1. Know where you are.
In order to know if you are on track on or not, you need to know where you are in a given period against quota, forecast and plan. It’s ideal to have this information at the “summary” level so you can identify regions and/or reps that are on or off track. After identifying groups that aren’t on track, you should drill into the details to determine if there’s a problem, discern the root cause, then talk about remediation strategies.
2. Know where you are headed.
The goal is to avoid surprises. It’s best to review your open pipeline to determine whether your coverage is sufficient to meet your period goals and identify at risk groups. For groups/reps that are at risk, you’d need to look at “what’s changed” in your pipe, you need to have the ability to see how things are changing and moving through the pipeline since your last meeting (last week). It’s ideal to inspect individual deals to proactively identify issues and ways to meet them head on (in advance) versus realizing when it’s too late. For example, you might find that a large deal has an expired close date, or that the next steps haven’t been updated in awhile.
3. Know what’s changed.
To really know where you are and where you are headed, it’s critical to know what’s changed in your pipeline. Review what’s changed in a given period or between two periods to see historical norms and provide lightweight benchmarking. Knowing where you were, and where you are is one thing ($ in pipe) but you need to know what’s caused that change. For example, what’s been moved out of the pipe, what’s been adjusted, won, or lost. This enables you to assess potential risk in real-time. It’s hard to set goals or expectations when you don’t have a clear picture of your current situation, and a good understanding of all the factors that will affect your goals and forecasts.
If you have access to an analytics application, it can be the best way to optimize the time you spend with your reps. With deal-level “what’s changed” detail available to the managers in real-time, reps see more benefit updating the system, because it stops their managers from asking them the same question every week and they can use their meetings for coaching and discussing next steps for driving deal closure. Both of which have a direct impact on increasing pipeline velocity and bottom line revenue.
