Growing Pipeline and Managing the Revenue Engine

How can you develop the right opportunities to support your growth objectives? The key is having a methodical approach to experiment with and invest in demand generation campaigns that yield pipeline activity with the highest conversion rates. We'll explore tactics to grow and manage pipeline through each stage of the revenue engine.

Crafting a Pipeline Strategy

Before executing demand generation campaigns, it's important to start with the end goal in mind and craft a pipeline strategy. Here are some key components your strategy should include:

Revenue Goals: What are the specific revenue targets you need pipeline to support? Make sure you have quarterly and annual goals defined.

Ideal Customer Profile (ICP): Document your ideal customer profile so you can tailor campaigns to your best-fit accounts. Include firmographics like industry, size, and location.

Lead Sources: Which lead sources perform best to deliver opportunities that convert? Assign a percentage of pipeline target to each top source.

Conversion Benchmarks: Determine conversion benchmarks for each pipeline stage to forecast revenue. Track win rates by lead source, account size, and other attributes.

Pipeline Stages: Outline your pipeline process with specific qualification criteria for each stage. This helps forecast opportunity conversion.

Having a documented pipeline strategy provides focus for demand generation and sets standards for tracking conversion rates.

Top of Funnel: Generating Awareness

The first step to growing pipeline is generating awareness for your brand, products, and messaging. To successfully reach new accounts, you need to implement a diverse mix of campaigns and track performance.

Here are some of the most effective tactics for boosting awareness:

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising: PPC ads placed on search engines like Google and Bing allow you to reach prospects as they search for relevant products or topics. Continuously optimize ads and landing pages to improve click-through and conversion rates.

Sponsored Social Media: Social platforms provide highly targeted advertising options to raise brand awareness and prompt followers to visit your website or landing pages. Experiment with social ad formats and placements.

Retargeting Ads: Use pixels to track site visitors and then serve targeted ads to them as they browse other sites. Retargeting helps stay top of mind.

Content Syndication: Distribute blog content, assets, and other media through channels like social media, paid ads, and partner sites. This expands your audience.

Referral Campaigns: Word-of-mouth referrals convert at a high rate. Offer incentives for existing customers and partners to refer new contacts.

To determine budget allocation, track the volume, cost, and conversion rates for these programs. Invest more in the campaigns that deliver the most pipeline opportunity.

Middle of Funnel: Lead Nurturing

Once you've generated awareness, lead nurturing helps develop promising prospects for sales follow up. Here are some of the most important lead nurturing tactics:

Lead Scoring: Assign lead scores based on demographic, profile, and behavioral data to identify sales-ready prospects. Send high scoring leads to an SDR.

Email Nurturing: Segment your list to deliver personalized email journeys that engage prospects with relevant content over time. This builds familiarity with your brand.

Account-Based Nurturing: For high-value accounts, target multiple contacts with campaigns featuring their company name and custom content. Coordinate cross-channel nurturing.

Content Offers: Provide free educational resources like ebooks, tip sheets, and blog posts in exchange for contact information you can nurture. Send follow-up content on topics they viewed.

Events: Webinars, seminars, and virtual events allow you to share more in-depth content while learning about prospect needs. Record and repurpose events to extend reach.

Analyzing metrics like email open rate, content consumption trends, and sales conversions enables you to refine nurturing programs for optimal pipeline contribution.

Bottom of Funnel: Sales Qualified Leads

As prospects develop into sales qualified leads, your focus shifts to sales enablement and conversion. Pipeline generation relies not just on lead volume, but on the qualification process. Here are key strategies for sales funnel management:

Lead Qualification: Implement a consistent scoring system and set of qualification criteria for marketing to nurture and hand-off sales ready leads. Review regularly for effectiveness.

Lead Response Time: According to InsideSales.com, contacting prospects within 5 minutes can increase qualification rates nearly tenfold. Set expectations for prompt lead response.

Sales Tools: Equip reps with CRM for a unified lead view, dialers for rapid calls, customized collateral, and other technologies so they can effectively qualify and progress leads.

Sales Process: Document your proven sales methodology focusing on prospect follow up, needs discovery, presentation, evaluation, and closing. Hold team members accountable to following the process.

Win/Loss Analysis: Evaluate your losses to understand why opportunities fell out of pipeline. Look for ways to improve positioning and competitive differentiation.

With robust lead hand-off and qualification procedures, your sales team will consistently progress promising leads through the final stages.

Ongoing Pipeline Management

Growing pipeline is not a one time initiative, but rather an ongoing process. Here are tips for maintaining strong pipeline management:

Measure Pipeline Metrics: Track volume, velocity, and conversion rates by source, campaign, sales rep, product line, and other attributes to stay on top of performance. Look at stage-by-stage trends.

Adjust Tactics: If certain lead sources or campaigns are over or underperforming, strategically shift budget and focus to channels with higher conversion rates.

Update ICP Targeting: As your company and product offerings evolve, revisit your ICP and tailor pipeline tactics to align with your ideal customer.

Improve Processes: When growth plateaus, re-examine campaign approaches and sales processes to identify any areas for optimization. Small tweaks can significantly boost results.

Account for Seasonality: Factor in annual changes in buyer behavior, market conditions, and fiscal schedules. Plan demand generation and sales ops accordingly with flexible forecasting.

Maintain Engagement: Keep past leads and closed accounts nurtured in your database. Customer renewal and upsell opportunities account for significant recurring revenue.

With a methodical, data-driven approach to managing your pipeline and revenue lifecycle, you can continually optimize performance to achieve aggressive growth targets, quarter after quarter. Use this guide to assess and enhance your pipeline strategy and execution. What are some areas in your current process that could be improved? What would have the biggest impact on growing qualified pipeline and accelerating conversion rates? With a strategic focus on pipeline generation, your growth goals are within reach.