Say Goodbye to the Sales Pipeline?

 

What would you think if you were to told to throw out your sales pipeline? That is the challenge from Lance E. Osborne, director of Acxiom Global Marketing. The concept of a sales pipeline is held dearly in the sales industry, but Osborne suggests a different way to view professional relationships so that they can be developed more fully, as opposed to the traditional “won-or-lost, transactional approach.”

According to Osborne, the sales pipeline is “shortsighted” and not maximizing sales potential because:

1. Typical pipeline-based sales and marketing tends to treat every prospect or client the same. After closing that target, win or lose, you move on to the next target. Not exactly relationship-building stuff and decidedly blind to the wonderfully rich additional buyer data, segmentation, demographics, and trigger events that can help you truly know your prospects and clients.

2. The typical model focuses on single, large-scale efforts to “move the needle.” But a cumulative approach is key to 21st century marketing. Levinson notes, “The days of single-weapon marketing have been relegated to the past. We’re living in an era when marketing combinations open the doors to marketing success.” There’s no excuse for ignoring the consumer insights, multichannel expertise, analytics, and technology available from top marketing services vendors.

3. Finally, there is the case of not recognizing existing clients, or their value. Once closed and won, they are often forgotten—until renewal time. But when you consider that nearly 70% of all business lost is lost after the sale, lack of recognition simply won’t cut it. Today, companies can recognize and treat clients as individuals, regardless of touch point.

He suggests an entirely different approach: A “dialogue cycle,” which allows for professional relationships to evolve and grow, rather than quickly dismissed if there isn’t an initial perfect fit. To read more on creating dialogue cycles, click here.