Pipeline Theatre

If you've ever sat through one of my workshops, you'll know I'm partial to the odd, well odd, phrase.

And if you haven't yet sat in a meeting or workshop with me, well, I guess you have something to look forward to.

There's a trend I can't ignore that I've labelled "optimising the visible." It sounds suspiciously naff, but bear with me.

I have a feeling that a surprising amount of new business activity exists to create the appearance of commercial momentum. Rather than, you know, actual commercial momentum itself.

I can already hear some of you sharpening your pitchforks. Put them down. Hang on a sec.

I don't think anybody is pretending or being dishonest here. I'm not saying growth consultants, SDRs or agency founders have all collectively decided to fool themselves.

Quite the opposite. I think we've all stumbled into the same trap. Looking busy is much easier to measure than becoming buyable, so we reach for the things that are easy to count.

Weekly cold calls made.
Emails sent.
Campaigns launched.
Meetings booked.
Pipeline stages progressed.

Someone, somewhere, is probably presenting a dashboard full of reassuring shades of green as you read this. It will contain graphs, percentages, trend lines (and at least one acronym to denote a lead stage that didn't exist three months ago).

We've all thought it and done it. I certainly have. When the real thing is difficult to measure, it's incredibly tempting to optimise the bits you can point at. "I'm trying. This is difficult. I need to show progress."

So we optimise the visible.

The problem isn't that these things are worthless. They aren't. Calls matter. Emails matter. Conversations matter. However, they're just proxies.

And proxies have an unfortunate habit of quietly replacing the objective they were supposed to represent.

I've lost count of the number of conversations that eventually arrive at the same question.

"Can we track how many calls we're making?"
"Can we report on emails sent?"
"Can we measure weekly activity? The board needs to know volumes"

Of course we can. In fact, we can build beautiful dashboards for all of it.

The charts will look excellent. The reporting cadence will feel wonderfully disciplined. Everyone will have something tangible to discuss at the Monday morning standup.

It's just that I'm not convinced any of that actually helps. None of it tells us whether the market is becoming any more likely to want to appoint you.

Instead, it's Pipeline Theatre.

Things are happening. Calendars are full. CRMs are immaculate and your Outlook folder clocked some serious reps.

The irony is that I don't think you should stop making calls or sending emails. It's just that movement isn't gravity. The better question isn't "What did we do?" It's "What changed?"

Did a new prospect become aware you existed?
Did somebody see your latest thinking and begin associating your name with a problem they need solving?
Did your positioning become a little sharper?
Did you discover a patch of territory your competitors have ignored?

Over time, this is what actually moves the commercial needle.

They're also spectacularly awkward to measure. Trust me, I've spent years trying. No graph I've ever seen has managed to accurately capture something like:

Two senior decision-makers at a tier one dream client both read the founder's latest post. Neither liked or commented on it but both remembered it.

Terrible dashboard but excellent commercial progress.

The awkward truth is that the work which creates tomorrow's opportunities rarely arrives with a neat KPI attached to it.

The visible work is easier to report but the invisible work is usually what wins you work.

So track the visible if you must. Just don't forget to spend most of your time improving the invisible.