I can’t wait to tell you about sales cholesterol in your pipeline!
Last week I posted a 2-minute video rant on LinkedIn about pipeline blockages and if you missed it, I ranted about how stupid decisions create blockages in traffic, sales pipelines and hearts, like my own quadruple bypass adventure.
Watch below!
One of the comments on the video was from friend and sales guru Larry Levine, author of two great sales books including Selling From the Heart and Selling in a Post-Trust World. Of course the Heart guy would introduce cholesterol to the analogy! He said:
“Time for many pipelines to be reevaluated for too much cholesterol and fatty substances Dave Kurlan. These substances, inflated egos, poor first-in meetings skills but they think they’re rock stars, lack of business acumen because they’re consuming too many sweets (product and company training from people who haven’t sold but think they know how) sales blockages can be prevented with proper nutrition and coaching.”
Then Derek Baer, from Kurlan & Associates, took it a step further when he said:
“The best pipelines flow when milestones are tight, sequences are logical, and no rep mistakes motion for progress. Sales cholesterol is real.”
I replied with:
“Thinking out loud here, sales cholesterol should represent the percentage of fat or bad (unqualified or improperly staged) opportunities in the pipeline. On a 0-100 scale, we are looking for a score as close to 100 as possible. A quality opportunity scores 100, with points taken off for each milestone that has not been met. If there are 25 milestones in the sales process, then each milestone is worth 4 points. A fully qualified opportunity, at 3rd base, should have around 95 points. The average score of all of a salesperson’s opportunities would be the salesperson’s sales cholesterol and the average of all salespeople’s scores is the sales team’s sales cholesterol. I’ll write a more fully formed post on this next week.”
So here we are – it’s next week – and I will present my more fully formed thought process around sales cholesterol.
In the medical world, there are several measures of heart health:
Total Cholesterol is the sum of all the cholesterol in the blood. For our pipeline, let’s break it into HDL (good) and LDL (bad), based on sales process milestones. In this pipeline, HDL represents the most important milestones which, in terms of my sales process, Baseline Selling (BLS), would be the milestones that occur between 1st and 2nd base during Discovery, and the milestones that occur between 2nd and 3rd base during Qualification.
In my quick LinkedIn comment, I sketched a rough 0-100 scale, but let’s refine it. The generic version of BLS has five second base milestones and eight third base milestones for a total of thirteen quality milestones for us to focus on. These will provide precision and would be awarded points when they are completed.
HDL – This is a measure of good cholesterol which can wash bad cholesterol away to the liver for processing. When any of the important milestones in the BLS process are satisfied, eight points are awarded for a possible total of 104. I know, 104 sounds stupid but not as stupid as assigning 7.69 points per milestone.
LDL – This is a measure of bad cholesterol – the fat that gets deposited in the arteries, becomes plaque, and in my case, completely blocked four of my arteries. For our pipeline, LDL would be any of the thirteen good milestones that have not been satisfied and would be docked 8 points for a possible total of 104.
Ratio of HDL to LDL – a higher ratio is better and so it will be with our pipeline. If a salesperson has met the criteria for nine of the thirteen important milestones, their HDL would be 72 and their LDL would be 32 for a ratio of 2.25. A ratio of >3 would be ideal.
C-Reactive Protein is a measure of inflammation which is another marker for heart disease. A pipeline suffering from inflammation would have a Cholesterol ratio of <1 so we’ll tie CRP to that and say that CRP<1 indicates an inflamed pipeline. Just like inflammation signals heart trouble, a low CRP warns of pipeline inflammation that will lead to those deadly clogs and stalls from my rant.
The good news is that with scores like these, we can objectively grade our pipeline five ways by:
- Opportunity
- Salesperson
- Sales Team
- Sales Organization
- Company
Until now, the only scores we had to work with were probability scores and and if they were anywhere near accurate, we wouldn’t have the chronic problem with unreliable sales forecasts. Some of our clients have sales scorecards but those scorecards predict the likelihood of a win. With sales cholesterol scores we can see the true health and viability of the pipeline, at any level, and instantly know where to look for the problem.
The best part? Unlike my arteries, you can fix this fast and either tweak your ‘diet’ (filling the pipeline) or ‘medicate’ (coach/train) or both, based on the scores.
No more guessing on forecasts—just clear diagnostics and, as always, we can help.
Image by Grok4
