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Rather than leave the success of a sales pipeline to chance, designing and creating a sales system forces the organization to address seven opportunities.

Firestarters are concerned with the number of ways a competitor starts a dialogue with a customer. In general, the more ways a company has to begin a dialogue with a customer, the more chance it has of creating a customer.

Credibility gives customers an assurance the company is trustworthy and likely to operate for the foreseeable future. Credibility is more valuable when it is ‘independent’. So website pages and paid advertising are not very useful, because customers expect these sources to be biased.

Packaging, even for internet-only businesses is still important. A customer’s first experience with a product is the packaging. The packaging is a cue to the quality of the product.

Inconsistent product knowledge adds friction. Customers form an opinion the product is ill-conceived or worse, they are the organization’s first customer.

In general, companies can reduce friction by augmenting the product served to a specific profile. The greater the product augmentation, the less friction and the greater the chance of creating a customer.

Keep an eye out for how long it takes the organization to make its first reply and the total time it takes to help the customer reach the endgame. If the total time exceeds customer expiry, you have a problem.

In 70 percent of friction tests we conduct, at least one of the competitors tested will fail to serve a customer profile claimed. The organization claims they serve a customer profile on their website, but later refuse to serve the customer, or treat the customer profile as a low priority.

By attracting the right customer profile, an organization reduces friction.