Marketers must avoid or remove sales pipeline challenges to optimize sales performance and revenue generation. These involve lead generation issues, conversion difficulties, sales cycle delays, and customer retention hurdles.
One way to do this is by implementing systematic approaches such as data-driven lead generation and scoring. Other solutions include establishing regular training, communicating clearly with sales teams, and aligning with customer needs. Barriers to maintaining a clean pipeline include lacking historical data, failing to have a working plan, relying on poor forecasting, and not having a flexible pipeline that simultaneously accommodates different analyses and queries.
Putting the correct CRM systems in place enables organizations to overcome sales forecasting and pipeline challenges that will bring more acute estimates of future revenue and more productive lead tracking. CRM platforms powered by artificial intelligence will empower sales professionals to evaluate customer data for a 360-degree view of the sales pipeline and customer relationship, according to Nikolaus Kimla, CEO and co-founder at Pipeliner CRM.
“Technology is evolving to provide better tools and solutions. Most legacy CRM platforms have clunky, less intuitive interfaces that make data management, evaluation, and forecasting tedious and time-consuming,” he told CRM Buyer.
Overcoming Sales Pipeline Hurdles With AI
Sean Evers, vice president of sales at Pipedrive, lamented that salespeople constantly deal with the fears and challenges of managing the sales pipeline. Pipeline challenges arise as technology and user expectations rapidly evolve.
A significant concern Evers sees for salespeople is promising leads disappearing after they invest valuable time and resources into building a strong foundation. This sudden shift is often due to budget changes, shifting priorities, internal company decisions, or personal reasons. The stakes for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) are especially high due to limited resources.
Objections pose a crucial issue for sales teams. They do not always mean a prospect is uninterested. More often, they signal that the prospect needs more information or reassurance.
“In a scenario like this, preparation is key. To help prevent these challenges from inhibiting the pipeline, sales teams need AI-powered CRM tools to track engagement and alert them when activity begins to drop off,” he told CRM Buyer.
Great CRM tools analyze the current pipeline and predict, based on past performances, how close salespeople are to reaching their targets. He encouraged sales professionals to focus on smaller goals to meet targets without feeling overwhelmed.
“There are many obstacles when it comes to sales forecasting and pipeline management, but with the right strategies and tools, sales teams can stay proactive and use data-driven insights to their advantage,” offered Evers.
AI Tools Should Empower, Not Replace, Sales Teams
Pipeliner CRM uses AI innovations to sharpen platform performance to benefit sales professionals. The company released Gen II of its Voyager AI Assistant on June 25, 2024. This updated version includes features like Voyager Recommend and Voyager Score.
Voyager Recommend analyzes customer data to identify up-sell and cross-sell opportunities better. Voyager Score analyzes customer data to help prioritize prospects most likely to result in sales.
“The intention behind Voyager AI is to give sales professionals access to the latest and greatest AI technology in a way that helps them do what they do best – sales,” Kimla offered.
The upgraded AI technology identifies successful strategies, areas that need improvement, and cross-sell and upsell opportunities. It removes the lengthy time sales professionals spend conducting their own data analysis from the picture, allowing them to focus on strategy and execution instead, he explained.
AI-Driven CRM Tools for Sales Operations
One of the most prominent pain points for sales teams is managing time-consuming tasks like data entry and follow-ups to keep sales cycles running smoothly, agreed Evers. The best thing sales teams can do is to find tools that automate these tasks, track emails, and provide actionable insights, allowing sales professionals to prioritize lead prospects and boost overall productivity.
“For example, Pipedrive’s pipeline management feature tracks the progress of each deal and determines where efforts are needed through a visual dashboard of the sales process,” he noted. “By centralizing all sales activities, teams can collectively access the same information, including notes and tracking interactions to improve team collaboration and efficiency.”
According to Evers, AI innovations in sales represent the next level of automation. They enhance the functionality of CRM platforms by transforming customer relationships, data analysis, and workflow management.
Pipedrive’s 2024 State of AI in Business Report indicated that nearly half of sales professionals struggle to identify leads with buying intent, making prospecting and lead management some of the key areas where AI provides the greatest value, he noted. Overall, the main driver of AI adoption was enhanced productivity (79%), followed by gathering insights (42%) and improving customer interactions and satisfaction (41%).
“These insights further emphasize that sales professionals are looking to AI to address critical challenges in their workflows. For teams not yet incorporating AI into their pipelines, the time to start is now. Most important is selecting the right tools tailored to their specific business needs,” Evers recommended.
Two of Pipedrive’s latest upgrades are a suite of AI tools and the expansion of its Pulse feature. The combination prioritizes leads, streamlines workflows, and closes deals faster.
“Sales will always need human insight to foster genuine connections and maintain customer relationships. But AI is a valuable automation tool that eventually leaves salespeople more time to interact with customers and potential leads,” he observed.
AI Opens New Opportunities for Sales Teams
One of the biggest obstacles is the ideal customer profile (ICP) not being properly defined. Other challenges include misaligned leads making it into the funnel, poor and/or inconsistent lead qualification, inconsistent adherence to the sales process, and incorrect or missing prospect/customer data, according to Kimla.
“AI, however, is changing the game,” he said.
Advances in AI technology drive the development of new CRM applications. Thus, Kimla predicted that sales forecasting and pipeline management will continue to become easy and efficient to execute.
“While sales teams need to keep a human in the loop to avoid AI hallucinations, they will be able to spend more time and energy on strategic sales initiatives and relationship building instead of data management and analysis,” he said.
This shift means that sales managers will have a greater opportunity and responsibility to coach and mentor their salespeople and help with better ICP definition, lead qualification, and sales process consistency, he added.
The Future of CRM Balances AI, Human Insight
Evers predicted that the intersection of evolving technology and human insight lies ahead. AI, in particular, will continue to transform the accuracy and efficiency of sales forecasting. Knowing that personalization is crucial in sales, the continued refinement of tools that adapt to specific business needs will be a paramount goal.
“An important differentiating factor is tools that help you get organized versus those that equip users with knowledge and recommendations on what to do next. At Pipedrive, we are taking the latter approach, providing tailored solutions that cater to different industries and businesses of any size,” Evers added.
The golden rule for sales teams is that a pipeline without a forecast lacks accountability and credibility. He emphasized that everything has to be tracked through a CRM platform.
“If something is not recorded in your CRM, it did not happen. Getting salespeople to ensure the most important information is updated is a challenge. That is why things like mandatory and required fields in Pipedrive means you can manage this process and require that the sellers fill in the information,” he concluded.
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