It’s a part of our culture of goal achievement that we make New Year’s Resolutions. It’s also an insight into our psyche that sometime in January or February, the personal commitments made to less food, more exercise or better contact with friends and family tend to fall by the wayside at least 80% of the time.
However, it’s the inability of sales teams to consistently deliver what they have promised or what they believe to be possible at the start of the year that interests me. The video below introduces the idea of the “fluffy pipeline”. Our view is that two things happen. One is that opportunities that are not real and that have not been properly qualified stay in pipeline reports far too long without any advance towards a close. The other is that “sales people” mask this by call reluctance. If they were doing enough prospecting, all the time, they would actually want to get the deadwood out of the pipeline and focus on these new opportunities. Let me know if your pipeline needs “de-fluffing”.
