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Sales pipeline calculator Prospecting Closure Stage

Sales pipeline calculator

To help you understand a sales pipeline and drive your sales forward, we've included some helpful information that we hope you enjoy.

"Understand Your Pipeline & Track Sales Effectively".

What is a Sales Pipeline, and how does it help with Sales Tracking?

A sales pipeline is a visual framework that will improve your sales tracking by illustrating the amount of business your company attempts to win over some time. A sales pipeline helps you to understand your company's sales better and allows you to make informed decisions that will improve your sales process and grow your business.

Picture your sales pipeline as a funnel with a few simple stages. These stages help you to organise leads and visualize what's in your pipeline. Much like a real-life funnel, a sales funnel begins with a wide opening at the top and narrows as you go further down.

Let's look at a snapshot of an example sales funnel.

                                                                                                     sales-pipeline-funnel

"Understand Your Pipeline & Track Sales Effectively".

What is a Sales Pipeline, and how does it help with Sales Tracking?

A sales pipeline is a visual framework that will improve your sales tracking by illustrating the amount of business your company attempts to win over some time. A sales pipeline helps you to understand your company's sales better and allows you to make informed decisions that will improve your sales process and grow your business.

Picture your sales pipeline as a funnel with a few simple stages. These stages help you to organise leads and visualize what's in your pipeline. Much like a real-life funnel, a sales funnel begins with a wide opening at the top and narrows as you go further down.

Let's look at a snapshot of an example sales funnel.

The first (and widest) stage of the funnel is the Prospecting stage. This is where you gather all business leads for initial processing. Any lead that is a good fit for your business is then moved to the Qualified stage for follow-up (leads that are not fit for your business get parked in the Unqualified stage).

After successful follow-up, a lead moves to a Quote stage for price quotes and then to a Closure stage for final negotiations. Last but not least, a deal that’s won moves to a Won stage, while one that’s lost moves to a Lost stage.

A simple sales pipeline will help you track sales, visualise leads, and organise follow-ups. Most importantly, a sales pipeline will give your business a wealth of information about why deals are won or lost, where your leads come from, and how your leads translate to sales.

This is critical information that will help improve your sales process and help you win more deals. Using a sales pipeline is the first step toward making you and your team 10x more productive. Let’s look at this example sales pipeline more deeply, taking it one stage at a time.

Find out how

Prospecting

Who doesn't love prospecting? 

The first (and widest) sales pipeline stage is the Prospecting stage. This is the stage where all your business leads begin. Leads in this Prospecting stage can include inbound leads (such as ones from your website or a customer referral) and outbound leads (such as a target list of cold call prospects you wish to call). You can think of this Prospecting stage as the clearinghouse for all your leads.

Your leads will come from a wide variety of sources. One critical data point you need to track for every lead is its source - where did it come from? Did the lead come from your website? Or did it come from a newspaper ad? By capturing this information, you'll better understand which of your lead generation efforts are most successful and which lead sources are most likely to produce winning deals for your business. The easiest way to do this is to ask for it as part of the lead form (or contact form) you use on your website.

Naturally, not all the leads in your Prospecting stage will be a good fit for your business. With so many things to do and so little time to do them, one major pitfall you want to avoid is wasting precious time chasing leads that aren't a good fit from the get-go. That's why it's so important to qualify your leads.

Qualifying leads is a critical activity you'll need to perform upfront for leads in your Prospecting bucket. If a lead is qualified, move it to the Qualified stage (the next stage in the funnel). If a deal isn't qualified for your business, move it to the Unqualified stage, and don't spend any more time on it.

A Qualified lead is a good fit for your business. To figure out whether a lead is qualified, ask yourself the following questions:

Is the prospect a strategic customer?

Is this prospect a high-profile customer you'd like to include in your portfolio for testimonial purposes? Is it a customer from whom you expect substantial work in the future? Is this prospect an influencer in the market you are targeting? If one of your leads is strategically vital to your business, you'll want to try to win the deal.

Can the lead afford your service?

Stay true to the pricing for your goods and services. If a lead operates with a budget well below your price point, they will unlikely be interested in the price quote you send them. It’s in everyone’s best interest not to pursue that lead.

Can you deliver the work that the lead is asking for?

It is essential to examine the scope of a project from a lead and ensure that (i) the project is the kind of work that your business excels at and (ii) your business has the time and resources to complete the project.

When does your lead need you to deliver?

If your lead is perfect in every way except that they don't need your help for months or even years, it makes little sense to spin cycles and spend a significant amount of time on the lead now beyond the occasional contact. Place this lead in your CRM and add an automated task to follow up down the road.

Do you have a relatively high chance of closing the deal?

Focus most of your time on the 20% deals with the highest chance of closing.

Answering these questions will help you to identify your qualified leads. Those leads should be moved into the Qualified stage of your pipeline.

How do you move deals to the qualified stage?

When you've determined that a specific lead is a qualified one (a good fit) for your business, it's time to build a relationship with your prospect and start putting the wheels in motion towards winning the deal.

The Qualified stage is where you learn about the specifics of a deal and start building a relationship with your prospect. During this phase of the selling process, you might exchange phone calls and emails, give presentations, and conduct meetings to convince your prospect that your company is the best for the job.

This is also when you exchange documents and information with your lead. To stay organised, use a collaboration tool in your CRM.

Your goal during this stage will be to progress the discussions and relationship to the point where your prospect requests a formal quote or price sheet for your business. The type of business and scale of the project will dictate the time you'll spend in the Qualified stage.

