Inquiry Management - 6 steps to clarity

We have all seen the the "sales pipeline" & "sales stages" represented in terms of close rates and percentages of Stage "x" prospects that make it to down the funnel to stage "y". For years sales people and sales management have used these percentages across the sales stages (usually 5-7 stages depending on the organization) to measure individual and company sales pipeline health.

Inquiry management is the fountain of youth for your sales pipeline:
Ironically, inquiry management and "Inquiry Pipeline" management has not received near the focus over the years even though inquiry management is the life source & fountain of youth for most sales pipelines. Until my recent read of James Obermeyer's post on the SLMA Blog I have not seen a crisp, clear, overview of how to measure Inquiry pipeline health. James' article "Is Your Sales Force Starving For Leads? Follow A Six Step Process To Create Enough Inquiries To Make Quota!" is a crisp, to the point, read that I have linked to by clicking on the title of this post.

Like all good-to-great processes, Inquiry pipeline management requires that we identify the correct metrics, measure them relentlessly, and gain the insight to take action for course correction and continuous improvement.

I hope you enjoy the "to the point clarity" of James Obermeyer's article as much as I did.