Sales Pipeline Guide
Introduction / Chapter 2 of 7
by Steli Efti, CEO
Last updated July 17, 2020
Have you ever had to deal with a blocked pipe at home?
It’s a frustrating situation, and it means that whatever was supposed to go through that pipe isn’t getting through easily. This can result in a huge mess in your home, and can cost you valuable time and money.
Unfortunately, the same thing can happen to your sales pipeline.
If that ‘pipe’ isn’t clear, it’ll be harder for prospects to travel through it and turn into customers. Without the right processes and stages in place, you and your team could be wasting valuable time and money using a sales pipeline that isn’t adapted to your unique needs.
That’s why we’re going to discuss:
By the end of this chapter, you’ll know exactly what stages to include in your sales pipeline to keep it running smoother than ever.
The stages in a sales pipeline are built around the actions that reps take to turn prospects into customers.
While these stages loosely follow your sales process and buyer journey, they are more focused on rep activity. That way, your whole sales team will have a clear view of how to move prospects towards the sale.
Here’s a quick infographic that dives into the seven essential pipeline stages:
Of course, every business is different and will need to adapt these stages to its own needs and customers.
Let’s take a closer look at each of these stages and what they include.
For the most part, lead generation is a job that’s reserved for the marketing team. Does this mean you can forget about lead generation as part of your sales pipeline?
Heck no!
In fact, sales can do a lot to help generate new leads. That’s why this should be the first stage in your pipeline.
Here’s what your team should be doing at the lead generation stage:
Pro tip: This is a task that both sales and marketing should have a hand in.
Unlike lead generation which involves reaching out to many people at a time, prospecting is a more one-on-one approach to pull in prospects that may want to buy from your business.
At the prospecting stage, these are the actions you should be taking with your leads:
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By now, your pipeline should be full of people who are hungry to buy your product.
Or are they?
Up to 67% of lost sales are a direct result of improper qualifying. If you take an unqualified prospect through the sales process, you’re just wasting your time on a deal that will never close.
That’s why during the qualification stage, you’ll need to make sure that the prospects you’ve discovered are really a good fit for your business.
These are the things you should be doing during the qualification stage:
Pro tip: Find out how to set up your own BANT qualification method using Process Street and Close.
Now that you’ve narrowed down your prospects to the most highly qualified opportunities, you’re left with the people who are interested and may actually buy your product.
It’s time to get in there and really sell it.
This will require contact, whether that’s a phone call, a physical meeting, a product demo, or an email or text message.
Here are some important tips for the contact stage:
If you get this part right, you’ll knock the ball out of the park and close the deal.
Proposals should generally include information such as:
To really nail your proposal, you can use the fantastic templates provided by companies like PandaDoc. For example, check out this sleek SaaS proposal template:
Don’t forget these essential guidelines for the proposal stage:
Both sides have put all their cards on the table. A decision is about to be made: so let’s make it a yes!
Maybe you’ll need to answer some last few questions, respond to discount inquiries, or renegotiate some of the terms.
In the end, if you play your cards right, you’ll have closed a deal. And that’s worth a bit of celebration.
Here are some tips for the negotiation and close stage:
Just because you closed the deal, doesn’t mean your work is over. You need to retain that new customer into the long-term.
Here’s why it’s important: when you increase your retention rates by just 5%, you can boost your profits by as much as 95%.
That’s why customer retention is its own stage in the sales pipeline.
Here’s what you should be doing during the retention stage:
By implementing these seven typical sales pipeline stages, you’ll have a smoother process that helps turn leads into happy, long-term customers.
Of course, there is no one-size-fits-all sales pipeline. We’ve just outlined the general stages that your sales pipeline should include: but to fully implement these stages, you’ll need to adapt them to your own particular sales process.
Let’s examine how to do this step-by-step:
Who brings in the leads at your company: Sales or marketing?
Obviously, both teams have their roles to play. But, how do those roles work in your business?
It’s time to get specific: have both the sales and marketing teams write down a brief list of the ways they generate or prospect for leads. Then, check the data: which of these methods is consistently delivering solid, healthy leads?
Finally, set a clear process for lead hand-offs between marketing and sales.
🚀 How this accelerates your process:
When both marketing and sales teams have a defined process for lead generation and prospecting, everyone knows what they’re supposed to be doing. With the steps for hand-offs clearly in place, your sales pipeline will always be full of valuable leads.
What research tools does your team use for qualification? What questions seem to hit home the most when on a discovery call? What are the most important aspects you need to learn about your prospects in order to qualify them correctly? Is the timeline more important than the budget? What are their priorities?
By defining clear characteristics you need to see in a prospect and analyzing your reps’ phone calls with prospects to see what works best at this stage, and you’ll be able to set clear processes for qualification.
🚀 How this accelerates your process:
By knowing exactly what qualities or characteristics your prospects must have to become customers, your reps won’t waste time with prospects that aren’t likely to buy.
Each industry and field has its own personality and methods. If you’re selling to enterprises, or older, more established companies, you may need to add steps in the contact stage to run things past more stakeholders. When selling to younger, more digital-age companies and startups, you might try implementing more video sales calls or interactive demos.
🚀 How this accelerates your process:
With your customer base clearly in mind, setting rules for the best contact and negotiation strategies will help your reps sell more effectively to that particular group.
Pro tip: If you have multiple customer profiles, you can create adapted processes for each profile.
Since your sales pipeline must be unique to you, it’s important to adapt the above stages to fit your particular business.
🚀 How this accelerates your process:
When you add the stages that are specific to your business, the process will be smoother and more effective for you and your team.
What kind of follow-ups seem to resonate more with your customers? How many respond to a ‘checking in’ email as opposed to a phone call? Are they more likely to fill out a survey with their feedback, or would they rather talk to someone about their concerns?
🚀 How this accelerates your process:
By answering these questions, you’ll have a clear view of the kind of follow-ups that work best with your customer base. Then, your sales team can focus on those efforts rather than letting their follow-ups fall on deaf ears.
These five sales pipeline steps will help you analyze the stages of your sales pipeline, define your processes, and ultimately create a pipeline that is adapted to your business.
Your pipes are all clear: it’s time to let the customers flow in.
Above, we highlighted the seven essential stages your sales pipeline should have. They are:
Then, we developed five steps you can take to define and implement these stages in your sales pipeline:
With these steps, you’ll be able to outline a sales pipeline that is effective for your sales team and unique customer base.
Ready to build your own sales pipeline? Then click through to read Chapter 3: How to Build a Sales Pipeline.