WHAT DRIVES REVENUE? PROBOS Perspective #3
The Pipeline Is a Lagging Indicator.
Are you managing the numbers, or the behaviours that create them?
I've sat in more sales pipeline reviews than I care to remember with spreadsheets, dashboards, RAG statuses, forecast calls and the conversations about what's closing this month, what's slipped, what's at risk and what needs pulling forward. Don't get me wrong, pipeline management matters hugely. Commercial leaders need visibility, predictability and accountability but I've often wondered whether we spend so much time looking at the number that we forget to look at what actually created it because by the time a deal is stuck, a forecast is slipping or conversion is falling, the problem may have started weeks or months earlier.
The pipeline is telling us what has happened, or what we believe might happen.
It isn't necessarily telling us why and that distinction matters.
The Problem Probably Started Before the Pipeline Review
Imagine you're sitting in your weekly sales meeting. One of your salespeople has a £250,000 opportunity that's been sitting in the pipeline for three months- it was supposed to close last month, then this month and now it's looking like next quarter. So you ask the familiar questions:
"What's the next step?"
"Have we spoken to the decision maker?"
"What's holding it up?"
"Can we get it over the line?"
"Do we need to sharpen the price?"
Perfectly reasonable questions but what if the problem isn't what's happening now?
What if the problem started in the very first meeting?
Perhaps the seller never really established the customer's compelling reason to change.
Perhaps they built a strong relationship with someone who couldn't influence the decision.
Perhaps they presented the solution before understanding the business problem.
Perhaps the customer liked the idea but couldn't justify the investment.
Perhaps nobody explored the cost of doing nothing.
Perhaps the opportunity was never properly qualified in the first place.
.....and now, three months later, we're trying to coach a deal through a problem that was created long before the forecast call.
You can't always fix a weak sales conversation with a stronger closing technique.
We Measure Outcomes But Do We Understand the Inputs?
Most commercial organisations have plenty of metrics: pipeline coverage, win rates, average deal size, sales cycle length, forecast accuracy, activity levels, revenue against target.
All useful metrics but these measures tell us relatively little about the quality of the conversations that sit underneath them. Two salespeople might each have £1 million in pipeline- one has built genuine customer commitment, engaged the right stakeholders, understood the commercial value and established a credible decision process, and the other has ten enthusiastic prospects who have all said: "Sounds really interesting. Let's keep talking."
Same pipeline value. Very different probability of revenue and yet, depending on how the CRM is being used, those opportunities might look remarkably similar.
Pipeline quantity is not the same as pipeline quality (and activity isn't necessarily progress)
The Difference Between Activity and Progress
I think this is one of the biggest traps in sales leadership. We measure what we can see:
Calls made.
Emails sent.
Meetings booked.
Demos delivered.
Proposals submitted.
....and when revenue isn't where we want it to be, the temptation is to demand more.
More calls. More meetings. More demos. More proposals but more of the wrong activity rarely creates the right result. A salesperson can have a diary full of meetings without moving a single customer closer to a decision. They can deliver an outstanding demonstration to somebody who has no intention of buying. They can send a beautifully written proposal before the customer has even agreed there's a problem worth solving. They can spend weeks chasing an opportunity that should have been disqualified in the first conversation. So perhaps we need to ask a different question. Not simply: "What activity has taken place?" but "What has changed as a result of that activity?"
Does the customer understand their problem differently?
Have they agreed the commercial impact?
Have we engaged another stakeholder?
Has the customer committed to a meaningful next step?
Have we helped them build an internal business case?
Has their willingness or ability to change increased?
That's progress and it isn't always reflected in the number of activities completed.
The CRM Isn't the Customer
Now, I know that might sound obvious but think about it. A CRM contains what somebody has entered about a customer. Their interpretation, their assumptions, their optimism, their judgement about probability & their understanding of the buying process. Sometimes it's accurate., sometimes it isn't. A customer saying "We really like what you've shown us" doesn't necessarily mean they're going to buy. A request for a proposal doesn't necessarily mean there's an approved budget.
A senior stakeholder attending a meeting doesn't necessarily mean they're sponsoring the project and a deal moving from one stage to another doesn't automatically mean the customer has made a corresponding commitment.
The CRM records the seller's view of the opportunity. It doesn't automatically validate the customer's reality. That's why great pipeline reviews need more than accurate data, they need commercial curiosity and sometimes a willingness to challenge the story we're telling ourselves.
