Pipeline is more than an activity, it's a strategy. So it's not an event, that's a process, and you want to be prepared. You want to be purposeful, and you want to be ready to qualify and disqualify.
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Hello and welcome to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast. I'm Rachel clap Miller. Today we are diving into one of the most critical things that you can do as a sales rep, and that is how to build pipeline. We know we need pipeline. We talk about it a lot here on the podcast. Without enough opportunities, right, you're scrambling. It creates a whole of problems. But today we want to talk about building pipeline with purpose. And you want to avoid just having a bunch of names installed deals.
If you have that, you really don't have great pipeline. You're just busy. So John Kaplan joining me today. Hi John, Rachel, how are you good?
Good.
Let's just start with some of your opening thoughts about pipeline.
John, Well, this is always an interesting topic. I'm just going to go beyond that. Might hit it again later in this but you know, this is not an option. The basic truth is pipeline is not just a number. It's got to be a strategy. And if you're chasing a target number the number of leads per week, per months, that's all great, that's what we should be doing. But volume alone is not going to get you to the
promised land. You need to have a you know, like a repeatable system to qualify opportunities against clear what we call value framework.
Right, all pipeline is not created equal. What are some mistakes you've seen common mistakes you see reps make when they're generating pipeline that may hurt their chances of actually making their quota.
I think this is a really good question because what I see is that many times people confuse activity with progress, and so if you're filling the pipeline with the wrong types of opportunities, then you're going to be in a big jam. And we should talk about that and then also in your reach out, if you're too generic in your reach out, you don't get any traction. You're not adding anything at the top of funnel because nobody's responding. So I think these are kind of three major problems.
Yeah, I love that word generic here because you know, when you're too generic. We see it in marketing content all the time. Right, if you're too generic, you're not really saying anything, right for everything to ever, everybody or nothing. So let's talk about let's shift into how you ensure as a rep you aren't falling into those traps. If you don't have enough, you have to ask yourself the who right are you targeting the right companies?
Well, yeah, and I think this is a joint responsibility. You've heard me talk about this before, where I say companies, Oh, the go to market function some basic truths. One of the basic truths is what is the ideal customer profile? Who are we targeting? And inside of that profile, what is the persona? And underneath that persona we call it what are the essential questions of value? What problems do I solve for that customer, that persona, that ideal customer profile?
What problems do I solve number two, how specifically do I solve those? Number three? How do I solve them differently or better than anybody else? And number four or where have I done it before? Proof points, case studies, testimonials of where we've solved those problems. For me, that's
the beginning, and it's a combination. If you're listening to this right now and you don't have the answers to what I just said, you don't know what your ideal customer profile is, you don't know who you're targeting, You don't know how to qualify or disqualify those based upon an ideal customer profile. You don't have the answers to the essential questions. You've got to go back to your
company and say, fundamentally, I need help with this. And companies, if you're listening and you're not providing, or if you're a leader listening to this and you're not providing your go to my market organization with an aligned answer to these four essential questions, then you are going to be in big, big trouble with not only your pipeline, but just basic execution.
Right they provide the foundation for a lot of sales execution and the motion to make all the go in the right direction. If you look at who you're targeting and you're like, well, this is ideal customer profile, this hits it. Another place to look at is that point you make about solving the problem?
Yeah? For me, it's simply does this account have a big enough business problem that I can solve? So not only is it a targeted account, but does it have the business problem? And do they realize that they have
the business problem that I can solve. Can I articulate that problem in terms that they're going to care about in things like cost and revenue and risk and strategic priorities, So I can use their words and their experiences to be able to build the case that this is a problem that I potentially have the ability to solve that's big enough for them to have urgency, critical enough for them to have urgency. And if you don't know the answer,
it's not pipe line. It's a guessing game. And I always like to say when I pick up the phone morning, I wake up in the morning, I have this written on my notes, I have it on plaques in my office. No business issue, No business If you are not waking up in the morning and saying I need to attach
myself to the biggest business issue facing these customers. You are at risk of just going through activities and being very, very frustrated because you're not going to hit the mark and you're not going to be building any qualified pipeline.
Yeah, looking at the problem you're solving. If you take it a step beyond that, it's are you making sure you're solving the right problem? But it's also are you articulating what you do in the right way? Right?
We say it all the time.
You need to make sure that you're focused on the outcome, increasing revenue, decreasing costs, mitigating risks, and you're not focused on those features and functions. We've been saying this for years, right, but right now this is a trap that a lot of these AI companies are.
