Sales Pipeline Building: 6 Deal Stages to Track
Are you looking for top-notch sales strategies and marketing tools to incorporate into your brand's infrastructure? Then the chances are that you must have heard about many fancy terms such as "sales pipelines." Want to know more about a sales pipeline? You're in the right place! In this article, we will provide a comprehensive summary of a sales pipeline.
So without further ado, let’s begin.
What Is A Sales Pipeline?
To put it briefly, a sales pipeline is a visualizing tool that represents the position of your prospects in the purchasing process. Pipelines are also a great way to find out where your deals are and what deals are earning the most revenue for your brand. It breaks down the sales process and allows you to strengthen your sales strategies.
Along with that, a sales pipeline also allows you to measure the performance of your sales rep. It tells you how close your sales team is to reach a sales quota. A sales pipeline is a tool for tracking all the tasks that are involved in sales and transactions. It is the most important tool of sales operations.
When all the different tasks are neatly divided like this, it becomes easier for your brand to reach any desired goal. This strategy has numerous benefits for your brands, as we will see in the following section.
Benefits of a Sales Pipeline
Sales pipelines have tons of benefits for your brand.
Forecasting
Sales forecasting refers to the process of predicting your future revenue by estimating the number of products and services your sales rep can sell in the coming future. As it turns out, sales pipelines are a great way to track your sales rep’s performance and develop a forecast report on him.
This allows brands to focus on improving the performance of their every sales unit and maximize their long-term profits.
Conversion Rate
Another obvious benefit of a sales pipeline is the conversion rate. Sales pipeline acts as a very intuitive, visual way of tracking your prospects as they progress through different stages of the purchase process. This allows you to effectively optimize those stages to ensure maximum conversion rates in the long term.
These conversion rates help you boost your brand’s success rates as well as profits, which brings us to the next benefit.
Revenue
The goal of every business is to maximize profits, both in the long and short term. When you are utilizing a sales helpline, every stage during the customer’s purchase journey is visible and also shows which products are quickly selling. This allows brands to only focus on successful products and stages and thus increases sales revenue.
Sales pipelines are a comprehensive method that helps fully optimize your brand's growth and development strategies.
Progress Monitoring
The sales pipeline is a great way to track the progress of your entire sales team. Since all the vital information is already available to your brand regarding deal stages, you can easily optimize your sales team's activities to maximize profits. You can help your team members eliminating harmful practices and adopt optimal ones.
Careful use of sales pipelines will aid you in creating a strong sales team.
Allocation of resources
This is a crucial point. During the deal stages, you will notice that there are some resource imbalances in your brand strategy. With the help of a sales pipeline, you can easily identify these imbalances and allocate the resources where they are needed in the sales process.
A careful allocation of resources will allow you to strengthen the stages and thus maximize your brand’s profits.
6 Deal Stages to Track In Sales Pipeline Building
Now it’s time to build your own sales pipeline. When it comes to building a sales pipeline, you need to follow certain rules for all the deal stages. This will allow you to achieve the desired results.
Prospecting
This is the first stage. Your salesperson has information about a prospect who's looking for a brand to solve his problems. The prospect likely has a high budget as well. But a formal relationship is still being built as the prospect has not yet fixed a time and place for meeting and further discussing the deal.
Meeting Set
By this point, your brand has secured a meeting for the product or service. Depending on convenience and schedule, the first meeting can be in person, on zoom, or on the phone. Your salesperson should be equipped with all the relevant information so he can assure the prospect regarding your brand.
If the meeting goes well, the prospect's interest in your brand will increase.
Meeting Completed
After guiding the prospect through your brand's values and product qualities, the meeting will be finished. Keep in mind that the prospect can ask for extra information on your brand's products and services. In that case, ensure that the prospect is reassured. If the meeting has been largely positive, the prospect will give you a verbal yes.
After receiving a verbal yes, you can send your contract to the prospect.
Contract Sent
You have a verbal confirmation, but nothing will be certain until you get written confirmation in the form of a contract. Send a formal contract with brief details regarding price and terms. The contract will help the prospect in making the final decision regarding the deal. That's why it should be top-notch.
Contract Signed - Closed Won
It's a victory! If the client sends you back a signed contract, then it means that you have secured a new client for yourself. This is called a closed-won. Now all you have to do is to return the favor with positive experiences for your new client.
Close Lost
Wins and losses are part of life. No matter how confident you are regarding the deal or your brand's performance, there's a chance that the prospect will reject the contract. In that case, it is a closed loss. There can be many reasons for the rejection that may include budget problems and last-minute reconsiderations.
It’s also possible that the prospect found a more suitable solution for himself. Use this opportunity to learn more about dealing and polish your dealing skills.
Sales Pipeline Conclusion:
Sales pipelines are phenomenal when it comes to tracking progress, allocating resources, forecasting, and increasing revenue. As long as you’re considering each stage carefully, nothing can go wrong. Trial-and-error is also very important when it comes to building a good strategy for your brand.