As we approach the end of the year, it's crucial to focus on healthy sales pipeline management. The fourth quarter brings its own set of challenges, especially with everyone working around holidays, holiday parties, and year-end rushes. This blog centers on optimizing your sales pipeline to hit those 2024 revenue goals and set yourself up for success in 2025. Impatient? You can skip to the action items at the end. Need some advice to close out fourth quarter strong? Grab a quick 15-minute chat.
A Checkup is Essential to Year-End Sales Pipeline Management
Sales are already complex, and navigating the end-of-year period adds another layer of complexity. You might feel like prospects are stalling when they’re just busy or on holiday. To optimize your efforts, it’s important not to waste time on dead deals. Focus your precious time and mental energy on serious prospects.
Food for thought: There are 76 working days between September 12 and the end of the year, minus extra days around Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year's. Your clients, prospects, and partners are in the same boat. Winning during this season takes proactive planning to close the year strong.
Your Assignment: Conduct a Pipeline Health Checkup
This is not going to be easy - get very honest with yourself about who is and isn't a prospect. We can go through the basics, but this is complex and it's not easy. If you need a deeper dive, book a quick chat with me for specific actionable insights tailored to your team.
Determine Shoppers from Buyers
Imagine walking into a busy market, looking for a gift before the holiday rush. You might need help choosing between two different holiday hampers, but if you've got it, you're going to buy. Contrast this with browsing without an urgent need—just scoping out potential gifts for the future. You know you're not buying that day, but the salesperson can't tell the difference. It's not always as easy to discern in a more complex sales process.
Serious buyers are those who need something specific and are ready to act, while shoppers are just looking around. So how do you tell the shopper from the buyer in a more extended sales cycle? Ask those crucial questions.
Key Questions to Qualify Prospects:
Is the deal properly qualified?
Do I know the decision makers and influencers?
Have I uncovered their key business issues and impacts?
Is the buyer's timing aligned with year-end timing?
Does the buyer need your solution in place by January 1, or is that a placeholder?
Are there holidays cutting down on available working days?
Are there any gaps in information?
Have you gotten clarity on the prospect's budget and all the stakeholders involved?
Is your next follow-up scheduled on your calendar and theirs?
Laying some tough love on you - if you can't answer yes to all of those, chances are you're not winning that deal.
Pro Tip: Use your CRM to assist you in determining who's likely to buy. Log your activities appropriately, and your CRM can provide valuable insights. Always review the information and reach your own conclusions. We're also publishing a blog series on maximizing productivity by using AI in B2B sales, check out the intro post here.
Action Steps:
Evaluate each active prospect in your pipeline:
Determine if they meet the criteria above.
Disqualify or deprioritize those who don’t pass the test.
Disqualifying or deprioritizing prospects is scary, but necessary. You only have so many hours each day—why waste time on people who aren't ever going to buy or aren't in a buying mood now? Send those deals back to marketing for nurturing.
Success Story:
I once worked with a client who went through this exercise. Each salesperson was very nervous about the size of their pipeline after the review. Two things happened—they conducted 80% fewer demos, and beat their prior year's sales. And here's the kicker—the following year they sold double without adding more salespeople. Anxiety over the smaller pipeline led them to prospect more.
Need Help?
Need help fine-tuning your pipeline strategy? I'm here to help. If you need assistance rediscovering prospects without feeling awkward, let's have a quick chat. Book a quick chat to see if I can help you and your team.
What's Next
Next week, we will cover strategies and tactics for following up with the deals you deprioritized. You won't want to miss that one! Subscribe so you don't miss anything. Share with anyone you know who's in B2B sales; we can all use all the help we can get.
AI Transparency: This blog was generated by an AI tool, CastMagic, which uses my podcast feed to generate other content for me. My podcast scripts are written by me, although I sometimes get ideas by brainstorming with an AI model. CastMagic helps me get more done with less. Wix AI generated the images in this post.
Rise of Us is a practice run by Summer Poletti, specializing in revenue growth: sales, strategic partnerships, customer success, marketing alignment. We generally work with financial services and SaaS companies from $2MM - $20MM ARR and help them plan and execute for their next stage of revenue growth. We concentrate on strategy, coaching, and organizational alignment.
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