Sales pipeline reviews are a critical part of ensuring that your team is on track to hit revenue targets. Whether you're managing a team of 5 or 50 salespeople, effective pipeline reviews give you the chance to course-correct, allocate resources, and guide deals to close.
But let’s face it: time is a precious commodity. Sales leaders are juggling growth demands, remote teams and fast-moving deals. That's why running efficient, high-impact pipeline reviews is key to maintaining momentum.
From my decades of experience leading sales teams, I've developed a few strategies for maximizing the effectiveness of your sales pipeline reviews. And here, I’m going to share how you can elevate your pipeline reviews to make more of your time.
Contents
Why pipeline reviews are vital
1. Setting clear goals for your pipeline review
2. Use data to drive conversations
3. Focus on the right deals
4. Address risks before they derail deals
5. Leverage AI insights to accelerate pipeline reviews
6. Create an action plan for each critical deal
7. Coaching sales performance
Why pipeline reviews are vital
Before diving into the how, let’s briefly touch on the why. Sales pipeline reviews aren’t just about looking at numbers. They’re about identifying opportunities, uncovering risks, ensuring deals are progressing and supporting and coaching your sales team to improve their performance. Without regular reviews, you’ll be blindsided by stalled deals, missed revenue, and a stagnating team. A strong pipeline review process ensures your team stays focused on the right deals and makes informed decisions to drive them forward.
But the challenge is that most revenue leaders lack the time to dig deep into every deal. That's where having the right tools and a structured approach come into play.
1. Setting clear goals for your pipeline review
The first step to a high-impact pipeline review is to set clear goals. What are you trying to achieve in each session? For example, you may want to:
- Identify the deals most likely to close this week, month or quarter.
- Surface deals at risk and create action plans to salvage them.
- Highlight where your team needs additional support, resources or sales coaching.
With clear goals, you avoid getting bogged down in unnecessary details and keep the review time focused.
2. Use data to drive conversations
One of the biggest mistakes I see in pipeline reviews is spending too much time on subjective opinions instead of hard data. That’s why it’s essential to bring objective data into the conversation. Your Deal Insights or pipeline dashboard should give you a bird's-eye view of your entire pipeline. In a single glance, you should see:
- Deal progress and stage
- Deal value
- Frequency and type of interactions with the customer
This combination of conversation intelligence (how often and in what way you’ve engaged) with revenue intelligence (the projected deal value and stage) means you have all the insights you need in one place. No more wasting time cross-referencing different systems or asking reps for updates. With everything centralized, you can dive into structured, data-driven reviews.
And for those of you using Salesforce, having your conversation intelligence insights dashboard integrated into your Salesforce environment allows you to run your pipeline reviews from within the CRM.
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3. Focus on the right deals
Every sales pipeline has deals that require different levels of attention. During your review, it’s crucial to prioritize the ones that will make the biggest impact. From your pipeline dashboard, filter based on:
- Team or rep
- Deal type
- Deal stage
This helps ensure you’re concentrating your efforts on the most critical deals - whether those are late-stage deals that need a final push or earlier-stage opportunities that are key for future pipeline health. By filtering, you can also tailor your review to each rep, focusing on the deals that matter most to them.
4. Address risks before they derail deals
No deal is without its risks, and the faster you can identify and address them, the better. Using conversation intelligence as part of your pipeline reviews means you have instant visibility into potential hazards through proactive deal risk alerts. For instance, if a competitor has been mentioned during a call or if there’s been a significant gap in communication with the prospect, you’ll be notified and the alert will be visible in the dashboard. These alerts can be customized, so they’re highly relevant to your team’s needs.
The key advantage here is speed. Instead of waiting until it’s too late, you can act on risks as soon as they appear. You might notice that one of your top deals hasn’t had an interaction in over two weeks. Now, instead of discovering this at the end of the month, you know immediately and can intervene.
5. Leverage AI insights to accelerate pipeline reviews
The amount of data generated from sales calls and meetings is immense. Sifting through hours of conversations to figure out what’s happening in each deal can slow down your pipeline reviews. That’s why we built Ask Jiminny, our AI-driven assistant that provides insights from every touchpoint in your open deals.
With Ask Jiminny, you no longer need to rewatch calls or parse through notes. The AI generates:
- A concise Deal Summary to get you up to speed on multi-call deals in seconds.
- A Deal Stage Assessment to tell you exactly where the deal stands.
- A rundown of Prospect Concerns and Blockers so you know what’s holding up progress.
- An analysis of Risks to the deal, including competitor mentions or stalled communications.
- Recommended Next Steps, so you’re not just identifying problems - you’re solving them.
This level of insight saves revenue leaders hours, enabling you to make informed decisions on the fly, allocate resources effectively, and keep your pipeline moving.
6. Create an action plan for each critical deal
Once you’ve reviewed the data, identified risks, and pinpointed the deals that need attention, it’s time to create an action plan. A pipeline review is only valuable if it leads to concrete next steps. Every deal discussed should have:
- A clear owner (the rep or team responsible).
- Specific actions to be taken (such as following up with the prospect, addressing risks, or advancing the deal to the next stage).
- A timeline for the next touchpoint or action.
By documenting these steps, you ensure accountability and that nothing slips through the cracks. Impact requires action, so hold yourself and your team accountable here.
7. Coaching sales performance
Pipeline reviews shouldn’t just be about checking boxes - they’re an opportunity to coach your team. Use these sessions to give feedback, recognize wins, and provide guidance on stalled deals. This is where combining data and insight becomes even more powerful.
With conversation and revenue data in front of you, you can offer tailored coaching based on actual conversations and deal progression, not just gut feelings or the rep’s memory of what’s gone on. This leads to more effective coaching and a higher likelihood of moving deals forward.
Putting your plan into action
Pipeline reviews are a must for sales teams aiming to hit their targets, but they don’t have to be time-consuming or inefficient. With the right goals, insights and tools you can make your reviews high-impact and laser-focused on closing deals. By integrating conversation intelligence with your sales process, you not only improve pipeline visibility but also speed up decision-making, address risks early, and give your team the best chance to win.
If you're ready to take your sales pipeline reviews to the next level, book a demo today.
Tom Lavery is the CEO and Co-Founder of Jiminny, the leading conversation intelligence and sales coaching platform that helps companies maximize their revenue. With over 15 years of experience in high-growth VC/PE-backed SaaS companies, Tom was previously SVP at Reward Gateway, now sharing his wealth of knowledge as a speaker in the conversation intelligence space.
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