Customize Your Sales Pipeline
Creating a sales pipeline can help you improve the odds of closing more sales. A sales pipeline is all about the buyer's and the sales person's sales journey together. The sales pipeline will detail the action steps that are taken in this journey from beginning as a lead to becoming a customer. These steps are referred to as stages.
Each business may have different stages for their sales pipeline. However, a business may also have different stages for different types of sales leads. Therefore, there is a need for different sales pipelines even within one company. For example, sales leads that are generated from a webinar may have different stages than sales leads generated from a trade show.
Sales pipelines tend to follow a basic outline like the following:
Lead generation.
Qualifying the lead.
Lead nurturing.
Initial meeting.
Follow up.
Proposal.
Proposal accepted.
Close the deal.
The above sample pipeline is a great start for custom shops to begin with. Since no two sales processes are exactly the same, this sample is meant to be adjusted to mimic the sales processes of your business.
Think about the sales processes in your shop. Consider the different steps that are taken to close a sale from a lead that you met a trade show. Consider the different steps that are taken to close a sales lead from a referral. Most likely, you will notice that these steps are different, therefore you will need to create two separate pipelines.
Our next article will discuss these different steps and help you custom the stages of your sales pipelines.