Does your Sales Pipeline leak? If you answered no, you don’t even understand question. Every business’ Sales Pipeline leaks to some extent. The question is: Have you done everything you can to ensure that it does not leak excessively? Do you even know what your Sales Pipeline looks like?

Very simply, a Sales Pipeline starts with an initial enquiry and ends with a sale. While Sales Pipeline looks different in each business, there are still some similarities between them. In all businesses, there is a need to generate enquiries. This can be done through advertising, cold calling, public relations or word of mouth. This enquiry may be a phone call in response to an ad. Or, in retail, a customer may walk in your front door attracted by your shopfront marketing. This is first step of Sales Pipeline for any business. However, there are usually a number of steps from receiving an enquiry to generating a sale.

The next step might be getting an appointment with prospect to establish their needs. In a retail situation, sales staff will ask: Can I help you? Once need is established, a second appointment may be made to present a proposal, or a quote may be provided. The final step in this generic Sales Pipeline would be to close sale.

Take pain out of gain and decrease upheaval surrounding change by following six commonsense steps to effective management.

Step 1: Establish Objectives

The process must begin with a clear and detailed statement of objectives and move from there to goal design. Goals must be directly accountable to vision while remaining in alignment with stated purpose of organization. This requires constant interaction with team members to determine that they are on track, and with all internal clients to insure that goals and objectives are pertinent to their needs, as well as to organization's greater purpose.

Step 2: Organize & Plan

Efficiency in this area requires ability and resources to develop and effectively communicate design/redesign plans and realistic schedules, while maintaining a balance between broad view and day to day operation.

The existing departmental structure in case of a redesign is all-important to success of plan, as is ability for leadership to delegate responsibility, while continuing to monitor and control outcomes. Structure, though transitional, must take precedence, often a challenge in an atmosphere of change.

Step 3: Communicate

Great communication, delivery of clearly stated information on true state things, is timely, pertinent, and requires confirmation that message has been understood. The more ways in which information is given, more believable it becomes and more likely to initiate action. By means of clear communication, a course of action is determined, pertinent information is provided and goals are met.

Step 4: Motivate

Motivation is purpose provider, impetus for action. It is complex at best and takes more than one form, depending on level of individual or team, level of manager, and product or service provided. Experts acknowledge that feelings of individual or team toward motivator are key to degree of motivation achieved. It becomes ideal then to have full cooperation of those directly affected by process and for leaders to have a good understanding of and rapport with teams and team members, knowing what makes each tick.

Change is disturbance of status quo, and will always involve a degree of resistance. Involving key staff in design and implementation process, particularly when it involves drastic structure changes can be extremely productive.

Step 5: Develop Staff

Developing people ought to be a primary goal of any organization, and developing existing staff during a period of transition is practical and profitable. Leaders have power to provide an environment rich in opportunity and resource, in which employees are encouraged in area of self-development.