Yeah. I think it's fundamental. I mean, if you're going to talk about the focus on value, it has always been about connecting technical requirements to business outcomes and making sure that as a seller that I do that from the customer's point of view, using their words, their experiences, with their pain, you know, of not solving these problems.
That's the basis of what we're talking about. Come to those conversations with only features and functions, and you are going to fall into a trap that I mean the
majority of people. We talk about seller deficit disorder all the time, and what that means is when we get people on the phone and we try to get them engaged, when we're trying to generate pipeline reach out to them, and social media reach out to them and emails, what have you, If we are not making ourselves relevant by understanding from an outside end point of view the problems they're experiencing that we're relevant for, and then, as you said,
being audible ready to articulate how specifically we have the ability to help them with those problems, how to help them differently or better than others out there, and then have examples of where we've done it before. This is not only understanding that customers have problems, but being audible ready to be able to talk about how you solve them.
That's it, as you talk about it, right, it may be really clear how you're going to solve the problems, because that's what you do for a living, right. You see these issues so all the time, but it might not be clear for them. So you need to make sure that they are understanding that and making the link use their words not yours.
Yeah, you got to make them stand in their own I mean this is a great skill, Rachel, that you know, it's an art and a skill, right, it'st in a science And basically you have to get the customer to stand in their moment of pain. First of all, you have to have a high confidence that there's a high
probability that they have this pain. And then you have to have discovery skills which are good enough to be able to get a customer to stand in that moment of pain by you asking questions that allows them to go there safely, and then for them to be safely explaining those pains, and then for you to be relevant to it. So I didn't want to skip over that because there's a lot of art and skill, but it's the basics of discovery. These are basics that we have to get mastery level on.
And the other foundational methodology that you can use here is medic Right, So let's talk about a little bit about medic as it relates to pipeline and how it can help you with qualification, particularly early in the sales process.
Yeah, it's a great point. I mean you should use MEDIC to qualify and disqualify quickly. You don't want to waste your TI, you don't want to waste the customer's time. And all of that has to do with what's going on at the customer level, who's involved politically, what types of problems are you trying to solve, how big are those problems, what's the decision criteria. All of that is a great tie in to the greatest qualification attributes and
the history of sales, which is MEDIC or medpick. You want to be able to use your champion You want to be able to use your champions early. You want to be able to use qualification to research potential champions early to qualify them in and out, so as fast as you can connect to the pain points in a way that will help you understand how you can influence the decision criteria with your differentiation. It's like, look for me, when I look at I'm having conversations with potential customers,
I'm using a couple of top level qualification things. Can I attach myself to the biggest business issue facing this customer and can I influence the decision criteria the customer's decision criteria. Can I influence it with my differentiation which makes it not only great for the customer in the
customer's words, but also great for us. Those are two things in qualification that I'm looking to do every single day, every single conversation, every single pipeline generation activity, strategy, event, phone call, everything I'm doing, I have those two main things in my mind.
Yeah, that's it. There's a lot at work through here. But if you're struggling with pipeline, or if you feel like you have enough and it's not closing, this conversation should give you some things to look at. If you don't have enough pipeline, work back from what you want right and then work back to those essential questions ideal customer profile. And if you need help, I would say ask for it. And I know you have a great bottom line to wrap us up with here today, John.
I think that you started it with one of them. You started it with like, pipeline is more than an activity, it's a strategy, So it's not an event, it's a process. And you want to be prepared, you want to be purposeful, and you want to be ready to qualify and disqualify early in pipeline generation. For me, it's a skill and a mindset that every capitalize, every seller should own, regardless of what your company's lead generation processes are. Rachel, I
think you know this. I can't stand hearing from reps. I need more leads. If I just could get more leads, I could do X, Y, and Z. Now. I understand companies are set up differently on how leads come in, but I'm telling you, long after I'm gone, the excuse Department's going to be closed. You always are going to
have to participate in your own rescue. I don't care if we have the greatest lead generation mechanics on the planet, having an ICP, having a conviction to attach to the biggest business issues facing that ICP, articulating how you do that they're solved their problems, how you do it differently or better than anybody else, and where you've done it before.
Those who participate in their own rescue on these topics, regardless of where the leads come from, are always going to be the most elite performers.
That's it. Thank you, John.
Kaplan, you got it, Go get them.
Thank you to all of you for listening to the Audible Ready Sales Podcast.
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