Sales pipeline management with CRM

3 Strategic ways to use sales pipeline management to prevent loosing sales dollars

Prevent Losing Sales Dollars

Your sales team is getting enough leads every day and giving enormous effort to convert them. But unfortunately most of the leads are slipping out of your hands, restricting you from getting right ROI.

Investing in marketing channels such as SEO, inbound, PPC, trade shows is effective enough for increasing the lead generation rate. However, some extra tricks are needed for a successful sales pipeline management.

A leaky pipeline is an adversity for a company. Though you need to know-

  • Only 25% of leads are truly legitimate (Source: Gleanster Research) and if the other 75% are leaking out, nothing is lost precisely.
  • 79% of marketing leads never convert into sales, mostly due to lack of lead nurturing. (Source: Marketing Sherpa)
  • A study with more than 62 B2B organizations shows 44% of executives think that their companies are ineffective at managing sales pipeline properly. (Source: Vantage Point Performance and the Sales Management Association)

But, if you are losing the most qualified leads, then it’s the right time to change the gear and try out new sales pipeline management software, for the perfect nourishment of your leads.

  • Companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales ready leads at 33% lower cost. (Source: Forrester Research)
  • Nurtured leads make 47% larger purchases than non-nurtured leads. (Source: The Annuitas Group)

A sales pipeline management is an easy way to observe the process behind a sale.

[Know more about – is sales pipeline management really important for sales growth?]

If you are not getting proper results out of it, then at first you need to identify the exact problem. Why are most of your leads leaking out? What are the exact leakage points in your sales pipeline?

Process of identifying the problem and leakage point

Identifying the leakage points involves in-depth observation into your sales pipeline. For this you need your sales CRM to showcase all the information related to your existing and potential clients.

Leaks tend to appear, when your company’s sales cycles don’t fit with the prospects’ buying cycles.

For an example, your company sells cricket accessories. For you, a prospective lead should be willing to buy cricket accessories, however, people who are interested in football accessories are not considered to be qualified.

Furthermore, if your sales funnel is filled with leads that are interested in sports accessories in general, then you need to segregate your qualified leads (people who want to buy cricket accessories) from the others.

Your CRM dashboard is the exact place, from where you can get significant insights for segregating your qualified leads from un-qualified leads.

Once you are able to identify the legitimate and qualified leads, you will gradually stop wasting time on ‘poor leads’, since they won’t be ready for a sales call.

Know the sales pipeline position of each lead

After segregating the qualified leads, you need to know their positions in your sales pipeline.

Though, the number of stages of your sales pipeline depends entirely on the length of the sales cycle. According to Donal Daly, “Having too many stages in the sales pipeline is counterproductive. Six or seven steps are the optimum number of stages in the pipeline”, since too many steps will be time consuming.

Generally, every business has five common stages of sales pipeline-

  • Initial contact
  • Qualification
  • Meeting
  • Proposal
  • Close

All five stages have different weighted value within them; hence, they can include multiple sub-stages.With your sales pipeline management software you can identify exactly what is the position of your lead.

sales pipeline management tips

Improve sales conversion rate by following-up

Identification of leads’ positions enables you to recognize what makes you fall behind from getting sales opportunities. You can plug those leaks with perfect follow-ups.

Following-up a prospect is the crucial part of lead nurturing. Follow-up calls and emails help you to seal more deals within the agreed time period.

46% of marketers with mature lead management processes have sales teams that follow up on more than 75% of marketing-generated leads (Source: Forrester Research).

Further, a CRM software can help you get maximum ROI with automated lead management process, by reminding you about meetings and follow-up calls. You can even set a daily task list to organize your day-to-day work that simplifies the selling process.

how to prevent sales loss

Companies that automate lead management, see a 10% (or greater) increased sales revenue in 6-9 months (Source: Gartner Research).

Efficient follow-up shortens the sales cycle and helps getting valuable opportunities to maintain long-term relationships with customers.

Conclusion

Pipeline management incorporates the issue of how the sales pipeline is structured, how it is measured and how it is utilized. Sales teams that invest the right amount of time in defining a structured and manageable sales process are the most proficient at managing their sales pipelines.

With these three simple steps you can remarkably cut down your leakage rate and additionally acquire accurate sales forecast. So it has a direct role in increasing sales revenue.

Now you know how CRM software helps you to fix your sales pipeline leakage.

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