ANALOG AND OLD SCHOOL! Do you still hand-write your Sales Pipeline once a week? If you are a Sales Manager, do you review your Salesperson’s hand-written Pipeline once per month and discuss it, while looking at a copy of the prior month’s pipeline? There IS STILL Value to Analog in a Digital world!

I was speaking to a client of mine last week. This CEO was telling me of the massive improvement in one of his salespeople’s performance over the past 90 days. What is the salesperson doing differently, or more importantly, what is her Sales Manager doing differently? Easy…every 2 weeks they are sitting down and reviewing her hand-written pipeline while looking at the hand-written pipeline from 2 weeks ago. The Sales Manager is coaching her and listening and supporting. Steadily, more suspects are being added to the first stage of the pipeline and week by week prospects are moving to Closed and the prospect velocity is increasing.

Normally when I suggest to a client that they have their salespeople hand write a pipeline and that they sit down and review it with that salesperson on a weekly, biweekly or monthly basis I get hard and fast pushback. No wonder…after all the manager says, “We have invested 10s of thousands of dollars in our CRM tool and I can just look at their Pipeline anytime I want to!”

But is it the same?

Does it really take that long to write down your REAL Pipeline (not the inflated one) by hand?

Is the real pushback by Sales managers due to not wanting to really engage with their salesperson and have a strong and meaningful and sometimes uncomfortable Sales Leadership conversation?

What do you think…what are you doing Analog, or what will you commit to doing Analog in the next 90 days?

Wayne