Whitepaper calls for sales enablement to start with pipeline health
Many sales programmes fail not for lack of training, but because they rest on weak pipeline data, poor qualification and unbalanced coverage.
Sales enablement programmes risk being undermined unless they are built on strong pipeline foundations, according to a new whitepaper from performance consultancy Mentor Group.
The paper, Clean. Healthy. Sufficient., argues that while companies are investing heavily in onboarding, coaching and simulation tools, many see little measurable impact because the underlying sales pipeline lacks accuracy and structure.
James Barton, Chief Solutions Officer at Mentor Group, said:
‘We’ve seen teams complete high-quality training, only to return to pipelines that are bloated, misaligned, or missing key information. Effective enablement must be pipeline first, grounded in real opportunities, benchmarked stages, and clean, accurate data.’
The research identifies three conditions for pipeline excellence:
Clean: Accurate and up-to-date opportunity data, including deal values, stages and close dates. Organisations that prioritise data hygiene report up to 28% higher revenue growth.
Healthy: Rigorous and consistent opportunity qualification, with properly qualified deals three times more likely to close.
Sufficient: Balanced coverage across pipeline stages, typically three times the revenue target, to avoid over-reliance on a few large deals or bottlenecks.
Mentor Group warns that without these foundations, sales training can become a ‘false economy’, disconnected from the realities of the sales process. The paper highlights the risk of what it terms the ‘Mirage Pipeline’, where optimism and volume mask a lack of genuine opportunities.
The timing is significant, with many organisations under pressure to deliver growth amid longer sales cycles and tighter budgets. ‘Aligning sales enablement with pipeline health is no longer a strategic preference, it’s a business imperative,’ the paper concludes.
The full whitepaper, Clean. Healthy. Sufficient., is available to download from Mentor Group.