You’ve invested time in researching the market and understanding your customers, you’ve piqued their interest through effective marketing and now your phone’s ringing off the hook with enquiries. The time has come to start managing your sales process and pipeline, turning prospects into paying customers.
Every business will have a slightly different sales process, some with five stages and others with eight. Invest time in brainstorming the sales process with all the relevant people in your team to make sure that it’s correct and comprehensive. The simplest sales process follows the path; new opportunities, information gathering, proposal, follow up and close.
At the first stage, new opportunities, the prospect has approached you expressing an interest in what you have to offer. Now it’s time to gather information on them. Say you have a printing business and you’ve been approached to produce business cards. You’d visit their website, understand their visual style and create a business card that fits their brand and message. Then it’s time to go back to the lead with a proposal. In this example, you’d give them a sample business card, a quote and possibly examples of any other promotional materials you can provide for them.
Some businesses make the mistake of sending the proposal and leaving the rest to faith. More often than not, leads need a bit of a nudge. A little reminder. Quite often a good follow up email or phone call informing the client that you are ready to answer any further questions they may have is the right approach. Then you’re ready to seal the deal and close the sale. Be confident in your approach, never be afraid to close and be ready to handle any concerns they may have.
The sales pipeline describes an approach to selling, founded on the underlying principles of the sales process. A well-structured pipeline helps you to visualise all of your current sales opportunities, arranged along each of the steps that make up your sales process. It highlights roadblocks and times of standstill, or if there are an insufficient number of leads at any stage. This knowledge allows you to determine where your salespeople should focus attention and efforts to keep sales at the desired level and meet agreed targets.
The pipeline can also point out where improvements need to be made within the sales process. This may be as simple as implementing additional training or ensuring that sales representatives put sufficient focus on all steps of the sales process.
The simplest approach to managing your sales pipeline is to invest in appropriate customer relationship management (CRM) software. There are a plethora of options available, so take the time to assess your options. Any CRM software you use must mirror your actual sales process and be flexible enough to be changed on the fly when necessary. It must also be intuitive enough that your sales team can not only can easily make use of it, but actually enjoy it. This ease-of-use must spread throughout the company, so that other departments such as marketing, development and finance will be able to easily access and utilise the valuable data CRM can provide.
A prime use of sales automation is analysis by salespeople, sales management and finance executives. A salesperson must be able to quickly examine his or her pipeline and know if they are on-target, behind target, or ahead. Sales management must be able to view the pipeline activity of each of their reps and their department as a whole, and accurately know where they stand. Senior and finance executives must be able to forecast sales for the next month, year and the years ahead, and know that their forecasts are as realistic as possible.
Simon Chuter, the Sales and Marketing Innovation Advisor at the Sussex Innovation Centre says “All the bells and whistles in the world won’t matter if your CRM application is difficult to use and wastes your company valuable time. Trial the tool before committing to it, make sure it’s the right fit for your business and has the flexibility to adapt and grow as you do.”
NCR, the world leader in consumer transaction technology, take an interesting approach to sales pipeline management. Firstly, they acknowledge that it’s a priority for their salespeople to spend a significant amount of time managing opportunities and forecasts. They then focus on what they call the four Vs of pipeline management; increase volume, reduce velocity, focus on high value, and ensure viability. Finally, they take a no nonsense attitude to the common mistakes in pipeline management. For example, we’ve all found ourselves thinking (or rather, hoping) ‘I just know that they’ll get the budget for this eventually’. NCR call this ambulance chasing!
A problem frequently faced by businesses is prospects getting stuck in their sales pipeline. If this is happening to you, ask yourself a few key questions. Are you attracting the right prospects? For example, in order to attract the right prospects to your website and convert them into qualified leads for your business, you can implement an inbound marketing program with a focused and well-designed content strategy that addresses the specific needs of your target buyers.
Another question to ask yourself is, do we offer compelling information about our company’s value proposition? If prospects are becoming stuck mid-funnel, take an objective look at your content and make sure it is relevant to prospects who already understand their business problems and are trying to learn what solutions are available. Offer content that explains your company’s value proposition in concrete terms using demonstration videos, white papers, competitive price and feature comparisons and customer testimonials. Push content that effectively differentiates your company from its competitors, giving your prospects tangible reasons to consider your company as their top choice. Offer multiple opportunities and incentives for prospects to interact with your company via email, social media, online customer forums and sales events. In doing so, you’re encouraging them to continue moving forward through the pipeline.
Finally, are you accurately judging the sales readiness of your prospects? Sometimes, prospects become stuck in the pipeline because they are simply not ready to buy. In this scenario, it is essential to continue the lead nurturing process in order to keep your company top-of-mind and prevent prospects from dropping out of the pipeline completely. Recognize the fact that prospects move through the purchase decision process at different paces to reach the point where they are ready to engage with your sales team.
As your increased sales efforts begin to bear fruit and improve the sustainability of your company, you might start to think about how you can leverage that success to pursue further growth. Our next column will look at how to go about seeking funding or investment to scale your business.
Joseph Bradfield is a communications specialist at the Sussex Innovation Centre, an incubator for high-growth businesses based at the University of Sussex, where he works with growing businesses to help share their innovative ideas with the world. He writes a monthly column for entrepreneurs and start-up companies, drawing on the experience of the Centre’s dedicated business support team to provide step-by-step advice and insight, helping readers to navigate some of the challenges involved in launching a new enterprise.