Beyond the Numbers: Reading Your Pipeline's Real Health

Not all pipelines are created equal. It can be easy at first glance to assume a pipeline is healthy just because there are a certain number of opportunities or an estimated monetary value that meets expectations. But it's important to realize that what appears in a high-level overview does not always translate into profitable sales.

Here are some of the most common signs of unhealthy pipelines:

Narrow at the Top

When a pipeline is narrow at the top, it signifies that there are not enough new opportunities entering the pipeline. This is usually the result of insufficient time spent by the salesforce on prospecting activities or a lack of quality leads coming from Marketing or Partners.

Bulging at the Top

A bulge at the top of the pipeline is a sign of the exact opposite problem of being narrow at the top. It means there are too many unqualified opportunities stalled in the early stages of the pipeline. Whenever the pipeline is top-heavy, more rigorous qualification or additional enablement around solutions and qualification criteria is needed.

Bulging in the Middle

Having more deals stuck in the middle of your pipeline is not much better than having a bulge at the top, except that you can hopefully say most of these deals have been qualified. This is usually an indicator that there is a gap in teamwork amongst colleagues, sales reps are not engaging the right decision makers, or unqualified opportunities are being moved to show artificial progression. In this situation, focus on strengthening internal collaboration—bring in technical resources or executives earlier in the process. Ensure your reps are building relationships with actual decision-makers, not just influencers, and implement account planning sessions that map out each opportunity's path to close with clear next steps and validation criteria.

Bulging at the Bottom

If a bulge at the top or in the middle is not healthy, you can probably already guess that a bulge at the bottom is not much better. What makes this problem so much more painful than the others though is that your sales people have likely spent a considerable amount of time nurturing the deals through the earlier pipeline stages only to get to the end of the sales cycle and discover the deal can't close. To get this far and experience this problem likely means your salespeople are not asking for the business, are not dealing with the correct decision-makers, have not anticipated objections from the client such as price, have not effectively qualified the deal, or they are not able to effectively communicate the true value of the proposed solution.

Skinny Pipeline

The worst case scenario: not enough opportunities across all stages of the pipeline. If you find yourself in this situation, you probably need to take a good hard look at all aspects of your sales process. This includes demand generation activities, seller competence, internal sales processes, and strategic prioritization of goals, accounts, and activities.

Moving Forward

If you're experiencing any of these symptoms in your own pipeline, you're not alone. Sales organizations struggle with pipeline imbalance all the time as a normal course of business. The good news is that these issues don't have to become costly mistakes—so long as you diagnose them early and take corrective action.

Start by running a pipeline audit to identify which pattern you're seeing. Then focus on the two or three highest-impact actions specific to your situation. For example, if you're narrow at the top, block dedicated prospecting time in your reps' calendars before addressing anything else.  If you're bulging at the bottom, institute deal reviews at the 75% stage to pressure-test whether opportunities are truly qualified before investing more pursuit time.

We've helped numerous companies turn unhealthy pipelines into effective deal machines. If figuring out where to start is the challenge, reach out to us today.