For example, if you are selling office supplies, it may take one phone call to move to a quoting stage. However, if you are an architect pitching a building design, this stage may last months.

As soon as your prospect formally requests a price quote from you, the lead moves into the next stage of the funnel, the Quote stage.

Quotation or Proposal Stage

Congratulations! The qualified prospect you've been pitching thinks you may be the right fit for the job and has requested a formal price quote. Now that you're in the Quote stage, you're starting to develop the relationship with your lead and becoming fluent in the deal's specifics.

To keep the momentum going, you’ll need to provide pricing information to your prospects to help them choose you over the competition. To be successful in the Quote stage, it's essential to prepare quotes as promptly as possible. A promptly prepared quote shows your lead that you are serious, responsive, and hungry for their business. You've done all the hard work to get here, so make sure not to drop the ball by appearing unresponsive and taking too long to provide pricing information.

When possible, provide price breakdowns shown as line-item costs and offer multiple pricing options to your prospect. In doing this, you'll show that you have a solid understanding of the project and demonstrate that you have flexibility in the solution you provide. Providing case studies, reference materials, or client testimonials can inspire confidence in your prospect and further drive home that your company has what it takes to solve their problem.

Now that you've promptly submitted a detailed price quote, it's time to move the lead into the Closure stage and get ready to put your closing skills to use.

Tips for engaging a lead during the Quote stage:

  • Be responsive - return messages quickly
  • Provide references
  • Send your lead case studies and testimonials

Closure Stage

It's go-time. You've put a lot of hard work into the deal and have hit all the right notes. That's great because closing is much easier if you've approached the sales process professionally and diligently up till now. But it's not over until you close the deal. That's what the Closure stage in your pipeline is all about.

Even if you're not a natural "closer", there are proven techniques to increase your chances of closing a deal.

Be Timely

Keep the momentum going because time can be an enemy. If your prospect expressed a verbal "yes" during the closure stage, move them as quickly as possible toward getting it in writing. If you allow too much time, hurdles like competition or doubts can move in, so stay ahead of the game.

Negotiate Effectively

The last part of your sales process will likely involve some negotiation. More often than not, this will be negotiation around the price, but sometimes it might also be negotiation around the delivery schedule for your product or service. Conduct research, and don't enter the negotiations blindly.

Know data about the industry, understand your competitive landscape, and have the facts at your fingertips. Remember to be calm and confident. And don’t be afraid to use your sense of humour as humour can bring two people together, even if initially they were entirely at odds with one another.

Provide insightful data and news.

Find an industry report that is helpful to your prospect and send it to your lead. Gather a recent press release or client testimonial and send it to your prospect to reinforce what a great decision they'll make by working with you.

Not every deal will close. However, if you've diligently followed the sales process up until this stage, your chances of closing the deal will be significantly higher.

Won or Lost? (Is it really lost or just delayed?)

When you arrive at the end of the sales pipeline, there are only two possible
outcomes for a deal: Won or Lost.

When you win a deal, pat yourself on the back and apply your successful tactics to the next deal. When you lose a deal, don't give up. Use the loss as an opportunity to learn what went wrong and improve your sales process to win more deals in the future.

A simple pipeline to track your sales can yield huge dividends and help you uncover parts of your sales process that need improvement.

Do you know the most common reasons you lose sales? Are you clear on which specific marketing channel is driving your best leads? Do you know where your current leads are sitting in your sales funnel and your next step for each deal? 

        Lost Deal Reasons

These aren’t “nice-to-have” answers – these are critical insights you need to win more deals and grow your business. Tracking your sales using a CRM tool with a sales pipeline will give you these essential insights. Once you have these insights, you can implement corrective measures to improve your sales process.

For example, this Reason for Lost Deals report reveals that 20% of deals were lost due to poor follow-up, which is entirely within your control. Upon seeing this, you might immediately implement a new follow-up policy with your sales staff to avoid losing even more deals. Also, 40% of deals were lost because your prospect felt your prices were too high.

Knowing this information can help you to take corrective steps, such as separating your offering into a ‘premium’ service and a ‘value’ service, which is priced lower and maybe a better fit for your prospects.

Use Pipedrive To Manage Your Pipeline and Track Sales

Tracking your sales with a simple pipeline is an invaluable way to visualize your sales process and help you win more deals. But you’re too busy and don’t have time for complicated new tools and processes, right? RIGHT

Pipedrive is a cloud-based sales CRM system. We use it to help our clients streamline their sales processes and reach their goals.

There are a few reasons we love Pipedrive – and it’s not just because it automates repetitive tasks (though that is high up on our list!).

Here are a few reasons we love Pipedrive

  • It’s pipeline-focused, giving you a clear view of your sales pipeline and any deals that need attention.
  • It automates repetitive tasks and automatically tracks emails, calls, and progress on deals.
  • The interface is straightforward and intuitive and gives you all the information you need in one place.
  • It allows you to track your team’s performance and use customizable KPIs
  • It’s easy to implement, and it integrates with your emails (along with many other integration possibilities)

When it comes to Pipedrive integrations, the possibilities are endless.

Pipedrive marketplace allows you to integrate all your favourite tools. Not only does this make the transition to Pipedrive a breeze, but it also means you can get the most out of all your systems.

Pipedrive marketplace offers one-click installation and granular security on new apps, so there’s no reason not to start using Pipedrive integrations.