Should Sales Pipelines Have a Flow Rate?

Or - What Happens to Your BD Pipeline When You Have Other Things to Do?

The first time you heard someone refer to a company’s sales pipeline, did you wonder why it was called a pipeline, or did it just seem to make sense? Why wasn’t it called a deal list? Was someone trying to imply something by naming it a pipeline? If they did, have you thought what the implications might be? Does it carry something – like business/money! Is it supposed to have a flow rate – where do you think those quarterly business estimates come from, and why CFO’s take such an interest in it – are we going to be able to pay the bills over the next few months, can we invest some funds in a new widget, are we going to turn a profit this year, will we grow next year? You know, little stuff.

But what happens in smaller companies where resources are limited. The executive team wears multiple hats, with BD being one of them, but there are other hats. When people are tending to client needs, going to a conference, working on a critical proposal, or just taking that badly needed vacation, what happens to the pipeline flow rate? You guessed it, it stops. And that hurts.

That is not how a pipeline is supposed to work. Just imagine that pipeline that brings water to your home. What would you think if you were about to get in the shower and you got a message from the water authority saying “sorry, we had a bunch of things we needed to do around the pumping stations today, so water has stopped moving through the pipe for a little while – but we will be back online as soon as we finish.” You understand, right?

Have you thought about what happens when the flow stops? You miss documents you should have responded to; you miss outreach opportunities with potential clients, you miss connecting with the perfect teaming partner only to find when you come back up for air that they teamed with someone else. In the end, you lower the number of bid opportunities you can be prepared for, which lowers the flow of wins, revenue, and growth.

So, wouldn’t it be nice if you had another resource that was always working on your pipeline. A resource with no other purpose. One that never goes on vacation and has no distractions to deal with. Of course it would, but that means hiring someone specifically for that job (sometimes called a BD/Sales Assistant). Of course, you would still need to have your CRM, your data provider for finding deals, and all the other overhead that goes with an employee. Along with the software licenses for the rest of your team you would have to spend at least $100k (conservatively) to keep the flow going. And we did not just make up that number. The chart at the bottom of this blog shows our calculations using salary.com data.

Or you could hire CLEVER. It is the only system you need. No data providers or CRM. In fact, no strategy tools, planning tools, competitive analysis tools, price-to-win tools, proposal tools; just CLEVER. And, CLEVER comes with an always on team dedicated to your account, that keeps the flow going no matter what you are dealing with. So, the big question is, can you get it for less than $100k. Well, CLEVER is not licensed by the user, you subscribe to it based on your government revenue. And you would have to lose your small business status before you get to a $40k cost per year. In fact, it starts at just $18k per year and you would have to grow to over $220M before you hit $100k.

If this doesn’t strike you as a good deal, we would love to hear why? Better yet, if you think it is a good deal, we would be happy to tell you how we do it. Go to the About or Contact pages and book a conversation.