You are in business to make money, and sales feed the business engine. The goal is to generate enough sales to cover your expenses and make a profit. This can quickly become a cash flow issue if you do not understand how many leads you need to generate and turn into sales.
Hopefully, this article will provide insight into how to create and track your sales pipeline for your business so that you can keep an eye on your profitability. As a business owner, it is essential that you understand where your leads are coming from and what the potential is for the leads to close. Also, for those who do not close, you will want to understand why they didn’t close.
Develop Your Sales Process
Whether you document a sales process or not, every business has one. Typically there will be similarities within industries, but in most cases, a sales process can differ for every business. So you ask, what is a sales process exactly?
A sales process consists of the steps that you follow to take a cold lead to close, whether that sale is won or lost. There is no right or wrong process; it is about the steps you find that work best for you and your salespeople to “win the sale.” It is also essential to understand that not every sale will go through every step of your sales process, and others will require that you follow each step. You may also have several sales processes within your business, depending on the type of product/service you are selling or based on the target customer.
Example: Company A has a product that can be sold to the following:
An end customer
A distributor
A retail store
A restaurant or bar
In this case, each target customer may follow a different sales process. There could be other sales channels within your organization that are selling to each target.
Developing Your Sales Funnel
Once your process steps are defined, you will want to assign probability percentages to close to each step. This will give you a view of the progression of the sales and their potential for closing. This step may take you some time, especially if you are starting or are not currently tracking the progress of your sales today. The idea is about understanding how many leads you need to make the deals you have forecasted for your business and the progression through the funnel to become a closed sale. The further the lead progresses in the sales cycle, the better the chance you have of it closing.
Over time you will gain a clear picture of your sales probabilities and closure ratio. If you have 100 leads and 30 turn into sales, then you have a 30% sales closure ratio.
The calculation to determine the amount of revenue potential in your sales funnel will be as follows:
$Amount * Probability Percentage
Example: Sales Process with Probability Percentages
Depending on the business, some will build their sales process, probability percentages, and a funnel based on what they feel are qualified leads. Others start at the lead phase because there is some qualification done prior. This could include a filled-in web form which collects qualification information or previous cold calls from a telemarketing firm you hired.
Tracking & Reporting
Suppose you are performing the sales function or only have one person responsible for sales within your business. In that case, this could be as easy as creating Excel spreadsheets to keep track of the information needed:
Contact Information
Customer Information
Where the Lead Came From ( Web, Referral, Advertisement)
Deal information ( Sales Process / Probability Percentages)
Activities of the Sales Rep (Calls, Other Steps Not in Process)
Reasons for Winning/ Losing Sale
If you have several people responsible for sales within your organization, you must invest in a CRM (Customer Relationship Management System). There are many systems out there to choose from, depending on the level of functionality you require. There are a few that have a free version for two licenses and others that offer limited functionality. Here is a list of three which I recommend for smaller businesses that only have one or two sales personnel.
Zoho CRM (free version up to 10 with limited functionality)
Insightly (free version for 2 with limited functionality)
HubSpot CRM (free version with limited functionality, but no limits on licenses)
Other Benefits
As your business grows, it is crucial that you have a handle on sales within your business. This tells you how your business is performing and if you are generating the expected sales you need. You need to track your sales to have a good handle on your business, which is when many companies end up in financial trouble.
Other side benefits of tracking your sales processes, probability percentages, and pipelines will also help you run your business. Here are just a few.
Suppose you follow leads through to opportunities (deals) and generate a customer. If you track each lead by marketing program, you will know which ones are producing sales and which are not. In that case, you can also tell how your marketing efforts are working.
If you are setting forecasts and then setting quotas for your sales reps, you can track how individual sales reps perform.
Suppose that your salespeople are losing sales at specific points along the process. In that case, this will give you some insight into investigating the issues. There might be issues with the process, and additional steps need to be added. There may be a problem of the need for additional sales training or a possible performance issue with a particular rep.
Suppose you are not tracking of information on your leads, prospects, opportunities, and customers by those in your organization. In that case, you could find that this information could walk out the door with an employee when they leave, and your investment could be lost.
Summary
Generating revenue is the most important task within any business because, with revenue, there is a business. This article focuses on sales but is just one area where it is vital to understand the workflow, processes, and measurements needed to know the pulse of your business. Start setting up your sales processes, probability percentages, and tracking before you begin hiring salespeople for your organization. You will find that you will likely modify all of this over time as you uncover ways to increase your probability of closure.
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