Previously,

We dealt with pipelines and its benefits.

A quick recap: Pipeline is the method to classify or segregate the available opportunities through the process of stages.

To create a pipeline, track your leads and chart them using a bar graph.

The bar graph will consist of the total at each stage. What you should see is a large bar for identified leads, and in each stage it follows, the bar should get smaller.

When this method is followed to categorize opportunities, it forms a pipeline that highlights the health of the business development efforts.

Let’s witness the possibilities and its outcome:

• If more leads at the end, but few at the beginning –

then once submitting them we don’t have enough leads and will be living off our backlog.

• If more leads at the beginning, but very few at the end –

then we have two outcomes,

1. Major new business development effort is lost
2. The organization is pressurized and will utilize unqualified leads into the system to make it look like they are up to something.

• If all bars are of the same height,

then we have two outcomes,

1. We are not being selective enough plus are passing leads from stage to stage unchallenged (ultimately bidding a bunch of low-probability leads that will consume resources and lower our win rate)
2. We are being too selective at the front end and only tracking opportunities that are certain of bid outputs.

These are the advantages of pipelining which plays a key role in Managing Business Development.