Long sales cycles, lack of qualified leads, and stagnate pipelines are common issues facing today’s companies. In many organizations marketing is charged with “generating leads” and sales is charged with “closing leads”. What should be a highly collaborative effort often becomes a lightning rod for inter-department friction. The cause of this friction is most often traced to several factors:

The lack of a systematic approach for managing the lead flow
Inconsistent or vague definitions for the various stages of the sales cycle.
Lack of understanding of what stages exist between an initial contact and a closed sales order.
Inability to accurately forecast the necessary quantity of leads to be generated.
Inability to accurately forecast the number of closed sales for any given month.

The Pipeline Engineering Workshop (PEW) is an interactive work session designed to help companies engineer a systematic buying pipeline model that can function as the single most important performance dashboard for marketing and sales departments. Participants find the workshop serves as a terrific vehicle for aligning company strategies and tactics as well as aligning sales and marketing teams.

The workshop covers the following ground: market strategy, target market, current pipeline process, behavioral commitment development, conversion ratios, and pipeline tactics.

Outcomes

As a result of the PEW, you will have a pipeline model suitable for use with each of your products. For the specific product on which the workshop focused you will have:

Identified the market strategy for product
Determined the target market for each pipeline
Defined the behavior commitments for each pipeline stage
Established reasonable conversion ratios and elapsed time between the stages
Established how many contacts, leads, etc. are required for every closed order, and the amount of time required to move a target through the buying pipeline to close
Linked tactics to each stage
A rough draft for an action plan to support a buying pipeline based on behavioral commitments of your target market.

Deliverables

A Word document is generated containing notes from the workshop that include the behavioral commitments that define each of the phases in the pipeline, estimated conversion rates at each phase, number of contacts required for each sales order, and preliminary tactics and responsibilities assigned to each phase of the pipeline.

FAQ:

(written by Penn of Sintra.ai)

Q1: Why do long sales cycles, low lead quality, and stagnant pipelines create friction between Marketing and Sales?
A: In many organizations, Marketing is tasked with “generating leads” and Sales is tasked with “closing leads.” Without a shared system and common definitions, this handoff becomes a source of conflict—especially when pipeline performance is weak.

Q2: What are the most common root causes of Marketing–Sales pipeline friction?
A: The most frequent causes include:

Lack of a systematic approach for managing lead flow
Inconsistent or vague definitions for sales-cycle stages
Limited visibility into stages between initial contact and closed order
Inability to forecast the quantity of leads required
Inability to forecast closed sales reliably month to month

Q3: What is the Pipeline Engineering Workshop (PEW)?
A: The PEW is an interactive work session designed to engineer a systematic buying pipeline model that serves as a shared performance dashboard for Marketing and Sales. It is also a practical vehicle for aligning strategies, tactics, and cross-functional execution.

Q4: What topics does the PEW cover?
A: The workshop addresses market strategy, target market definition, current pipeline process, behavioral commitment development, conversion ratios, pipeline elapsed time, and pipeline tactics.

Q5: What outcomes should participants expect from the PEW?
A: As a result of the PEW, participants will have a pipeline model suitable for use with each product. For the product in focus, the team will:

Identify the market strategy
Determine the target market for each pipeline
Define behavioral commitments for each pipeline stage
Establish reasonable conversion ratios and elapsed time between stages
Determine the required number of contacts/leads per closed order and the time required to move targets through the pipeline
Link tactics to each stage
Produce a rough draft action plan to support the buying pipeline based on behavioral commitments

Q6: What deliverables are produced from the workshop?
A: A Word document containing workshop notes, including: behavioral commitments by pipeline phase, estimated conversion rates at each phase, number of contacts required per sales order, and preliminary tactics and responsibilities assigned to each pipeline phase.