Sales Pipeline: What It Is, How to Do It and Examples 2023
A sales pipeline is a visual tool that allows us to understand the evolution of the sales process that a prospect goes through from the moment they know us until they buy from us and become a customer.
Understanding what a sales pipeline is critical to understanding, growing and predicting the future revenues of your business. In addition, through its use, you can detect problems within the sales process, which channels work, which sellers work and what to do to increase your sales.
Learn now what the pipeline consists of and How to use it to help your sales team:
What is a Sales Pipeline?
When learning about a brand or solution, consumers go through different stages to make the purchase. Those stages or “touches” are the points of contact we have with a prospect until it converts.
Those touches in B2C can be:
Read an article
See an announcement
Get a recommendation
Read reviews
Visit the web
See how an influencer uses the product
The touches in B2B could be:
Download an Ebook
See an ad on LinkedIn
Receive an email from the sales team
Attend a webinar to understand the product
Interact with the company on LinkedIn
Listen to a podcast from the CEO
If I try to sell to a prospect who is not in buying mode because they have simply visited our website, I will probably lose it forever. Their thing is to simply attack prospects who are hard-working enough to buy if they are contacted.
For this purpose, the Sales Pipeline is used to record the touches or stages that the user goes through and increases the probability of successful closing the sale.
How to organize a sales pipeline?
To organize your sales pipeline, you must first define what are the stages that the lead will go through before converting.
Steps to organize your pipeline:
Identify all phases of the sales process. Think of it as if the prospect entered a labyrinth and you had to give it instructions to get out of it and convert.
Understand the conversion rate. You must understand and optimize each stage to have the best possible conversion. If your seller is very bad and your offer is very good, very few quotes will be sent but many will be accepted. If, on the other hand, your seller is very good and your offer is very bad, hundreds of quotes will be sent but very few will be accepted. If you don't measure the conversion rate at each stage, you'll never know where the problem is.
Time. You should measure how much time the lead spends at each stage. For example; imagine that the problem is that when the budget is sent, weeks go by on average and we have a bad conversion. That's because the lead cools down as time goes on. One solution would be to set an expiration date on the budget of 3 days, so by using urgency, you will decrease time per lead and increase conversions.
Actions. Teach your sales team to use the pipeline, and schedule actions for calls, messages, follow-up and the rest of actions that must be taken for the lead to avoid forgetfulness, to keep everything recorded and to systematize the process.
A sales pipeline, such as the one with Hubspot built in, usually looks like this:
To get started, you'll need to define the steps of the Sales Pipeline. Let's look at some examples:
B2C sales pipeline
Suppose you are a B2C company such as a solar panel installer, a dental clinic, a photography studio, a real estate agency...
First contact. It would be the first contact we establish with the lead. Maybe it's a cold lead because we're contacting them through coldcalling after buying a database, or maybe it's hot/warm because you already know us and have asked for a quote through the web. This contact is usually carried out by phone or WhatsApp.
Prospectus rating. In this conversation, our salesperson will need to study who the prospect is, what needs they have and if we can help them. If it is not our Buyer Persona, we would have to discard it and move on to the next prospect.
Proposal. If, after talking to the lead, we show them how we can help them and analyze if they would be a good fit to work together, a proposal should be sent to them. The proposal must include what was said in the call (personalization), the services to be offered as well as the price.
Follow-up. These are the contacts or touches that are made with the prospect to help them move through the stages of our pipeline. Follow-up is usually done with calls, WhatsApp or even emails.
Closing of sale. This would be the final stage where the prospectus must pay the agreed financial amount to start the onboarding or delivery of the products/services.
B2B sales pipeline
Suppose that it is a B2B company such as an agency, a marketing agency, a software company, etc.
First contact. It would be the first contact we establish with the lead. The normal thing in the B2B framework is usually cold calling, contact through LinkedIn, recommendation or inbound contact through the web.
Meeting/DEMO. A meeting is usually held through Google Meeting, Teams or Zoom where both companies know each other, talk about the needs of the interested company and show the services or make a DEMO of the product/software.
Prospectus rating. Based on the information from the meeting, the seller must conclude, if the prospect is an opportunity and can add it to the pipeline to continue working on the stages.
Proposal. If, after talking to the lead, we show them how we can help them and analyze if they would be a good fit to work together, a proposal should be sent to them. At Insurgente, we are in favor of customizing the proposal by adding; Explanatory loom, written document, prices, objectives, expected results, times and the form of payment.
Follow-up. In B2B, the sales process is much longer, so follow-up is more important than ever. Follow-up is common to hold meetings, to know what the team of the interested company thinks and to receive a response regarding the budget sent. Sellers should write down and schedule in their pipeline the actions to be taken so that the prospect doesn't get cold and we lose it.
Closing of sale. This would be the final stage where we will sign the agreement with the company (if necessary), execute the initial payments and begin with the onboarding.
If you don't use a sales pipeline, you won't know what phase each lead is in and it will be super difficult to organize the sales team and predict future sales.
Differences between Sales Pipeline and Sales Funnel
Let's not confuse Sales Pipeline with Sales Funnel. Let's look at the differences:
A pipeline is a set of specific actions performed by salespeople to convert a prospect into a customer, while a funnel is the visual representation of the opportunities that move from one phase of the process to another, and the corresponding conversion rates.
A pipeline would be a map that our sales team has to locate the lead within the sales process and thus give them instructions to help them “not get lost in the labyrinth” showing them the path to the exit that would be the sale.
