Observations
A Pilot with the Sales Team: How to Rebuild One Part of Your Funnel in 90 Days
You know your sales process is far from perfect. Deals get stuck, new hires take a long time to reach target performance, and your best salespeople rely on “heroics” rather than a system. However, the thought of restructuring the entire department, which would paralyze operations for several months, is frightening.
This is an “all or nothing” thinking trap. You don’t need “general anesthesia” and a complex operation on the entire body. What you need is a precise, “surgical intervention” at the most problematic point.
That intervention is a ninety-day pilot project. The logic is simple: we don’t fix what isn’t broken. We identify one bottleneck in your sales funnel, assemble a focused team of one or two salespeople and marketing support, and transform it into a benchmark—an efficient, scalable process.
In this article, we will provide a complete breakdown of the pilot project. You will see how you can solve one problem and create a ready-made playbook in one quarter that will become the foundation for the systematic improvement of your entire sales department. Without revolutionizing things or risking current performance.
Identifying the Main Bottleneck
Any successful project begins with a clearly defined problem. Attempting to “improve sales overall” is a dead end. Therefore, the first phase of the pilot, which lasts one to two weeks, is entirely dedicated to diagnostics. Our goal is to identify the one area of your sales funnel where improvements will have the greatest impact on the overall result.
To accomplish this, we will conduct a joint workshop with you and two or three of your top salespeople. The workshop consists of two parts.
The first part is an analysis of CRM data. Together, we will examine your funnel and look for anomalies. Where is the largest percentage of deal drop-off? At which stage do deals “hang” the longest? Which loss reason is indicated most often? The numbers usually point very clearly to one or two problem areas.
The second part is collecting qualitative feedback. We ask salespeople direct questions such as: “At which stage do you feel the least confident?” “What tool or argument do you most often lack in conversations with clients?”
We then formulate the main goal of the pilot project at the intersection of this data and these insights. It must be as specific and measurable as possible.
- A poor goal would be “Improve objection handling.”
- A good goal is, “At the ‘Proposal Presentation’ stage, increase conversion to the next stage from twenty percent to forty percent by implementing a new script and an ROI calculator.“
This work transforms an amorphous feeling that “something is wrong” into a clear, quantified problem. Now, we have a well-defined target. In the next phase, we will begin creating the “weapons” to achieve it.
Equipping Your Salesperson
Once the target is defined, we begin developing the “tools.” The second phase, which takes two to three weeks, involves creating and packaging all the necessary tools and processes that the pilot group of salespeople will need to solve the defined problem.
This is the clearest example of sales and marketing synergy. The salespeople act as the “clients” and carriers of expertise. “We need a case study specifically for the financial industry that proves ROI.” Marketing acts as “production”: it takes these requirements and turns them into high-quality, professionally designed assets.
This “arsenal” may include new email templates, an ROI calculator, and a presentation adapted to the specific problem. All of these assets are compiled into a draft “mini-playbook,” which is a short set of instructions for the pilot group. By the end of this phase, one or two salespeople will be fully armed with new tools and a clear plan of action.
Launch and Data Collection
The third phase, which lasts four to six weeks, is the moment of truth. We send our “pilot group” into the field to test the new methodology under real conditions. Importantly, the rest of the team continues working as usual. This group serves as our “control group” for comparing results.
Management at this stage revolves around short weekly syncs. We examine leading indicators such as email open rates, response rates, and the number of scheduled meetings. We also collect qualitative feedback from salespeople. “This argument works extremely well, but this one raises questions from clients.” This allows us to quickly adjust our approach.
From Precedent to System
In the final phase, which lasts one to two weeks, we summarize the results. We compare the numbers from the pilot group with the performance of the control group and with the pilot group’s results before the pilot began. Did conversion increase? Did the time required to pass the stage decrease?
Based on this data, we finalize the main asset: a proven, quantified playbook. It is no longer a draft but rather an effective instruction manual. Along with it, you will receive a clear scaling plan detailing how to train and transition the rest of the sales department to this new, more effective process. You will receive more than just an “improvement”; you will receive a systemic precedent ready for replication.
An Engineering Approach to Sales
A pilot project with the sales team is the fastest and safest way to implement real improvements. It allows you to test a hypothesis on a small scale, prove its effectiveness with real numbers, and gain team buy-in before a full-scale rollout.
As a leader, your role is not to be the “chief firefighter,” but rather an “engineer” who constantly identifies and improves bottlenecks in the system. The pilot project is your primary tool for this kind of engineering. Are you ready to select a bottleneck and transform it into a model of effectiveness for the entire team? That is the first step.
