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Out-Quarter Review Thoughts - Minimizing Revenue Leak

  • 7 October 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 114 views
JoshM
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I recently spoke with a customer about some of the challenges they were having as they were looking to gain better visibility in their pipeline health for future quarters. 

They were noticing a trend that many organizations see. 

  1. Reps would set all early-stage opportunities as set to close in the current quarter.

  2. Each quarter, a significant subset of those deals would not be closed.

  3. Once the quarter ended, sales reps would slip those deals into the next quarter in mass, changing the pipeline makeup for NQ significantly.

This rep behavior was creating an inconsistent, lumpy pattern of pipeline movement. A massive pipeline cleanup effort was required at the start of each quarter as reps frantically moved, slipped, and lost deals moved in mass. These factors led to fluctuations in early quarter pipeline and caused a lack of confidence in their overall pipeline health.  

The customer uses Waterfall to visualize the potential revenue leak occurring every quarter.

 

This analysis enables leaders to have conversations with their reps on why these deals slipped and how we can be more precise on when our deals will close. As the team learns to forecast when deals will close accurately, they get clearer visibility into how much pipeline they have in future quarters and are one step closer to achieving Revenue Precision.

This company is building the foundation for Revenue Precision and ensuring its revenue team is enabled to achieve its goals by building a revenue process that focuses on creating an accurate, qualified pipeline. 

Now, we are building a workflow and coaching process for leaders to coach their sellers to improve pipeline hygiene by:

  • Identifying deals where the close date doesn’t match their typical deal cycle

  • Identifying deals where the sales stage and forecast category don’t match

  • Setting realistic close dates and reevaluating them as needed

Sellers and Leaders can discuss the current quarter and future quarters, minimizing the chance that a key deal gets lost in the shuffle of deal cleanup at the beginning of the quarter. 

 

Have others in the community experienced similar pain in your organization?  

What strategies did you take to get a clear look into your future quarter pipeline visibility?

2 replies

rblock
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Josh,

I very much like how you brought out the use of our Waterfall view to assist during in-quarter manager-rep 1:1 meetings, and during the beginning of quarter data cleanup.  A quick analysis at the beginning of the quarter can highlight the issue you describe, of a rep not updating their close dates.  Once flagged, it becomes a regular element of the manager-rep meeting to keep the close dates clean.  By doing this, you move from simply flagging problems, to operationalizing better hygiene.

So many of our customers talk about how much trouble they have with updating SFDC data before Clari.  This is another example of how introducing Clari into cadence processes operationalizes data cleanup.

#data cleansing #Waterfall

Robert Block
mirjammartin
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I would really be curious to learn, how may leaders use Waterfall to analyse the changes in next quarter. Sure, changes in future quarters are necessary and welcome as sales goes through the motion of qualifying, aligning, and getting necessary steps completed, but I wonder how much time is taken over analysing the quality of next quarter’s pipeline? Regularly analysing it through Waterfall, is perhaps a new motion one ought to consider.

#Waterfall, #data cleansing, #Revenue Leak

Mirjam Martin - Strategy Director@Clari

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