A funnel is another visual tool that does not help the seller, but rather their manager to understand the efficiency of the sales process. The funnel would be a funnel where you “cast leads” and expect sales to come out.
The funnel helps the manager to understand what stages can be improved, which channels give better quality leads, which seller is more efficient, which seller needs to improve, that is, if it is the SDR/BDR that does not bring enough leads or it is the Account that does not convert well.
A sales funnel usually looks like this:
What can I measure with my Sales Pipeline?
To know if your pipeline strategy is working and how it can be improved, you need data, to get data, to get data you have to measure. Let's look at some metrics to apply to your pipeline:
Average ticket: Every sale I make usually has an associated ticket. In the case of the B2C model, tickets are usually smaller and more well-defined, compared to the B2B model, where tickets tend to be much higher but very different due to the customization of each project. Therefore, it is necessary to calculate the average ticket that is Sales €€/ Number of customers.
CAC/LTV: Thanks to the pipeline, after defining the average ticket, you can also define how much time and money it costs you to attract the customer, that is, you will be able to know your CAC (Customer Acquisition Cost). Once you know the CAC, and the LTV of your customers (Lifetime Value), you can know the profitability of your sales team and adjust the commissions of your sellers.
Sales cycle: How long does it take from when the lead enters the pipeline until it is converted? That's the sales cycle. The sales cycle of a dental clinic is much shorter than that of a real estate company that sells apartments for 100K€. However, both companies will need to measure it and implement measures to reduce it.
Number of opportunities: You should know how many opportunities open and close each month to understand market seasonality and predict future revenues.
Efficiency: If I add 1000 leads to a pipeline and convert 10, the efficiency of my pipeline is very low since it would be 1%. However, if out of every 1000 leads, I convert 300, the efficiency of my pipeline would be 30% and I would have to compare it with market standards to know if it is very good or can be improved enough. The more effective my pipeline is, the fewer leads I'll need to reach the same number of sales.
Productivity: If seller A takes 13 hours on average to close an opportunity than seller B, who would take 38 hours on average to close, then seller A would have to be much more productive than seller B. You can know this metric from the start, without having to wait until the end to verify that in fact seller A sells much more than seller B.
How to manage your sales pipeline?
To manage your pipeline, you'll need software. It can be as simple as an excel spreadsheet or a Notion, or more complete if you decide to opt for a CRM (Customer Relationship Management).
A good CRM should help your sales team be more productive and effective. The main advantages of using a CRM are:
Automation. You can automate the nutrition of potential customers by sending sequences of emails, posts on LinkedIn and WhatsApp messages.
Synchronization. You can synchronize lead capture channels (Google Ads, web forms, LinkedIn Ads...) with your CRM through tools such as Zapier.
Tracking. A good CRM allows you to track customer information and explore the history of the actions that have taken until the closing of the sale.
Notifications. Best of all, in the CRM, your sales team will be able to schedule future tasks with leads and receive notifications so they don't forget to follow up.
In the case of large companies with a lot of staff, it is best to use a CRM integrated into an ERP to manage both resources, processes and business flows.
What tools do I use for my sales pipeline?
Depending on the company's situation, you should choose simpler tools with a reduced price or free, or more complete, specialized and expensive tools.
Whatever your case, we will recommend the best ones.
Let's review the tools from the cheapest to the most expensive and complete:
Excel spreadsheet
You can set up your sales pipeline in Excel. You could organize it manually, totally free and personalized to your liking. The problem is that it will take you some time, and you will not have more comfortable functionality as in other cases.
Notion + PeopleToNotion
This tool is very complete and little known in the Hispanic market. However, you can use it together with the PeopleToNotion extension to set up a simple but effective pipeline there, totally free of charge.
All you have to do is download Notion and PeopleToNotion, and you'll have the cheapest and most efficient Sales Pipeline in the entire market.
Holded
Holded is an accounting and finance software for startups and SMEs. However, it has a built-in pipeline included with the payment for the tool, which will help you with your prospecting since it is quite complete and customizable.
We recommend it, because this way you can take advantage and for the same price to have both finance and sales on the same platform.
Take advantage of Holded and control your finances and sales from the same place.
Hubspot Sales Pipeline
If you have a larger budget, we recommend Hubspot's Sales Pipeline.
With the Hubspot Pipeline, you can identify sales opportunities in a very visual way, you can program tasks and actions with respect to prospects, and even define the chances of closing the sale in each of the opportunities.
Zoho CRM
If you want everything in one place for an affordable price, Zoho is a great option. Zoho allows you to manage your pipeline, analyze data, create meeting booking pages such as Calendly, save message templates to speed up prospecting, and it also has an intelligent calling service and allows you to manage several chats at the same time.
Beyond the programs we have recommended, there are other very interesting options such as ClickUp, Pipedrive, Sales Navigator, Salesforce, and others.
Now with this article you know why you need a sales pipeline and how to start implementing it in your company. However, if you want to generate a constant flow of leads, then we recommend that you talk to our team and see if Insurgente; the B2B Marketing Agency is the perfect option for you.
Es un experto en LinkedIn y Ventas B2B. El joven ex-jugador profesional de eSports, lleva años dedicándose a las ventas B2B, trabajando con +100 empresas del sector, mencionado y reputado por LinkedIn como un experto en su campo, y dirijiendo la Agencia de Marketing B2B: Insurgente.
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