The Art And Science of Pipeline Creation.

The core discipline of every business is creating pipeline. Generating leads. Contacting those leads. Giving them a presentation. Nurturing them. Turning them into a customer or client. That’s it. When you do this one on one, we call it sales. When we do it en masse we call it marketing and advertising. If there is one discipline you need to focus on as a business owner, it’s the idea of pipeline.

If you think of yourself as the engine and fuel of your business, true productivity = multiplying your energy, effort, and results as many times as you can.

McDonalds was great at this. They were able to create a legion of franchises, employees, and managers who were totally unified around the same processes. That’s why their business is so successful wherever it goes. When you codify something and multiply it, you will multiply your results.

There are dozens of ways you can scale your own input and energy. You can buy ads. You can use software. You can hire salespeople. You can use marketing automation. You can do direct mail campaigns. Whatever it is, it’s never been easier to systematize and multiply your influence.

The real power of doing this however, is becoming a master at each stage. One of my mentors framed it as: Lead, Contact, Appointment, Follow Up, Close, Delivery.

You want to treat each of these pieces as its own thing. For example, build a list of leads instead of alternating between finding a lead and then contacting them. The switching costs between those tasks will totally grind you down.

The other key is that you want to constantly be getting better at each thing. Reading books, working with coaches, and—most importantly—taking intelligent action, will help you gain a deeper understanding of the various approaches and methods to each area, and what works best.

Most people are just winging it. They have a few amorphous patterns that “sort of” work. Rather than learning or improving, people complacent and just keep doing what they know how to do. This is infinitely preferable to doing nothing, one is always infinitely better than zero, but it’s almost the opposite of ideal.

In other words: there is always a much better way, and it’s always your job to be always looking for it.

Better can take many forms. I advise my clients to seek efficiency and effectiveness. Find ways that save time, without compromising effectiveness. In fact, most of the time you will discover that you can reduce time and improve effectiveness. That’s why this entire process is so valuable.

Each of these pillars is a domain of expertise, with almost unlimited sub-domains and sub-modalities that you can discover, explore, and master. But never forget the top categories: from Lead through Delivery.

As the title of this essays suggests: treat Pipeline Creation as both an art and a science. Inject your process with magic, beauty, discovery, and excellence, but codify it and build it like a machine. Disney. Apple. These are businesses that thrive on systems but produce magic for the end user. You can do the same.

The chokepoint of most businesses is Lead Generation. Despite the abundance of ways for a business to generate leads, it’s also the area where many businesses have the most friction. Paradoxically, the foundational way to solve it is to get a minimum level of clarity on the other buckets. When you know what you’re selling and why, you are equipped to go out and get leads. This is a very subtle point, and it’s not meant to invite further procrastination, but if you approach a market without a clear offer or something people really need, your approach will fall on deaf ears. The key to finding out what you’ve got is to make contact with the market as quickly and effectively as possible, and iterate as quickly and effectively as possible.

Sam Walton, the founder of Walmart, was exceptional at this. He understood that Walmart was basically a delivery mechanism for products. He mastered the art of merchandising. He was obsessed with finding products people would love, and presenting them in ways people would love. He used to test and measure everything. The success of Walmart is not accidental. He mastered pipeline. He saw his stores as a way of multiplying his mastery of pipeline creation.

See your business through the lens of Pipeline Creation. Then get clear on mastering each element of the pipeline (in terms of effectiveness and efficiency) then scale each elements with people, systems, and tools.

—JM