Running your business without a well-defined sales pipeline is like playing darts while blindfolded. You might hit something, but the chances are that it won't be the bull's eye. Even with a sales pipeline in place, the effectiveness of your sales pipeline will impact your sales numbers and customer satisfaction rates.
Sales processes are often complex and consist of all types of customers. Some are willing buyers, others might need a few follow-up calls to convert, and others might not be the ideal customer for your business. A great pipeline helps you define these different groups and come up with ways to manage them.
When done right, a great sales pipeline can smooth out your sales processes and improve how you address customer concerns. Read on to learn more about what a sales pipeline is and how to build and optimise yours with HubSpot.
What Is a Sales Pipeline?
Businesses run under uncertainty. Since it might not always be possible to predict what happens to your business by the end of the quarter, anything that could provide some insights will help. Sales pipelines are organised, visual representations of the sales opportunities that your business is handling at any specific moment.
The pipeline breaks down your sales processes into specific tasks that salespeople should take customers through, from initiating contact to qualifying leads. For salespeople, pipelines provide insights into the position of every prospect in the buyer's journey. Since they are often juggling multiple sales prospects at once, a sales pipeline helps them keep tabs on every opportunity. This way, they can avoid having a potential customer fall through the cracks.
For sales managers and C-suite executives, sales pipelines provide insights into what's working for their business and what needs to be changed. It can offer them granular details on how their sales representatives are fairing, the business assets that are drawing the most leads, and how close the company is to achieve its revenue goals.
How to Build a Sales Pipeline
Think of your sales pipeline like the average water pipeline. If no water is passing through these pipes, the end-user (your business) is bound to suffer. The goal is to keep feeding opportunities into your sales pipeline to keep the revenue flowing. All that starts with creating a strong sales pipeline.
Step 1: Design Your Sales Cycle
Your sales cycle will determine how you take customers through the different stages. Some will want to learn about a specific product, and others will be ready to close a deal. Defining your sales cycle ensures that you establish a consistent format for catering to customers.
Sales cycles differ between industries and businesses, but the standard sales cycle could look like this:
1. Engagement
This stage involves connecting with prospects that show interest in your brand. You need to establish different touchpoints for brand engagement. This can be anything from video content to prospecting emails to website copy. Engaged prospects have a higher likelihood of purchasing from your brand.
2. Meeting
This stage involves scheduling a meeting and talking directly with the customer. Sales representatives will need to discuss buyer pain points, showcase how the product can solve these issues, and maybe offer a demo of how the whole process works.
3. Education
19% of buyers will contact you during the awareness stage of their purchase journey. These buyers are mostly interested in knowing more about your product, which should be the aim of this stage.
4. Proposal
In this stage, you should offer prospects insights into the scope of your solutions, talk about the nitty-gritty details of the deal, and present them with a contract. They then have to decide on the next step.
5. Close
This is where you either end up sealing the deal with a customer or losing them. If you seal the deal, be sure to put in place customer follow-up practices to help you assess their satisfaction and maybe get future referrals.
Step 2: Identify Your Ideal Customer and the Accounts to Target
A one-size-fits-all approach won't cut it if you are looking to land high-quality leads. You need to identify who your target customer is and what drives them to make a purchase. Start by defining their specific qualities, from who they are, to their attitudes and their willingness to make a purchase.
The next step is to score each buyer persona. Lead scoring helps you differentiate high-value leads from the lower-value ones. Dividing them into tiers will also inform the amount of time you spend with a prospect and the level of personalisation to use. HubSpot's account-based marketing tool can help you tier customers in a visual and actionable manner.
Step 3: Look For the Right Contacts From Target Accounts
Speak to the decision-makers – they have the power to sway your deal. Sure, you can always contact other people in target accounts to familiarise yourself with the prospect, but the decision-maker will have the final say. They are the ones who are almost directly impacted by the decision to work with you.
Once you find these contacts, be as human and genuine as possible. Learn about their pain points and where they cross paths with your business offerings. If possible, look for a way to create a personal connection with them without making them feel overwhelmed. Creating close bonds with prospects improves the lead nurturing process.
Step 4: Streamline Your Sales Cycle to Give Qualified Leads an Easier Time
It's common for prospects to get stuck in specific stages of the pipeline. Look for ways to optimise the pipeline to reduce sales cycles and increase revenue. For starters, ensure that you follow up with prospects. 80% of successful sales call for five follow-up calls.
During these calls, look for ways to nurture your leads some more. For instance, your sales and marketing team can create resources like blog posts, ultimate guides, and case studies to give customers further insights into your product.
Some of the best tools HubSpot offers for streamlining sales cycles include their email tracking tool and their lead scoring tool. The former helps you keep track of email open rates to know the next step to take for relevant prospects.
The latter helps you score leads based on their readiness, from hot to warm to cold. You can use lead scoring to gauge your strategy for approaching potential customers. The last great tool you should consider using is Vidyard's 1 to 1 Video tool, which helps you create personalised videos to form better connections with leads.
Step 5: Improve the Efficiency of Your Sales Cycle With a CRM Tool
Your chances of closing a deal are 21 times better when you respond to a lead within five minutes rather than after 30 minutes. If you have a poor customer relationship management strategy, sales representatives might spend a lot of time referring back to calls or text messages to get some context into their previous conversations with a prospect. This reduces your chances of closing deals immensely.
Streamline your sales cycle with a CRM tool like HubSpot. These tools provide a single source of truth for every customer interaction, from the phone calls they made to their current stage in the purchase journey. When combined with HubSpot automation, you have a stack of tools that improve your sales cycle efficiency by a huge margin.
For instance, you can easily score leads to increase your efficiency at handling them. The tools also offer enough data to help you analyse each part of your sales pipeline. This analysis can give you insights into how to improve the pipeline to increase the chances of hitting sales goals.
Sale's Is a Dynamic Process
Strengthening your sales pipeline is not a one-time thing. Customers' attitudes change, new opportunities arise, and better tools are innovated. If you are looking to build a strong pipeline, you should be ready to adapt to the changing times. For starters, use the data you collect from HubSpot to continuously optimise parts of your sales funnel. Feel free to contact us today for more insights on how to improve your sales pipeline.
