In today’s issue, I’m going to share 5 steps to building your pipeline for Q4 and beyond.
If you can replicate this system, you will have a clear idea of what needs to be done to reach your target, and how realistic they really are.
Unfortunately, most SDRs don’t do this exercise, and they end up missing their targets, or they prospect without predictable results.
Building your pipeline is how you take control of your career.
Without a solid prospecting system, a few challenges arise:
Challenge #1: You have no control: you’re at the mercy of your marketing team, the economy, or seasonality.
Challenge #2: You have no visibility: you’re not able to gauge how close or far you are from reaching your targets.
Challenge #3: You become anxious: as you have no way of course correcting, you start worrying about reaching your goals.
You can overcome all of these challenges by building your pipeline early.
Here are 5 steps you can follow do to just that:
Step 1: Find your real target
Knowing your real target is a lot harder than it seems.
In some sales organizations, you may have multiple targets to reach, which makes it harder to understand what’s expected from you.
My advice; find the number that has the biggest impact on your commission and focus on it. You’ll often find it in your compensation plan.
If you’re an AE, you may be compensated on the MRR, ARR or bookings you bring in. If you’re an SDR, you’re often compensated on the meetings you book, meetings held, or opportunities generated.
Go find the number that stands out and focus on it. This is your real target.
Step 2: Convert it into a number of prospects
Now that you know exactly where you want to go, you need to understand the effort required to reach your target.
I recommend focusing on a number of prospects to contact.
In the example below, I have to perform 124 discovery calls per quarter. With 20% of no-shows, I need to book 155 calls. With a 33% meeting rate, and a 55% reply rate, I need to contact 855 different prospects in order to reach my target.
(Note: If you’re interested in running these numbers, go check my Sales Process Calculator).
Step 3: Divide it by the number of days remaining to work
Having a clear activity target is good, but knowing exactly how many prospects to contact daily is better.
The third step is quite simple; find out how many working days remain in the quarter and divide the number in step 2 by that number. Make sure to deduct days off and public holidays.
For example, at the time of writing, there are 58 working days remaining. I have planned 3 weeks of holiday until the end of the year (including Christmas), which gives me 43 working days in Q4 (58 – 15). With the example in step 2, I would need to contact 20 prospects every day (855/43 = 19,9).
Step 4: Protect your schedule
Dedicating some time to prospecting can be challenging. Between internal meetings, customer calls, and incessant notifications, you waste a ton of time and energy on secondary tasks.
I recommend protecting your schedule with time blocks. Find the time of the day when you’re the most productive, and put a 30 – 60 min blocker. Make sure this blocker is at the same time every day so your colleagues and manager know you won’t reply during that time.
Ideally, your blocker should be at the beginning of your work day, around lunch time, or towards the end of the day.
Here’s an example:
Without this last step, nothing you did before will be of any use.
Executing means showing up every day, following up, finding new prospects, and contacting them.
That’s what I call a prospecting routine, and it’s the number 1 reason SDRs succeed or fail. Without building a daily prospecting habit, you’ll find yourself with varying levels of motivations, and your results with be inconsistent.
Here’s how you can execute daily:
Time block
Mute all your notifications
Focus on your follow-ups first
Find new prospects
Contact them
And these are my 5 steps to building your pipeline for Q4 and beyond.
TL;DR:
Step 1: Find your real target
Step 2: Convert it into a number of prospect
Step 3: Divide it by the number of days remaining to work
Step 4: Protect your schedule
Step 5: Execute
Cheers,
Thibaut
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