Why building sales pipelines has never been harder… and what to do about it

FIPP Training promotion: Every media salesperson knows that “I love hunting for new business” is exactly the kind of line that recruiters want to hear. Unfortunately, it’s often a fib. In truth, salespeople say that prospecting is the most challenging part of the sales process*.

Building pipeline is hard and it’s not much fun, writes Flume Sales Training, a FIPP Training partner, ahead of an upcoming Sales Accelerator programme with FIPP. It takes a lot of work, involves a lot of rejection and there is little short-term reward. Most salespeople are all too happy to take their foot off the prospecting pedal as soon as they can.

They would much rather spend their time trying to grow existing accounts and topping up their revenue each month by closing a couple of warm, marketing qualified leads. In the past, that was kind of okay — it worked.

Not anymore.

The average number of sales opportunities for salespeople has decreased by 74% since Corona started**.

Prospecting has never been so competitive, and, to make matters worse, buyers have become sceptical of salespeople. In fact, according to The Rain Group; buyers say that 58% of their meetings with salespeople have no value while just 16% say that today’s virtual sellers are skilled in making a strong ROI case***.

Salespeople have to really embrace prospecting in 2021 and they need to get better at it. That requires a deep understanding of today’s buyers and insight into what is and isn’t working right now.

‘Building pipeline’ is the first in FIPP’s ‘Sales Accelerator’ series of sales training workshops in association with Flume Sales Training. Click here for more information.

*Hubspot
**Contemsa
***Rain Group

Topics

Your first step to joining FIPP's global community of media leaders

Sign up to FIPP World x