I recently had a conversation with both the Director of L&D and the RVP of Sales for a large global company. The topic: how to improve the company’s ability to manage its sales pipeline. The L&D director was keen on our pipeline management training program since her company was struggling with several pipeline issues such as decreasing deal win rates and increasingly long sales cycles. She believed we could help, and she wanted to gain the RVP’s agreement to engage us. His influence would help win over his peers and assist in moving the effort forward.

I explained our training program and its key objectives, including how to differentiate pipeline management and forecasting, determine the ideal size for a pipeline, qualify new opportunities early, and use the shape of a pipeline to isolate trouble spots.

After I finished, the RVP paused and said, “This sounds pretty basic. It might be useful for onboarding new sales managers, but some of our managers have been here for 10-15 years. They’ve been managing sales pipelines forever.” And with that, he exited the meeting. The L&D director then groaned in frustration, “His attitude is indicative of the core issue here: he doesn’t even see the problem!”

Unfortunately, the RVP’s perspective is not an uncommon one. Like many companies, he was confusing comfort with a task with competence in performing it. Comfort and competence are not the same thing. Just because someone has been managing a sales pipeline for 10 years does not mean they’re good at it. That’s a dangerous assumption to make—and it’s an assumption that was getting the company I mentioned into trouble.

Forget for a moment how long your sales managers have been in their positions and instead look at some of these key performance indicators that tie right back poor pipeline management:

• Are you missing your sales targets? If so, it means your sales teams aren’t maintaining a pipeline healthy enough (either in size or quality) to get you to your targets consistently.
• Are you losing too many deals and taking too much time to lose them? Low win rates and long sales cycles indicate that bad deals are being allowed into your pipeline and then being invited to stay.
• Are you missing your sales forecasts? Forecasts are most often built off a sales pipeline. When your sales team misses its forecast, it means your pipeline isn’t clean and healthy.

These may look like basic issues, but they’re some of the most common problems companies encounter today, no matter how long their sales managers have been in their roles.

In our recent research on sales management practices at large B2B companies, we learned that only 44% of sales forces think they’re good at managing their sales pipelines. That leaves 56% of organizations struggling with basic issues like bloated pipelines, ‘stuck’ deals, inaccurate forecasts, and low win rates. And every one of these companies employs experienced managers. These common problems plague organizations of all sizes and sales managers of all experience levels.

Bottom line: Don’t assume that just because your managers have been doing something for a long time that they’re doing it well. Training and development still matter, even for sales veterans. And sometimes especially for sales veterans.

About the Author

Jason Jordan is a founding partner of Vantage Point Performance, a global sales management training and development firm, and co-author of Cracking the Sales Management Code. Jason is a recognized thought leader in the domain of business-to-business sales and teaches sales and sales management at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business. Sign up for Vantage Point’s newsletter to stay up to date with the latest sales manager research and best practices.