Sales Pipeline Management: How to Diagnose and Fix a Pipeline Gap
You’re approaching the end of the quarter, and it’s becoming evident that there’s a gap in your sales pipeline. Perhaps the volume isn’t there, the quality is ambiguous, or you’re unable to establish what stage of the sales journey each prospect is at.
Regardless, diagnosing the root cause is the necessary first step — and it’s usually one (or more) of the following:
- People — Do you have a talent problem?
- Process — Are your processes broken (or lacking)?
- Technology — Or is your tech stack simply not fit for purpose?
Working through these three key areas is a great place to start when determining the reason behind an underperforming sales pipeline.
Firstly, let’s turn to people.
People
Your sales team, from account executives and business development reps through to senior leaders, is the most vital part of effective sales pipeline management.
Are they the right cultural fit?
It isn’t just about how good they are at selling — it’s also about how well they fit the culture of your business.
Do they sufficiently understand your product, market, and ideal customer profiles? Do they know how to speak to your prospective clients and have a sufficient understanding of their key pain points?
If reps aren’t a good match for how your company sells, they may fall behind on pipeline targets, spend too long on prospects that are unlikely to convert, and ultimately struggle to get deals over the line.
Is the sales structure fit for purpose?
Does your new business team have clearly defined roles with specific territories and/or segments to focus on? Or are too few reps chasing too many leads?
Lack of a transparent team structure, with muddied responsibilities, can undermine the broader team, leading to duplication of work, missing key accounts, or simply team members burning out from being stretched too thinly.
In these situations, pipeline generation invariably suffers — they’ll either miss good opportunities or simply run out of time to follow-up effectively.
Is your team benefitting from ongoing training?
Training shouldn’t just happen during onboarding.
Are you giving reps regular coaching on how your product is evolving? This is especially important in SaaS companies, where strong investment in R&D can mean that the product changes on a regular basis.
Likewise, are they aware of your current market and buyer personas? And are they learning how to use new tools effectively, or receiving feedback on the competency of their outreach?
Without regular, updated training, your sales reps could be using dated messaging, miss buying signals, or take too long to ramp up. This inevitably leads to slow pipeline generation and impacts win rates.
How to diagnose team issues
Ask yourself the following question:
‘If a proven sales performer joined your team tomorrow, would they be likely to hit their target once fully onboarded?’
If the answer is yes, your people-related issues could involve hiring decisions, team structure, or inadequate training.
If not, it’s worth considering what else could be limiting their success. So, once you’ve looked inward at your team, the next step is to look outward — at your processes and prospecting strategy.
How to Source High-Quality Leads
Processes
Even with a strong team in place, your pipeline can dry up if your approach to prospecting and outreach is off.
When it comes to generating pipeline, a few wrong assumptions can seriously impact your team’s ability to book qualified meetings.
For example, are your email or call response rates declining? Are prospects going cold after initial outreach? And crucially, do the accounts your team is targeting match the profile of your ideal customer?
These are just a handful of ways of diagnosing potentially faulty processes. Here are four ways to help get back on the right track.
Focus on targeting your ICP
Are your sales reps focusing on companies that match your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)?
Most sales teams claim they’re targeting their ICP — but in practice, it’s often just a checklist of quite basic firmographic traits such as industry, headcount, tech stack, and job title.
These are all useful data points, but they don’t reveal any unique details about your prospective client and their challenges, and it presumes that every company has the same pain point.
For example two manufacturing companies may appear similar in terms of size. However, one may be in growth mode, looking to double the size of their commercial function in the next few years, with a view to achieving ambitious revenue goals that enable the directors to sell up and retire in the next 3-5 years.
In contrast, the other could be under pressure from the private equity firm that has recently brought them out to significantly reduce their costs by consolidating tools and outsourcing to reduce labour costs.
Find your ICP at the right time
Similarly, timing is critical. Perhaps you’re speaking with the right companies, but getting in touch when a company has budget, urgency, or a relevant initiative underway is vital.
Showing up cold — after they’ve already chosen a competitor — is no good.
Align your messaging with their pain points
Generic messaging kills engagement — and this is no clearer than now, in a time of over-used AI-generated outreach. On the one hand, everyone can now craft outreach emails in seconds. On the other hand, the quality (and sincerity) of outbound messaging is more important than ever.
If your outreach doesn’t speak to a company’s specific pain points, use cases, or recent changes, you’ll be ignored.
Use the right channels
Email might work for one persona, but another might respond better on LinkedIn or via a warm intro. A solid sales process adapts to the buyer, not the other way around.
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Technology
Whether it’s clunky tools, outdated data, or inefficient workflows, your tech stack should be enabling your sales team — not making their lives more difficult.
One of the most common culprits in failing sales pipeline management? Weak or outdated firmographic data.
Here’s how to assess whether your technology is helping or hurting your pipeline — and how better data and technology can move the dial.
Is your sales tech intuitive and rep-friendly?
Ideally, sales reps should spend their time selling, not battling with software. If your CRM or sales enablement tools are confusing, manual, or full of unreliable data, your team’s productivity will inevitably take a hit.
Similarly, if new technology such as an ERP system is introduced, but take-up is poor, you can end up with a fragmented workforce working in silos.
And this is especially true when your company is scaling up; inefficient tools are less of a problem with five reps, but can be a nightmare with 50.
How smart is your tech stack?
Strong pipeline generation depends on good timing and targeting. That’s only possible with accurate, real-time firmographic data — enriched with contextual, trigger-based insights (more on this later!)
Outdated or shallow data leads to poor prioritisation — you might be reaching out to companies that appear to be your ICP on paper but are in no position to buy right now. And on the flipside, you could also be missing out on companies launching relevant initiatives, with budget assigned to address the precise challenges that your company can solve.
Good data gives context, including whether a company is growing, their founders’ business pedigree, if they’ve recently raised funding, or if they’re showing tell-tale signs of risk.
Without this, your reps are left guessing.
Is your tech stack integrated or fragmented?
When your CRM, data platform, email tool, and call software aren’t integrated with one another, your reps are reliant on manual data input.
And in a fast-paced sales environment, this increases the risk of duplicate entries, missed context, or poor handoffs between team members.
Sales teams need smooth, automated flows — not hours spent copying and pasting between tools.
The solution:
Trigger-based targeting
Instead of relying on basic firmographic data, boring outreach comms, and bad timing, the best sales teams build their ICPs around signals of pain and buying intent.
In other words, don’t just ask “does the company fit our profile?”, but rather “are they showing signs that they need our solution?”
Here are some examples of deeper, trigger-based targeting:
- Companies that raised a £5m series A a couple of years ago and now have to hit a specific revenue target in a set timeframe to reach series B
- Companies late on filing accounts — a possible sign of financial stress or operational distraction
- Businesses launching new products or expanding into new markets
- Companies with ageing directors and strong cash reserves, potentially preparing for succession or exit
This kind of insight-based targeting allows for a far more precise sales process — one that demonstrates nuance and knowledge to prospects.
You can do all this, and more, on Beauhurst. Take a two-minute online platform tour to see how it works in practice — or book a demo below for a bespoke look at how Beauhurst could work for your business.
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