A sales pipeline is a logical, visual way to track multiple potential buyers as they progress through the purchasing process’s various stages. Pipelines are frequently depicted as a horizontal bar, or occasionally as a funnel, divided into the stages of a business’s sales process. Potential buyers progress through the sales process in stages: when contact is made, for example, or when a prospect is qualified. Discover how Pipedrive is a critical tool on how to build a sales pipeline. 

 

What Is A Sales Pipeline?

It’s a visual representation of where prospects are on their journey from lead to (hopefully) customer; with a pipeline, salespeople can always see the status of their money, deals, and other sales efforts. Furthermore, it is a tool for salespeople who are frequently juggling multiple sales prospects and deals and cannot afford for one to fall outside the sales process time frame. Sales managers can seek additional data on the effectiveness of their sales process using a sales funnel. Reason being, a sales pipeline tracks a salesperson’s activities, it provides greater visibility into which sales activities generate the highest return for a business.

 

Before Creating A Sales Pipeline, Consider The Following Factors

A prospect list

The first thing you’ll need is a list of potential customers. This list should contain as much information as possible to help your sales pipeline management. You should have their names, contact information, company, and job title. Moreover, you should know how they contacted you or how you know they’re likely to be interested. If they’ve already communicated with you, attempt to assign them a rough pipeline stage: was the contact initiated by a rep, or have they been qualified? You can alter your sales pipeline stages for better conversion rates.

 

Your sales cycle

A sales process is a logical, structured, step-by-step formula that outlines the activities your team must perform in order to close a deal. When you have a strong sales process in place, your reps will be able to win deals repeatedly simply by following the steps. If your team already has a defined sales process, you’re in luck. The steps of building a sales pipeline are almost certainly defined. The stages of your pipeline will assist you in developing your sales process.

Your revenue objectives

Because your pipeline is a tool that will assist you in meeting your revenue goals, it’s critical to have those sales goals in mind when designing a successful pipeline. These figures will eventually assist you in answering a critical question: How many deals do you need to add to your funnel in order to meet your targets? If you know how many leads convert to customers, you can easily calculate the number of deals required at each stage. Calculating your numbers enables you to see how your opportunity list is performing and how many deals you need to add to the top of the pipeline in order to meet your targets.

Your coworkers

Your sales funnel is a cross-functional tool. Because your entire sales team will be working with the same pipeline, you’ll want to involve your sales team in the decision-making process when building a sales pipeline.

Additionally, having more than one set of eyes on a sales pipeline is beneficial; a second opinion frequently helps you identify flaws in your plan prior to implementation.

How You Can Create An Effective Sales Pipeline With The Right Metrics

1. Visualize your ideal pipeline

When you generate initial ideas about individuals and businesses that may require what you sell, you are already taking the first steps toward developing a sales pipeline. You almost certainly have multiple prospecting ideas. Some of those will continue to the end and will close, while others will not. However, the nature of these conversations and their progression will shape your pipeline. You create a pipeline by creating a series of sales stages that take you from that initial idea to a closed sale.

 

These could include the following:

• Objects (very early days, not yet contacted)
• Contacted (via phone or email)
• Meeting Confirmed (you’ve established an agenda and a date in your diary)
• Proposition
• Sent (you’ve submitted a formal proposal that includes a dollar amount)
• Close (at this point, the signature on the bottom line is required)

It’s critical to remember that your sales stages must correspond to your prospects’ or customers’ purchasing stages. Customers typically require a fully cost proposal as part of their “buying cycle.” Everyone’s buying cycle is unique, but believe me when I say that it helps to have a firm grasp on your customers and how they prefer to shop.

2. Determine the “magic numbers”

The critical question is this: How many deals do you need to add to your pipeline in order to meet your goals? While it would be ideal to win every deal for which you submit a proposal, this is not the case. If you know the average number of deals you win, you can easily calculate the number of deals required during each of the early stages. Calculating your numbers allows you to see how your pipeline looks and how many deals you need to add to the top of the pipeline in order to meet your goals.

3. Create momentum from stage to stage

Once you’ve established each of the pipeline stages, you’ll need to keep deals on track. What factors or variables help your marketing team advance your deals stage by stage? It could be sending a written proposal, identifying stakeholders, or obtaining budget approval—each stage has an event that advances the deal.

Setting goals for these significant events is a good habit to develop. You can control the activities that maintain the pipeline’s flow, but not the outcomes. Setting daily goals for the number of proposals you send and new prospect calls you make is the best way to ensure that your deal flow does not stall.

4. Establish a routine for filling the pipeline

Activities that add new deals to your pipeline must become a part of your daily or weekly routine—depending on your business. You may need to experiment with various ideas before settling on a routine that works for you: a specific time of day, a particular day of the week, or a regular slot in your calendar when you can truly focus on putting deals into the pipeline. When you maintain that focus and practise of identifying new prospects, you won’t have to worry about your sales pipeline.

Conduct cold calling with an ideal customer during your sales training. Moreover, implement an effective sales management system. If you use these strategies for building a sales pipeline for your sales metrics you’ll be pleased with the results.