the beginning of the sales process, but we know that all the research in the world can’t avoid having some unqualified leads in the pipeline. Qualifying early will help you to make sure that they are in alignment with what you need or want from a customer before investing time into building out the rest of your pipeline.

This is a step where business value consultants can come in and help. By taking advantage of an expert in identifying business value, your sales team can focus on investing its resources into identifying those who show potential as customers instead of wasting valuable time trying to convince people who will never convert.

Focus on value-based selling

They say the hardest part of a sales call is getting on the phone. Often, even if you have the knowledge to assist a prospect with their needs; they can sense that you are all about trying to go for a “deal” and do not truly care about what they need. Generate your pipeline by building relationships with your prospects, talking not at them but with them!

The key to value-based selling is mapping business needs to business outcomes for the customer – this will get you through any objections they have. A great first step in qualifying prospects is asking them what business challenges are keeping them up at night so that they can be related back to business outcomes. 

To be able to use these challenges and relate them to business outcomes, the sales team needs to focus on becoming trusted advisors. This means focusing on their solution — even if that means not making a sale. Don’t go into every call thinking that no matter what your prospect says, you have the solution. “No” is the most powerful thing a salesperson can say.

Quality AND Quantity

With an enterprise sales pipeline, you may not have a giant pool of potential customers. This is part of the reason why the quality of your prospects is as important as the quantity. Your team will need to spend more time with these high-quality prospects, and they need as many of those high-quality prospects as possible. Your Business Value Consultant will assist with the quality level. They can disqualify early so that the sales team is focusing all of their attention on qualified opportunities. 

To increase the quantity of leads, a sales executive can expand his or her team by adding more people to prospect for new business. The Business Development Coordinator (BDC) would be able identify locations and prospects that need attention while also working with their internal roadmap on all potential contacts from within. This will keep your pipeline consistently full as well as generate higher numbers in overall leads created!

Building Your Enterprise Sales Pipeline

In business, you can’t have a pipeline without leads. And in order to build up your business sales pipeline, there are some important steps that you need to take. By qualifying your leads early, focusing on value-based selling, and enlisting the help of a Business Value Consultant to improve the quality of those prospects staying in your enterprise sales pipeline, your sales team will be more efficient and profitable.