For a business, product sales are essential. Therefore, every sales department must pay attention, including the sales stage. In business, this sales stage is often visualized in the form of a pipeline. It’s called sales pipeline. A sales pipeline is a guide used to increase business sales.
With a sales pipeline, businesses can monitor the progress of each prospect handled by the sales team. This article will discuss the meaning of a sales pipeline, its benefits, and how to make it.
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What is a Sales Pipeline?
The sales pipeline is a systematic sales management process through the stages in the sales funnel. It means a sale will deal with all the steps right from the start of establishing the relationship to closing with the sale and purchase agreement. The sales pipeline provides a clear understanding of how much money can be made in a sales deal.
A sales pipeline allows companies to see the flow and volume of their products and revenue opportunities for a given period. It is supported by the central sales elements such as sales opportunities, open offers, and potential sales to the monetary aggregate value.
A sales pipeline can also be defined as an organized visual way to track multiple potential buyers as a company begins to penetrate the market into various stages of the buying process. A sales pipeline is a way to track progress towards a sales goal through specific stages. The sales pipeline is usually described as a horizontal bar which is then subdivided into various stages of the company’s product sales process.
In the funnel of the sales stages, marketing management will then move potential buyers from one step to the next through the ongoing sales process. It is done starting from the initial contact with potential customers until the purchase process occurs.
Importance of Sales Pipeline for Business
The sales pipeline is essential for a business because it can produce specific information about the sales team, customers, and company products before the product is made or is still in the development stage. The sales pipeline also allows sales operations or sales management to make a significant difference in the profits the company will earn.
The sales pipeline is essential for sales managers who want more data about how well the sales process is working. The sales pipeline tracks salesperson activity and offers more visibility into sales activity in detail. This visibility will make the sales manager know which selling points are with the potential for huge profits for the company.
At least there are several advantages of the sales pipeline:
1. Shows the Location of Leads in Sales
There are three leads in the sales pipeline; cold leads, warm leads, and hot leads. Cold leads are times when the company determines the target market, and the company does not know or does not know the sales potential at that point. Warm leads are when the target market with specific prospects can be seen but has not yet started buying the product. Meanwhile, hot leads are when the target market has raised points of customers who seem ready to buy certain products.
Knowing the location or points of these leads can provide a particular picture for marketing or sales management to determine where sales will occur. Deals can later be arranged through specific strategies by looking at these prospects.
2. Finding Forgotten Prospects
In the sales process that targets various market points and customer prospects, some prospects will undoubtedly be forgotten by the salesperson or even by the marketing management itself. The reasons are several things regarding data collection and the lack of detailed data on prospective customers. These things can be prevented and corrected by using the sales pipeline method.
Because the sales pipeline will be able to show data from all interconnected processes during sales. Data before a product is sold to the market. The business of sales activities triggers the potential for specific customer prospects to be forgotten, but with a sales pipeline that also stores various lead points, this kind of thing can be adequately resolved.
The immediate solution for the sales pipeline is that the existing data will remind sales management about the existence of customer prospects by the point of warm leads or hot leads.
Stages of Creating a Sales Pipeline
No | Stages of Creating a Sales Pipeline |
| 1 | Prospects: finding potential customers, such as through the subscription process, social media followers, old customers and so on |
| 2 | Qualifications: doing research to find priority and non-priority customers |
| 3 | Contact prospects: contact customers by phone, email, social media and so on |
| 4 | Building relationships: responding to customers when they ask about your product or other ways that can strengthen relationships with potential customers |
| 5 | Closing: when a potential customer says yes or no to buying your product. If not, don’t immediately cross it off the list. You can offer them again at a later time. |
3. Explaining All Sales Process
From what has been explained, the main advantage of using a sales pipeline is that this method explains all the sales processes.
The sales pipeline will show sales and marketing management about the entire process that will and has been carried out by the salesperson. It includes finding the location of leads and following up on charges when executing leads on product buying and selling transactions. These recorded processes will later make sales or even marketing promotions in the future more effective and efficient.
4. Productivity and Work Efficiency
Another benefit of the sales pipeline is helping increase productivity and work efficiency. Since their conversion rate in the pipeline categorizes transactions, this allows sales reps to focus on transactions with higher conversion rates. The sales team can save time by concentrating somewhat on transactions with lower conversion rates.
5. Closing Deals Faster
CRM software allows businesses to store their information in the cloud. Companies can cut down on manual work processes by storing business data in the cloud. Increased productivity and efficiency help sales representatives close deals faster and increases the company’s overall sales revenue.
FAQ
What is Pipeline Management?
-Sales pipeline management is the process of tracking sales activities and forecasting revenue in the sales cycle. This process is carried out systematically. Sales pipeline management is an important activity that allows companies to control the overall sales process.
What is a sales pipeline in CRM?
-Sales pipeline is a visual representation of where prospects are in the sales process. The sales pipeline shows you how many deals a salesperson expects to reach in a given week, month, or year and how close the reps are to reaching their sales quota.