Are Your Sales Managers Coaching or Inspecting?
This is where I think things get particularly interesting. Many sales managers were promoted because they were excellent salespeople. They knew how to build relationships, create opportunities, negotiate, influence, close business and then suddenly they're responsible for getting results through other people and the organisation gives them a number, a dashboard, a forecast meeting and a team to manage. So what do they do?
They inspect.
They ask for updates.
They chase activity.
They intervene in deals.
They tell people what they would do.
.....and sometimes they end up becoming the team's most expensive salesperson.
But managing pipeline and developing sales capability are not the same thing. One focuses on the opportunity and the other focuses on the person. Both matter but if we only coach the deal, we may solve today's problem without improving tomorrow's performance.
Imagine replacing: "How are you going to close this?" with "What do you think is really preventing the customer from making a decision?" or "What did you learn in the last conversation that you didn't know before?" or "What assumptions are you making about this opportunity?" or "What would you do differently if you could have that conversation again?" or perhaps my favourite ,"What do you need to get better at so this doesn't keep happening?"
Now we're developing capability, not simply chasing a forecast.
Your Forecast Might Be Telling You Something About Your Culture
Here's another angle that I don't think we talk about enough. What happens when somebody tells their sales leader that a big opportunity isn't going to close? Are they thanked for the honesty
or made to feel they've failed? What happens when someone disqualifies an opportunity that's been sitting in the pipeline for months? Is that recognised as good commercial judgement
or challenged because pipeline coverage has dropped? What happens when a salesperson says
"I don't know." or "I think we've misunderstood what the customer needs." or "I don't believe this deal is real." If the culture punishes bad news, people become very good at delivering optimistic news and suddenly the forecast becomes less about what the customer is likely to do and more about what the salesperson feels safe enough to say.
Forecast accuracy isn't just a process issue. It can also be a leadership and trust issue.
That's worth thinking about.
Don't Just Inspect the Number, Diagnose the Behaviour.
When conversion drops, we often reach for sales training.
When pipeline is light, we increase prospecting activity.
When deals stall, we introduce more rigorous reviews.
When forecast accuracy is poor, we tighten CRM governance.
Sometimes those are exactly the right responses but sometimes they're treating the symptom rather than the cause. Perhaps your sellers need stronger discovery skills, perhaps they understand discovery but lack the confidence to challenge, perhaps managers need coaching capability, perhaps the sales process encourages opportunities to progress before they're properly qualified, perhaps the organisation rewards activity rather than customer progress, perhaps sales and technical teams aren't working effectively together, perhaps the value proposition isn't landing or perhaps there's a wider change required in how commercial teams are led, developed and measured and often, it's a combination.
This is why, at PROBOS, we believe commercial improvement should start with diagnosis.
Understand the target.
Understand the gap.
Understand the practices and behaviours creating it.
Then build the right combination of training, coaching, leadership development and change support to address the real problem.
Your commercial challenge should determine the intervention, not the other way around.
The Best Sales Leaders Look Forward by Looking Beneath the Numbers
Of course we need dashboards, off course we need forecasts and of course we need accountability but the most effective commercial leaders don't just ask: "Are we going to hit the number?" They ask "What are we learning about the behaviours that will determine whether we hit the number?" They know the difference between activity and progress, between pipeline value and pipeline quality, between optimism and customer commitment, between inspecting deals and coaching people, between a short-term intervention and sustainable capability development and they recognise that the commercial result they're looking at today may be the consequence of leadership decisions, customer conversations and behaviours from months earlier.
You can't manage tomorrow's revenue by only inspecting yesterday's behaviour.
You have to influence what happens next and that starts with understanding what's really happening now.
Leadership Reflection
If I sat in your next pipeline review, would I hear more conversation about when deals are going to close, or about what your people and customers are actually doing that will determine whether they close?
Revenue follows behaviour.
And the best commercial leaders don't simply manage the pipeline. They develop the people, practices and behaviours that create it.
Find what's getting in the way of your number. Then fix the right things.
We work with commercial leaders to identify the behaviours, capabilities, leadership practices and organisational barriers affecting revenue performance.
Then we build the right intervention around the problem, combining training, coaching, leadership development and change support where it's needed.
Not training for training's sake. Commercial development designed around the outcome you're trying to achieve.
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