SALES CHECKLIST
Setting up a CRM to manage sales pipeline? — Learn how to set up stages like a pro
Use this checklist to set up a sales pipeline in any CRM. As a sales leader, know how close your sales representatives are to meet their quotas. Help them close deals faster.
TLDR; Use this checklist while setting up the stages in your CRM sales pipeline management.
Why well-defined stages in a sales pipeline matter?
A sales pipeline represents how a prospect moves through the different stages of your sales process. For example, a prospect could move from showing interest to taking a demo.
An optimised sales pipeline with well defined stages can increase your revenue by 18%. Conversely, a sub optimal sales pipeline can reduce your sales. So your sales pipeline is as effective as the stages that you define.
Well defined stages help you to improve sales by :
- Improving your sales team’s productivity.
- Identifying bottlenecks and unblocking them.
- Focusing on more promising leads and converting them faster.
- Reviewing progress and analysing your team’s performance.
- Providing insights into your processes so that you can optimise them.
Because sales processes are different for every company (and even for products within the same company), the stages in the pipeline should be unique and reflect your typical buyer’s journey.
Why use a checklist?
- The human brain can remember only 7 things (+/- 2) at any given point of time. When you are doing something, it is better to have a list that has all the steps if the number of things you have to pay remember more than 5–7 items.
- A checklist can eliminate mistakes. Following a checklist reduces the potential for mistakes and errors by ensuring you have a reference.
- A checklist ensures that everything necessary is completed.
- Checklists reduce errors by clearly laying out exactly what needs to be done so that nothing is missed. Evaluating sales pipeline systems is not something that you do routinely and the chances of you missing a critical step is high.
Things to watch out for when defining the stages in your sales pipeline
Understand your buyer’s journey
The stages of the pipeline must match your prospect’s buying journey. This will help you track progress and forecast revenue. The buyer’s journey may be different for different customer segments. For example, one segment could just use their credit card to buy your product and reimburse the amount from their company while another segment would need to go thorough their purchase department. The nature of your product will define the buyer’s journey. So the first thing you should do is define this journey for every customer segment.
Map stages to the general purchase lifecycle
The stages that you define should normally follow the general purchase lifecycle of “Awareness -> Consideration -> Decision”. You can break this rule if you are clearly able to explain “why?” for your case. But avoid a sales pipeline where some stages related to “Creating awareness” like “Send Brochure” comes after “Consideration” Stages “Like” Send response to RFP.
Don’t repeat stages
Avoid similarly defined stages at different parts of your pipeline. For example, avoid multiple stages such as demo to the user, demo to the exec etc. Instead, have a single demo stage.
Define activities in a stage
Every stage should have a set of activities that the sales team performs to move the prospect to the next stage. For example, in the demo stage, one activity could be to identify all the people who would influence the decision. Another activity would be to demo the product to them.
Stage order should be based on progress
The later a stage is in the pipeline, the higher the probability of conversion. If prospects move back & forth between stages then it indicates that your stage definition is out of sync with the buyer’s journey.
Has an expiry
Every stage should have an expiry beyond which you should be able to mark the prospect as “Lost” at that stage. This will ensure that your pipeline is clean and your sales team is not swarmed with busy work.
