Generating pipeline is the #1 challenge 99% of B2B sellers face today.

It's a slog to get a first meeting and more often than not, the prospects go dark after that.

Yet 1% of reps are steadily growing quality pipeline, even in the economic downturn.

Here are the ten steps they follow:

1. Identify and Target High-Value Accounts

Spend the time to pick your shots.

Here are my criteria for great accounts to invest in this year:

• TAM: Which accounts have the capacity to buy my solution at scale?
• In-market: Are they ready to buy now?
• Relationships: Are you starting from scratch or do you have coaches or champions already in place?
• Fit: Is there evidence they need what you have?
• Awareness:  Are they unaware, aware, or taking action on the problem your tech addresses?

2. Deep Dive into Account Research

Invest time upfront to deeply research each high-value account. 

Understand their business model, challenges, aspirations, and key decision-makers.

Best sources:

• SEC filings: 10-K’s, 10-Q’s, proxy statements
• Earnings calls: especially Q&A with analysts
• Investor Day presentations
• Annual reports: especially the letter from the CEO
• Financial news and interviews
• Social media: executive posts

3. Develop Customized Value Propositions

Create your value story not from product material, but from the insights you discovered in your account research.  

Here’s my talk track:

1. Account A is [describe business health - growing, stagnant, declining].
2. Their core imperatives are: [list top 3 priorities of management for current fiscal year]
3. Their challenge in reaching imperative X is [describe details of their challenges].
4. If they had [a capability your solution provides], they could [describe ideal future state].
5. We have helped similar companies solve this challenge: [2-3 customer stories]
6. Product intro - only at the end!

4. Engage with Multiple Stakeholders

Build relationships with various stakeholders within the target account - executives, mid-level managers and worker bees.

Shoot for 3 executive decision-makers and 2-5 people around each. This is great coverage.

Action: Map out the organizational structure in an org chart to bring order to your multithreading.

5. Leverage Thought Leadership

Position yourself and your company as thought leaders in your industry. Share insights, trends, and valuable content - not product information - that comes after you have them intellectually chasing you.

Here is a treasure trove of insights from top management companies which you can use to be smarter than any rep you compete with:

McKinsey: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights

BCG: https://www.bcg.com/publications

Bain & Co: https://www.bain.com/insights/

Accenture: https://www.accenture.com/in-en/insights-index

Deloitte: https://www2.deloitte.com/us/en/insights.html

EY: https://www.ey.com/en_se/insights

6. Create a Strategic Outreach Plan

Stop sending one product-based email followed by 15 follow ups “did you get my email?”

Try this instead:

Send three emails, one week apart, that are 3 - 5 sentence customer stories describing business outcomes - without mentioning the name of your product. No calls to action, no request for a meeting.

Then send a fourth email asking if these stories resonate and if they’d like to go deeper to understand what these customers did to achieve the results.

7. Get Senior Stakeholders Involved Early

When you invest in deep research and customer-specific value stories up front, you vastly increase your value to senior customer stakeholders.

They can tell you in 2 minutes if the theme you have built is important to them.

If so, you have a solid opportunity. 

If not, you just saved yourself nine months of a painful sales cycle with lower stakeholders that will ultimately fail because they lack executive support.

8. Leverage Your A-Players

Your research and custom-crafted value story will also make it easier to attract internal A-players to your deal team. 

But with no compelling story on why they should work on your deal, they will push you off on lesser players.

A-Players supercharge the quality of the conversation which makes customers lean in. This is my favorite way to avoid customers going dark - which is the biggest killer of pipelines.

9. Establish a Cadence

Time kills deals.

Sometimes good opportunities die just because customer stakeholders are so swamped with other projects. 

Once you’ve made it to that all-important second meeting, suggest a weekly or bi-weekly cadence.

Having a cadence in place systematizes ongoing contact, keeps you top of mind and is another strong strategy to avoid customers going dark.

10. Create a Compelling Event

“I can’t get the customer to make a decision,” is one of the most common sticking points I hear. 

Engineer a goal to work towards that motivates customer stakeholders to complete a body of work that drives a decision.

My favorite compelling event is driving an evaluation to completion in time for an executive read-out meeting where the decision-maker or committee will meet with my team and my executive(s) to hear how the evaluation went and what evidence it produced that would justify a sizable investment in my tech.

Use these steps to drive quality pipeline and leave the land of transactional selling for good.

Share this email with other sellers if you found it valuable so they can know the secret of the 1% too.

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Thank you for reading,

Jamal

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P.S. If you want to master all ten of these steps to build quality pipeline with me and my team, join my Elite Sellers Playbook 8-week course.

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‍Book a call to learn more.

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