April 10, 2014- ISSN# 1545-2646
Sales Pipeline – Analytics
So you have an accounting system and you track revenues. Good Job! You now know how much money came in. But what about the activities which actually contribute to the sales. Looking in your accounting system tells you what happened. Looking elsewhere in your business information should tell you what is happening and forecast what is going to happen. If not you will always be running your business by looking in the rear view mirror.
In small and medium sized businesses – CASH FLOW is KING! It influences all businesses but has significant ramification to business leaders when they loose track of revenue flow. Once the contract is sold and the invoice sent, your accounting system can and does give you receivable status. It lets you know if you are doing a good job at collecting what has already been sold. This is short term cash flow management – collecting what is yours for goods or services rendered.
If each and every month your sales equal or are greater than your prior sales then the pipeline activity is consistently producing measurable results in the form of closed sales. Your attention can focus on collecting those revenues. If you take your eye off of the future you could suddenly be seeing closed sales begin to drop off and not have a plan to stop gap the difference in revenue vs. expense.
For this reason you can not stop looking into the future and using the analytics from your sales pipeline to manage cash flow well in advance of the pending ebb and flow of money.
By managing into the future your pipeline you can plan well in advance the downturn in revenues and manage expenses accordingly. If you know your sales cycle is a 3 week effort and you look 3 months into the future of your sales pipeline and see a drop then you can begin to start to take corrective action.
As you analyze your pipeline and know it takes certain sales action to bring an opportunity into the pipeline then you can also see what level of energy is being delivered in those areas.
For instance if your sales requires cold calls or some type of outbound customer contact, are you tracking those metrics on a daily, weekly, monthly performance standard. If the calling is with in standards, what then has changed? Are the callers not using the script? Are they calling a different demographic?
If you are not measuring and managing to the numbers you are at the mercy of them when the bottom falls out.
This week, take a look at your business practices for managing up stream of your sale. Do you have a business system in place to measure and manage sales activity? Do you have standards which must be met to maintain a solid pipeline of future business? The choice is totally up to you. Manage sales upstream or deal with cash flow issues downstream.
Wondering if your sales practices are delivering the best they can? Give JKL Associates a call at (313) 527-7945.
Questions or comments – email us at partners@jklassociates.com or call our Office at (313) 527-7945
Copyright – JKL Associates 2014
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