As you know, I participate in 100s of pipeline and deal reviews every year. One of my standard queries focuses on pipeline quality. It seems like such a simple/obvious question, but you’d be amazed at the amount of “hand waving” and confused responses I get.
“How do you know this is a real deal? How do you know this is qualified?”
You can guess a lot of the responses: “They seem to be interested in our solutions…. We’ve been having great conversations…. They responded to our outreach…..”
I ask, “I get that, how do you know they are ready to make the change now, what’s causing them to need to take some action?”
The responses are, “Well they are talking to us, we are having interesting meetings. Why would they be meeting with us if they weren’t serious?”
I see too many opportunities in qualified pipelines, I see too many opportunities “committed to a forecast,” that are just interesting conversations. Customers may be interested in learning more about our products, about issues we see happening, about how their competitors are addressing certain issue. But the fact they are having conversations, or even engaging on our websites doesn’t mean they are interested in buying…at least now.
Too many sellers fear having the right conversations with their prospects. They fear asking, “Why are you interested now? Why is this change important now? What happens if you don’t change? When do you have to have something in place? Why….?”
With sellers desperate for customer engagement, too often they fear asking these questions and understanding the need to change. They are thankful to have people that want to talk and engage. They believe if they can keep these prospects talking, they will eventually get a deal.
Sadly, a huge number of deals I see in pipelines are not qualified opportunities. We may be having interesting conversations–and those conversations may be important. But until we help the customer commit to making a change, understanding when they need something in place, and have stated the consequences of not making that change are unacceptable, we don’t have a real opportunity.
Again, we may carry some of those conversations in a nurturing or prospecting stage, and they may convert, but they are not real until the customer has made them real.
Afterword: Here is a great AI generated discussion of this post. This is a fascinating conversation. In some sense, they created a hallucination at the end—but one that is entirely valid and something I wish I had incorporated into the article. Enjoy!
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