The DriveSales™ | What is a sales pipeline and how do you build one?

If you are a ‘Sales Enthusiast’, you might often encounter the term — ‘Sales Pipeline’. Very frequently you would hear this term being thrown around casually which leaves you to wonder what it actually means. ‘Broadening the pipeline’, ‘Expanding your pipeline’, ‘Fitting new leads in the pipeline’ are a few common examples where you encounter this term.

It is imperative to understand that pipeline is not just a regular English word but rather a very crucial and important sales tool. The way you mould your sales pipeline can do wonders for your business.

In layman’s language, a sales pipe is like a blueprint of how you approach selling your product. It involves all the various stages a product has to go through before it is fit to be sold.

A sales pipeline aids you to visualize your entire sales process — from your investment operations to your sales revenue, it incorporates all the steps.

Driving a business without a sales pipeline is just similar to cooking a meal blindfolded: you have no idea whether your business is on the right track with respect to your goals or is just burning due to the lack of future insights. One of the major advantages of using a sales pipeline is that it provides a coat of accountability and trust which, furthermore, helps you to achieve your set goals and aspirations for your venture.

Now that you have a clear understanding of what a sales pipeline is, it is really necessary to build a good one so that your business can flourish.

Below are a few important things that you must prepare before building a sales pipeline for your business:

· Your current sales process.

· A detailed list of your prospective customers.

· Your business and revenue goals.

Sales Pipeline Stages:

· Lead — You have found your potential customer but haven’t contacted them yet.

· Contacted — You have contacted your prospect. Either you have contacted them to check if they are interested in your product or they have contacted you due to their interest or need.

· Qualified — This stage is of utmost importance. It shows that you have qualified your sales opportunity as one that you can score.

· Proposal — After the qualified stage, you can start to draw up a proposal for your sales prospects. Once you have made the proposal, you wait for the feedback of your client.

· Close The Deal — This is essentially the last stage where you close the deal. Hence, it all comes down to this one, whether you’ve won or lost.

How to build your own Sales Pipeline:

Now that you are pretty familiar with all the stages of the sales pipeline, let’s make sure you build an effective one.

1) Organize your potential clients — All you’ll have in the beginning, before even a pipeline, is a list of your prospective clients that you think would be interested in buying your product. You will definitely require something to assist you in managing not only these connections but your schedule with them.

Using a spreadsheet tool such as Google Sheets or Microsoft Excel can prove to be very beneficial to you in terms of recording and organizing your customer data. On a broader scale, using a CRM is the most efficient solution.

2) Follow your stages — It is very easy to get overwhelmed by the set goals as the end result seems too huge to achieve. The only way to solve this problem is by breaking down the needs of your product/deal into various different stages that are required to close the deal. Thus, you are managing the activities, and this will finally constitute to a bigger picture — your set goal. These stages will be the fundamental blocks of your sales pipeline that will direct you towards your desired result.

3) Continuously monitor your stages — Once you have your base model ready and the work picking up its pace, it is crucial to monitor your stages regularly and to maintain consistency. With the changing market needs, your stages should also mould themselves according to the ongoing pattern and trends to ensure optimum productivity.

4) Update your pipeline regularly — This part can prove to be very crucial and tricky. You have successfully built a pipeline, but it is very important to follow it without any hiccups. When a team hasn’t used a pipeline before, it can be difficult to adjust to a new system, but it is essential to develop the habit of entering contacts and deals into the pipeline and moving them along the set stages.

In case of any difficulties in the pipeline, try resolving the issues. If that seems to be impossible, it is completely fine to make a few major changes in the pipeline and bring about a ‘revamped’ version.

Now, as an effective SALESPERSON! We can do three things from here.

1. Not ignoring the opportunity and blaming the situation for revenue loss.

2. Taking important notes and going back to revisit your sales strategy with the growth mindset.

3. Reaching out to The DriveSales™ if you need any specialized help for sales.

To conclude, what you choose to think also provides some idea of your development as a consultative salesperson. It is something like Mark Hunter quotes “It’s not about having the right opportunities. It’s about handling the opportunities right.”

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