Table of Contents
TL;DR
Introduction
What is Pipeline Hygiene?
Why is Pipeline Hygiene Important?
Pipeline Hygiene Recommended Frequency
How to Use Atrium for Pipeline Hygiene Reviews
Sales Coach for Pipeline Hygiene
Conclusion
TL;DR
Pipeline hygiene is a focused, proactive process of maintaining the health of your opportunities by identifying deals that could be more effectively worked. It's about ensuring reps actively spend time on deals, following up, and engaging new leads. In other words, it's like saying, "Hey, sales leader! The sales team is literally setting these opportunities on fire by neglecting them!"
Using your saved Pipeline Hygiene view in Atrium's Opportunity tab, you can quickly identify at-risk opportunities set to close this quarter or next, and leverage Atrium's Sales Coach guidance on taking action, keeping your pipeline accurate and actionable. Pipeline hygiene is distinct from deal strategy, which focuses on specific tactics to work a particular deal or account.
Introduction
Before we discuss pipeline hygiene in detail, it might be worth reading this support article to refresh your understanding of Atrium's "Opportunity Health" tab.
What is Pipeline Hygiene?
Pipeline hygiene is the proactive process of maintaining the health and accuracy of your sales pipeline by identifying deals that are not being effectively worked. It ensures reps actively spend time on deals, follow up, and engage new leads.
Pipeline Hygiene involves:
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Identification: Recognizing opportunities that are at risk due to lack of rep engagement.
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Investigation: Digging into the reasons behind the lack of engagement to understand why these opportunities are at risk.
- Correction: Taking appropriate actions to re-engage with these opportunities and get them back on track
Why is Pipeline Hygiene Important?
Practicing good pipeline hygiene helps you:
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Maintain Accurate Forecast Rollup: By ensuring your pipeline data is up-to-date and reflects the true state of each opportunity, you can more reliably trust future forecast rollups.
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Identify Risk Early: Regular pipeline hygiene allows you to spot at-risk deals early, intervene, and get them back on track before it's too late.
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Keep Deals Moving: By surfacing stalled or untouched opportunities, pipeline hygiene ensures that no deal slips through the cracks and every opportunity is actively worked.
- Improve Rep Prioritization: Pipeline hygiene helps reps focus their time on the right opportunities and actions, as Atrium has identified, where their deal engagement is falling through the cracks.
Recommended Frequency
The frequency of your pipeline hygiene meetings will depend on the velocity of your sales cycle. We generally recommend conducting these meetings bi-weekly, rotating between pipeline hygiene and performance management check-ins each week.
To help pipeline hygiene reviews become an established part of your sales management motion, in Atrium, your AM will help you automate pipeline hygiene distributions to your team, set pipeline hygiene-specific goals, and have Sales Coach communicate directly with your reps about maintaining pipeline hygiene.
How to Use Atrium for Pipeline Hygiene Reviews
Atrium's Opportunity Health view is your central hub for pipeline hygiene reviews.
Here's how to use it:
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Access the Opportunity Tab: Navigate to the Opportunity tab in Atrium to see a snapshot of the pipeline for which you're responsible.
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Review At-Risk and Poor Health Opportunities: Focus on the opportunities flagged as "At Risk" or "Poor Health" that are set to close this quarter or next. These are the deals that you need to pay attention to most.
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Save Your New View: To maintain consistency, create a new view in Opportunity Health called "Pipeline Hygiene - This Quarter & Next." By creating a specific view, you're building consistency in this new process you're implementing.
Once you've mastered this, you can create an additional pipeline hygiene view for opportunities scheduled to close further out called "Pipeline Hygiene Q+2" that are less critical but still important to review.
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Understand Health Indicators: For each flagged opportunity, Atrium shows you key health indicators such as days since last activity, days in current stage, and deal age. The colored text (i.e. red, orange, etc.) will help you quickly identify where Atrium has located a problem with the respective deal.
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Take Action: Based on the health indicators, take the appropriate action. This could be re-engaging the opportunity, updating the deal stage, or marking the opportunity as closed-lost if it doesn't seem viable. Atrium's Sales Coach will also offer specific guidance (more on this below).
There are multiple ways to access Sales Coach from your Pipeline Hygiene view, just look for the sparkles! ✨
Sales Coach
Atrium's Sales Coach is your AI-powered guide to pipeline hygiene. You can launch Sales Coach on an opportunity right from your Pipeline Hygiene view.
Here's how it helps:
- Get Actionable Suggestions: For each at-risk opportunity, Sales Coach offers specific suggestions on restoring that opportunity to good health. This could include recommending a stakeholder's re-engagement, a next step to schedule, or a question to ask.
- Understand Deal Context: Sales Coach provides context-sensitive guidance, taking into account the deal's age, stage, and activity history. Its suggestions are tailored to each unique situation.
- Learn Best Practices: Sales Coach shares pipeline hygiene best practices, helping your team build strong habits over time. It's like having an expert whispering in your ear.
Conclusion
You can maintain a consistently accurate, healthy pipeline by regularly leveraging Atrium's Opportunity Health view and Opportunity Sales Coach. This proactive practice of Pipeline Hygiene prevents surprises, improves forecast rollup, and ultimately drives more closed-won deals.
Ready to get started with Pipeline Hygiene? Go to your Opportunity Health Tab in Atrium, learn more about Opportunity Health via this support article, or contact support@atriumhq.com with any questions.