Pipeline coverage

Open pipeline closing in the period over the remaining target. The multiple a team needs is one over its own historical conversion at this week, per stage, not a rule of thumb of three.

DefinitionOpen pipeline closing in the period over the remaining target. The multiple a team needs is one over its own historical conversion at this week, per stage, not a rule of thumb of three.

By stage

Discovery-stage pipeline converts at a tenth of negotiation-stage. Face-value coverage flatters the rep whose pipeline is all early.

As a dollar gap

Expected close per rep, from stage pipeline times stage conversion, against remaining target. The gap says who needs pipeline and at which stage.

How it is computed

Open pipeline with a close date inside the period, with aged deals removed, divided by the remaining target, and read against one divided by the team's measured win rate.

Example

In-period pipeline of $1.75 million against a target of $0.5 million is 3.5 times. With a win rate of 25 percent the team needs 4.0 times.

Where it goes wrong

The 3x rule applied to a team that wins 15 percent of the time.

Articles that use this term

Data quality and reconciliation

A CRM data quality scorecard: five fields, five checks, one number per rep

How to score CRM data quality from the export rather than from complaints: five fields that every coverage and pipeline measure depends on, owner, close date, stage, activity date and account identifier, the check for each, the completeness and validity rate per rep, why the score is reported beside the measures that depend on it, and the rule that a measure computed on data under a stated score is shown greyed.

16 Sept 20263 min read AI and self-service analytics

A weekly sales digest worth reading: what a good one looks like, line by line

An annotated example of a weekly sales digest built from computed tables: the header that states the period and the checks, ten movements each with the measure, the level, the change, the threshold and the citation, the three lists that follow, untouched, slipped and dormant, the line that says what did not move, and the footer with the definition version. What each element is for, and the version of the same digest that nobody reads.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting · Finance and FP&A teams

Automating the sales report: from a manual monthly pack to computed tables

A practical path for a sales operations or finance team that assembles the monthly sales report by hand: what to automate first, the definitions that have to be written down before anything can be computed, the four exports the whole pack comes from, the identity checks that replace the reconciliation week, what stays manual, and the order in which the pack's sections move from spreadsheet to computed table.

16 Sept 20263 min read How-to guides

How often should sales data be refreshed? A cadence per measure, not one for the tool

Why 'real-time' is the wrong answer to how often sales data should be refreshed, the cadence each measure actually needs, weekly for coverage and pipeline, monthly for share of wallet and concentration, quarterly for norms and segments, annually for definitions, what a refresh more frequent than the measure's cadence does to the reader, and the export schedule that follows.

16 Sept 20262 min read AI and self-service analytics

How to ask an analytics assistant a question it can answer reliably

What separates a question an AI analytics assistant answers correctly from one it answers plausibly: naming the measure, the level, the period and the comparison, asking for the table before the sentence, and checking the citation. Six rewrites of common questions, and the four kinds of question an assistant should refuse.

16 Sept 20263 min read Board and management reporting

How to read a movements page: the line to check first, and the line that is not a finding

A reading guide for the movements page of a monthly pack: why the first line to check is any failed identity, not the largest movement, how to tell a movement caused by a definition change or a re-upload from one caused by the business, the citation as the thing to click, the threshold column as the reason a line is there, the within-threshold line as the one that closes the question, and how long the page should take.

16 Sept 20263 min read