How To Maintain A Clean Sales Pipeline

Clean data. Accurate forecasts. Effective pipeline reviews.

Most pipelines in HubSpot are overcomplicated & under-defined.

As a result sales forecasts are inaccurate and pipeline reviews are ineffective.

An effective pipeline ensures the minimum time is needed to find blindspots...and the stage of each deal accurately reflects the buyer’s reality.

A few small tweaks can help save you a lot of work and avoidable stress later.

Today we’ve got:

1. A scorecard to audit your existing sales pipeline in HubSpot

2. A step-by-step playbook to improve pipeline accuracy

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A scorecard to audit your sales pipeline

How do you identify the highest impact changes you could make to your process?

Having a defined scorecard to evaluate your implementation consistently on an ongoing bases is a great way to establish a baseline and communicate the specific bottlenecks in your sales process.

See the scorecard below as an example (copy the template here):

Use the 15-point audit of your sales pipeline yourself to identify areas to improve your process:

1. Clear pipeline stage definitions - Each stage in your sales pipeline is clearly defined and aligns with the buyer’s journey.

2. Stage Alignment - The target customer’s buying process from awareness to decision has been mapped and aligned with the pipeline.

3. Entry/Exit Criteria - Specific criteria have been defined for when a deal enters and exits each stage in the sales pipeline. These criteria must be objective and easy for your sales team to understand and apply.

4. Activity Definition - Required and repeated activities are documented and have playbooks to support them.

5. Automation Usage - HubSpot workflows have been implemented and are used effectively.

6. Metric Tracking - Key metrics are defined in a HubSpot dashboard and reviewed weekly.

7. Consistent Data Entry - Information is in the correct format, consistently entered and validated using data rules.

8. Sales-Marketing Alignment - Metrics, processes and definitions are aligned and reviewed in regular team lead meetings.

9. Regular Reviews - Sales and RevOps processes are reviewed on a monthly/week cadence.

10. Feedback Implementation - A short feedback loop is created from each deal that follows the sales process and issues are prioritized and addressed.

11. Training & Support - Documentation and adoption guidance are provided.

12. CRM Utilization - HubSpot features and functionality are implemented and adopted.

13. Conversion Rates - Pipeline stage conversion is accurately and consistently measured.

14. Deal Velocity - There are no consistent bottlenecks and deals move through the pipeline smoothly.

15. Lost Deal Analysis - A process for analyzing lost deals to understand why they were lost and how to improve future outcomes is in place.
    
    

Step-by-step sales pipeline optimizations

Ensuring a clean and accurate pipeline requires discipline.

You could click into and review every deal record to understand recent activity (or lack of it). But who has time for that?

Here’s 3 step-by-step ways to improve your HubSpot pipeline hygiene: