Do you remember the times when opening a thousand tabs to find data regarding one potential lead seemed normal? Well, the good news is that those days are over and done with. Sales intelligence is a gift to modern markets that can help teams collect and consolidate your prospects’ data on a single interface. This in return helps to assist your sales executives in easily finding the ideal leads and personalizing the outreach strategy to close better deals.
As per findings made by Forrester research, organizations that integrated with a sales intelligence B2B system like Clodura have documented evidence of receiving 35% more leads as well a 45% boost in high-quality leads. This goes to show us how sales intelligence data plays a pivotal role to enhance the effectiveness of a data and quality management strategy for a sales team.
The roles that benefit the most from a sales intelligence integration are sales development representatives (SDRs), accounts executives (AEs), and business development representatives (BDRs). These are the parties responsible to conduct all tasks, all aspects of which process require a sales intelligence platform through various functionalities and automation.
Let’s take a look at how sales intelligence integration can help an organization refine its data and quality management while sales prospecting:
Real-time Data With Sales Intelligence
An impressive factor about technology is that it never stops evolving, with no need to take breaks or naps. Web indexing technology today has made it possible for sales associates to possess constant access to real-time and highly enriched company data through repositories.
This not just prevents them from making discomfiting phone calls by reaching the direct-dial of someone who is not a match for your service. It also avoids sales executives from making mistakes while pitching wrongly as a result of using outdated data regarding the organization and decision-making professionals. Sales Intelligence platforms like Clodura facilitate actively tracking the activities of your prospective organization’s buying signals. Generally, the first associate to touch base with such a key decision-maker is the one to convert them, which is where Sales Intelligence can help them in improving the quality of data.
Forge B2B Sales Leads Effortlessly
Sales-intelligence features can help enhance the prospect discovery process with its machine-learning-based recommendation mechanism. All one needs to do is make sure the territory is updated and the sales intelligence system will automatically comb through its extensive database. Without going above and beyond, Clodura can help one can find new prospects that match your Ideal Customer Profile.
Monitor Buying Signals of Ideal Companies with Automated Alerts
Apart from recommending organizations that fit your Ideal Customer Profile, sales intelligence data can help determine the best time to reach out to your prospects. Clodura’s automated alerts let the sales teams know about the key buying signals such as a change in leadership, new high-profile hires, or incoming funding. These are the ideal signs that a prospect may be open to your pitch and is likely to invest. This also improves data quality management by showcasing the leads that come across as high-rolling stakes.
Quickly qualify new accounts
A sales intelligence platform allows you to scan data about organizations that your team discovered or those that were recommended, refining your entire process even more. Qualifying accounts to add them to your database avoids the collection of redundant profiles, bad leads, or inaccurate data.
Direct line to high-level decision-makers
Once you’ve found your prospective businesses using the sales intelligence platform’s account-based technique, you can find all the contacts at each organization. Clodura can help you bypass all the entry gates and have a direct line to the key decision-maker of an organization for the most fruitful pitch.
Final Words:
Getting access to sales intelligence data shouldn’t be a spoiler to your sales team’s operations. Hence, investing in a solid sales intelligence platform can help you manage the client engagement process based on end-to-end solutions leading to increased sales. To gain the full value of sales intelligence, the data provided to salespeople have to be systematically organized for context and accessibility. Clodura’s sales intelligence can be integrated with your sales engagement platform to drive better actionable insights.
This decade so far has seen a massive upsurge in the use and integration of supportive technologies. Based on the Internet of Things, Machine Learning, and Artificial Intelligence, these emerging systems and integrations have rapidly become the backbone of organizations varying in scale. One such piece of art in the technological realm is the Sales Intelligence software, which is revolutionizing the way a sales team operates.
Moreover, the cost-to-benefit ratio is by far one of the most advantageous factors, apart from optimizing the sales team’s workflows. If you’re looking for reasons why sales intelligence may be the right solution for you to improve your lead conversions and revenue, this blog will showcase five reasons why you need to transition into this digital transformation journey.
Detects the Total Addressable Market (TAM)
An organization’s Total Addressable Market (TAM) refers to the total revenue that the B2B business can rake in.
While TAM is represented as a revenue amount, it can also be depressed as the number of businesses in the market that could be your customers. Sales Intelligence software helps a business in:
Defining budgets
Forecasting future growth avenues
Segmenting your audience into subgroups for targeted marketing
Knowing the businesses that fall into your TAM will help the sales team avoid wasting time on companies that don’t need or relate to your product.
The bottom-up method helps Sales Intelligence systems recognize your most accurate TAM by analyzing the existing client base while searching for trends. It then proceeds to use these trends and existing buyer personas to find new prospects that your sales associates can target.
Differentiated buying signals
How can your sales team determine which of their perspectives is a green light for your pitch? The process can be made infinitely easier if your organization uses a sales intelligence platform like Clodura to help identify the top buying signals. If your sales team knew when prospects from the TAM are ready to buy, it could mean quicker deals.
Sales intelligence solutions tell your sales exactly when it’s the right time to reach out. Sales intelligence monitors business websites and news to alert your team of any buying signals so they can pursue these prospects.
Glean insights in real-time with actionable data
Today, having an upper hand over competitors means requiring heaps of data. Too often, the sales team has a vast pool of information but cannot use it accurately to find actionable trends. Sales Intelligence can help mitigate this by not simply collecting data in real-time, but corroborating past trends to find a pattern and help your sales associates:
Become the first to approach and finalize a prospect
Gain insight into the prospect’s pain points to curate the perfect pitch
Reduce the amount of customer churn by finding signs that they’re looking for other options and repairing the rift on time.
Work smarter with CRM integrations
Time is of the essence in sales, and any solution that helps your sales associates’ close deals before the stipulated time limit can help you benefit financially.
The leading sales intelligence integrations like Clodura can help save time and improve profitability by integrating with the existing CRM, so all the information you need is consolidated in one place. Say goodbye to issues like duplication and multiple or contrasting resources, because Sales Intelligence brings in greater levels of the organization. For instance, you don’t even need to switch screens to access the contact details of a prospect from your CRM while using Clodura.
Enrich your existing data
Every company has its resources and information on potential businesses it would like to reel in. However, how much of such data goes unused due to the siloed approach? Also, there always exists the challenge of storing outdated and inapplicable data, such as changing decision-makers. With an AI-powered Sales Intelligence solution, all your data remains up to date, filling the gaps in your existing CRM resources.
Wrapping it Up
Sales Intelligence can be the solution that changes the game for your team; all you have to do is find the right technology partner and lean into transforming your experience. With Clodura, generating leads, sales prospecting, accessing an extensive repository of data, and gaining real-time insights are as easy as the click of a button. Help your sales team work smarter by walking into the era of digital transformation.
Since the advent of cutting-edge technology, specifically Artificial Intelligence, we have seen companies switching to modern routes to generate qualified leads for their businesses.
Nowadays, ZoomInfo and Apollo are the major competition in the B2B sales software market. Businesses prefer to pick them due to their highly scalable and accurate solutions.
However, multiple reports suggest their inaccuracy and costly solutions. Hence, companies are actively looking for both ZoomInfo competitors and Apollo alternatives.
Hence it is important to opt for smart and efficient ZoomInfo alternatives which can optimize your sales funnel. Clodura.ai has come up with a revolutionary platform driven by sales intelligence to manage and improve communication with leads, prospects, and partners. If you are someone responsible for business development and sales, here’s how you can use Clodura to your benefit:
Skip the grunt work of speaking to gatekeepers and operators by getting access to key decision-makers with Clodura.ai. The platform has 90 million successfully-verified direct-dial phone numbers which get updated regularly, so you can be sure you are making the right calls.
Convert Effectively Through Actionable Sales Intelligence By using Clodura’s advanced filters, you can get hyper-targeted company & contact lists, enabling you to zoom into your Total Addressable Market. You can enter your choice of search parameters and also get an AI-recommended list of accounts that are best suited for your prospecting. By spotting low-hanging fruits, you can approach your prospects with confidence. Clodura helps eliminate the time spent on researching accounts and before contacting them. It provides 25 buying signal alerts on a real-time basis and thus helps in converting low-hanging sales opportunities seamlessly.
Automate Email Sequences:
Instead of manually reaching out to each prospect, Clodura, with its proprietary platform Cadence, allows you to automate email sequences for consistent outreach and follow-ups. Not just that, the platform also gives you insight into the open-rate and response rate of emails, so you can know what’s working and what’s not. By consistently evaluating which email marketing campaign produced the best results, you can build an effective outreach strategy that works for your business. The platform also allows you to save the best sales emails as templates for future reuse. Given that it integrates with all popular email apps such as Gmail and Microsoft Outlook, seamlessly, this might be the perfect tool for those searching for an all-in-one lead-gen solution.
Catering to Customized Needs:
Clodura helps companies by providing customized contact lists curated based on clients’ requirements within a timeframe of 48 hours. This helps businesses in successfully reach out to those prospects who will likely drive the revenue for them. The platform’s research and verification team constantly tests the machine learning algorithms to maintain superior data accuracy and provide businesses with the most suitable sales prospects.
Understanding the Customer:
Get a deeper understanding of your customer by truly understanding their current patterns and pain points. With features like intent search, tech stack reports and more, you get to tailor your pitch as per the requirement of your prospect. When you have all the research you need at your fingertips, you are able to build relevant pitches leading to deeper customer engagement. By building your sales strategy around research-driven insights, you can establish a meaningful dialogue with your potential clients.
Finding the ideal customer who rushes to buy your product or service can be tough. A platform like Clodura could make the herculean task of sales prospecting a little easier by equipping you and your sales teams with features and tools designed to solve modern-day lead generation problems. Clodura offers free, starter, and enterprise plans for different user needs and team sizes. Explore Clodura’s pricing options here.
Everyone in sales knows that their goals have to be S.M.A.R.T. That is, Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, and Time-Bound. The keyword that we will be covering here would be “measurable.”
Without measuring the impact of your sales activities, you would be in the dark as to where your company is heading! Sales KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) allow businesses or team members to measure the performance of a sales campaign against the overall organizational goals. Further, you can use it to optimize the sales process and ensures that you are prioritizing the right set of tasks for enhanced results!
In this post, we will explore the concept of inside sales along with the inside sales metrics that will propel your business’ growth.
A Brief History of Inside Sales
Before getting into KPI for inside sales, one needs to have a robust understanding of what constitutes as “inside sales.”
Traditionally, sales were primarily divided as Inside Sales and Outside Sales. The latter comprised of on-field sales representatives, who traveled places for face-to-face sales calls and lead hunting. On the other hand, inside sales had on-premises sales agents, who played a minor role in aiding and supporting the outside sales reps.
However, with technological innovations in the field of telecommunication through telephone and later the internet, the inside sales team assumed a more proactive stance to conduct sales outreach through cold calling and cold emailing.
Soon enough, inside sales started to dominate sales, especially in B2B industries. Insides salespeople started to work directly and independently with clients and acquired the lion’s share of closed deals. Naturally, this transition called for defining inside sales KPIs to measure and monitor the progress.
The need for quantifying sales efforts have become even more crucial since the advent of remote sales. At a time when the world started to shrink and the scope of businesses expanded to a global scale, there was a need for handling and facilitating sales even without physical meetings. In this context, inside sales and remote sales metrics gained prominence, which brings us to the present – its role during the global pandemic.
The COVID-19 outbreak was a wake-up call for several businesses that were operating a traditional operation. They were now faced with a choice between “pivot” or “perish.” Such a situation accelerated the worldwide adoption of digital technologies and transformation. As per a McKinsey report, technology-driven sales interactions registered a two-fold growth! The same report also highlights that over 90% of B2B businesses have adapted to the virtual sales model.
Hence, remote selling is no longer “the future” but it is very much the present!
9 Powerful and Insightful Inside Sales Metrics
As we have seen, more and more businesses are adopting the inside sales model for various reasons ranging from cost-effectiveness to higher productivity. As a result, they should clearly define the inside sales metrics to give direction to the sales team and to measure the result of their efforts.
Following are a few standard inside sales KPIs that are worth tracking:
1. Number of Activities Completed
In the present context, inside salespeople reach out to clients and prospects in a number of ways. Hence, the first and most crucial KPI for inside sales relates to these activities.
When you count the number of activities completed, it should include the number of calls made, emails, LinkedIn emails, or text messages sent, and connections built on LinkedIn. Any other communication channel used by your company must also feature in this metric.
Why Does it Matter?
Naturally, accelerated customer outreach would unlock greater opportunities. Hence, salespeople who make more attempts for initial contact will be at a greater advantage to actually get in touch with someone!
On the other hand, a fewer number of activities could indicate low energy or burnout experienced by your sales reps. At the same time, it could also mean that they are more engaged in unproductive tasks, which is not contributing to your sales outreach. Hence, diagnosing this issue could help improve this output.
Even if these attempts at establishing connections do not result in a closed deal, they contribute towards generating interest and establishing brand presence amongst the target audience. Organizations can enhance these through sales prospecting tools, such as Clodura, which help you connect with more decision-makers with accurate contacts, emails, and direct dial numbers.
These tools allow your sales team to zip through the entire contact database without any distractions.
2. Number of Fruitful Conversations
While it makes sense to make use of an aggressive call or email outreach program, it also needs to be meaningful and smart. You cannot blindly shoot arrows in the dark!
As a result, your sales team will also have to keep a log of the following:
The number of people that responded to the call or mail
The number of connections that resulted in conversations
The position occupied by the contact (Were they the deciding authority?)
The duration of the conversation, and so on.
Keeping track of the above KPI for inside sales can offer a holistic overview of your efforts.
Why Does it Matter?
Merely meeting the quota of sending out X number of emails or placing Y number of calls does not present the full picture of where your sales activities are heading. Hence, it is equally vital to measure the remote sales metrics for determining the usefulness of the conversation.
The point of carrying out outreach campaigns is to connect with a human being and to trigger a conversation. Most importantly, it is to connect with the authorities who carry weight in all the purchase-related decisions. Hence, the “fruitfulness” of the conversation only counts when you have managed to bypass the gatekeepers and make break-throughs in the executive suites.
If the number of fruitful conversations is less, it indicates that your sales team is targeting the wrong person. It could also indicate their inability to engage with the target and achieve the desired results. Monitoring such conversations can help you identify and locate the problem areas and take remedial actions on the same.
3. Conversation Outcome
As stated, several times before, businesses are making use of a mixed bag of communication channels to contact their prospects. Hence, the sales reps must record not only the medium of communication but also the outcome of the activity. For example, they could create fields corresponding to the following outcomes:
Incorrect contact details
Meeting or demo booked
Prospect not fit/interested
Gatekeeper reached
Decision-maker contacted
Left voicemail
No response, etc.
Why Does it Matter?
Capturing the activity outcome helps businesses understand the impact of your outreach and communication efforts. It gives an overview of the subsequent results in response to every activity. Companies can use this data to train and mentor their sales team. Recognizing top performers based on these metrics can motivate the team, and using employee recognition software ensures timely and effective acknowledgment of achievements. Also, it helps to compare the performance and methodology used by each salesperson or team.
For example, Team A makes 100 calls per week, with 60 calls reaching the decision-maker. On the other hand, Team B makes 100 calls per week, out of which 70 calls reach gatekeepers or receive no response! Through this analysis, you can take measures to groom your employees and improve the ratio of the results. Furthermore, you can have Team A coach Team B on how they reach the decision-makers!
Ultimately, it is an overall win for your entire sales unit.
Most importantly, measuring this KPI for inside sales lends insight into the activities that appear to deliver results versus the ones that fail. So, if your salesperson tends to run into gatekeepers every time they make a call but manage to reach the decision-makers through mails, then you could resort to running an effective email sales campaign.
4. Reply Rates for Email & Messages
Your outreach activities pave the way for starting a dialogue with your prospect. Apart from your attempt to establish initial contact, you may also be contacted by potential prospects who would be interested in your product or service.
Either way, this form of communication would be a two-way street. Hence, your inside sales team will have to bring forth their A-game in the mix and make every message or email count. Being proactive is the best way to engage with prospects.
Your salespeople should make an effort to comprehend the customers’ requirements and keep them hooked throughout the communication. Naturally, the first and most effective way to achieve this effect would be through directly addressing their concerns, enriching every interaction with value, and responding quickly.
Next, you should also make an attempt to personalize the conversation. If you are sending out generic emails, you are making your client feel like a part of the crowd. Finally, you need to capture their interest and craft correspondences in a manner that encourages them to read your responses and reply to it. Hence, it can be seen that this act involves balancing several aspects in tandem.
Therefore, the reply rates would be a fitting KPI for inside sales in this aspect. Reply rates correspond to the average time taken by your sales team to get back to a client.
Why Does it Matter?
Your inside sales team can make your prospects feel like a priority by being available and accessible to them at all times. Make your customer feel important, and you would have won half the battle!
If your sales team takes an inordinate amount of time to respond to queries or messages from the prospect, you are inadvertently sending across a message that they are not worth your time.
On the other hand, responsiveness will establish credibility in your business and its ability to serve the customers. According to a Harvard Business Review study, salespersons who contact a lead within an hour of receiving the query are 7x more likely to engage with the decision-makers and tip the results in their favor. Hence, responding quickly to emails and messages will move them along the sales funnel, which will result in higher conversions.
5. Average Follow-up Events and Number of Touchpoints
Let’s be honest. Nobody likes to be ghosted, least of all, salespeople!
Hence, in addition to responding quickly at lightning speed, your inside sales representatives will also have to follow-up on leads that are going cold. The average follow-up events refer to the number of activities completed by the salesperson, through various touchpoints, to close the deal.
Now, what are touchpoints? Touchpoints are the channels of communications, such as emails, calls, voicemails, live conversations, etc. through which you can prospect for leads and engage them. High-growth companies register an average of 16 touchpoints per prospect for every two to four weeks!
Why Does it Matter?
Persistence is the name of the game when it comes to sales.
However, a staggering 44% of sales reps give up pursuing their prospects after a single follow-up! What’s worse is that according to a NuGrowth Solutions survey, about 92% of salespeople stop following up if they fail to make sales at the 4th touchpoint, while 60% of customers say “No” four times before making the purchase! So your sales team is this close to closing the deal before abandoning it!
At the same time, salespeople tread a thin line while following up as it is easy to over-do it and push away the prospect! It is believed that after the 8th touchpoint, the law of diminishing factor comes to effect and takes away the effectiveness of your follow-ups. So now your salespeople are focusing their energies on a dead lead, which is basically hurting your company! However, this value changes from businesses to businesses as some may need as many as 12 to 13 touchpoints before the interactions start bearing results.
Hence, there is a need to keep a close eye on these remote sales metrics and ascribe a value that best suits your industry.
6. Number of Meetings or Demos Fixed
In simple words, it is a ratio of the number of activities to the corresponding number of meetings or demos fixed.
For this metric, we are not looking at the outcome of the meeting or demo. It is simply a measure of the number of activities required, in its various forms, to bag a meeting or a demo.
Why Does it Matter?
The number of activities per booking of a meeting or demo is the ultimate KPI for inside sales that determines the productivity of your inside sales team. Almost every activity, whether it is making calls or engaging with prospects over emails, should focus on securing meetings.
By monitoring and measuring such remote sales metrics, you can get an idea of which sales rep is more effective in booking meetings. Naturally, someone who is more adept at handling this aspect should be rewarded with more leads. Conversely, someone who is struggling to secure meetings or book demos may either have to undergo training or may even be discharged from the team.
Measure the inside sales metrics by the hour, day, week, month, quarter, and year to get an overall idea of the effectiveness of your sales team. You may even discover trends and patterns that highlight the peak times corresponding to the increased demand for your product or service.
Alternatively, if you notice progressive decline or stagnation, then it is time to train your sales team to upskill the talent or adopt new remote sales strategies.
7. Number of Meetings or Demos Completed
So, you have booked an appointment and blocked your dates. It feels like a win, right?
However, there is an equally good chance that your client may not show up or be available on the day! At the same time, you may have to postpone the meeting or the demo due to legitimate reasons. It is also worth mentioning here that you may have to hold more than a single meeting or demo to convince the buyer.
Hence, you can’t merely bank on the number of appointments without factoring in the no-shows and the carryforwards. So, logging in the number of meetings or demos that your sales rep completes successfully is one of the many crucial inside sales KPIs.
The process that the salesperson follows, from the very moment when the meeting is scheduled and right until you close your pitch could make or break the deal. Thus, the interactions at this stage must also be closely monitored. A few enterprising initiatives at your end, such as issuing reminders for when the meeting is due or touching base with the client regularly, can help make it a less stressful and nerve-racking wait.
Keep an eye out for the various techniques employed by various salespersons to engage the prospects and to ensure that the meeting goes through. You may find a correlation between those who can harness their “people’s skills” with greater success. While you cannot measure soft skills, you can definitely coach your salespersons to acquire some. Train your sales reps to actively participate in the buying process by forwarding the meeting agendas, rescheduling or following up with those who have been no-shows, and having a Plan B when things go south.
Why Does it Matter?
Even though your sales rep may have scored an appointment, there is a lot that goes on in the background until the very day of the meeting or demo.
For instance, your sales rep may still have to actively work towards engaging the client and keep them interested and looking forward to the meeting. Little considerations, such as scheduling or pushing off the meeting in the distant future, that is more than 2 weeks, leaves enough room for the prospect to change their mind. Sales reps should create a sense of urgency to fast-track closing the deal. Similarly, they may have to monitor the buyer’s behavior to ensure that your competitors are not swooping in and stealing their leads!
It becomes apparent that the sales rep must keep their eyes peeled to keep a tab on the conditions and take remedial action. If at any point, your sales team senses that the lead is beginning to lose interest, then they can send them friendly reminders or follow-up to test the waters. They can also employ other tactics such as using a tool like Calendly, where the prospect can pick out a schedule as per their availability.
Hence, through this metric, you can get an idea of your sales team’s intuitive behavior and soft-skills to convince the clients to go through with the meeting.
The number of opportunities created is a measure of inflow and outflow of opportunities at the pipeline stage. It is a measure of the number of opportunities already presented to the sales rep versus the leads that they have nurtured and converted into opportunities.
Through these inside sales KPIs, your business can forecast future sales for the given month, quarter, or year, and identify the opportunities that are worth pursuing. It is also an indicator of the effectiveness of your marketing team and how capable they are in capturing prospects that suit the ideal customer profile.
Sales managers can measure this KPI to test the health of the company’s sales pipeline. Further, it plays a crucial role in resource allocation and determination of sales process outlook to capitalize on these opportunities.
Why Does it Matter?
Your sales pipeline is the lifeblood of your business. By measuring such remote sales metrics, your organization can get a granular understanding of the leakages in your existing sales process. Moreover, it is applicable to any stage of the sales process to measure its efficacy.
For example, you can record the number of opportunities created through outreach versus the total number of outreach activities. Similarly, you can test the effectiveness of your sales pitch by comparing the number of opportunities before the pitch versus the number of opportunities arising after the pitch. The same goes for your meeting or product demo, and every other sales touchpoint!
Hence, it is a fairly vital metric to carry out checks and balances at each stage of your sales process.
9. Number of Proposals Submitted
After your inside sales team has qualified the prospect to filter in the high-quality lead, it is time to send them a proposal that they can’t refuse! Do make it a point to ensure that all your proposals are relevant, to the point, and clearly states the critical information such as the pricing, deliverables, timelines, etc.
But first, the sales rep must keep a log of the number of activities, such as calls, emails, texts, meetings, etc. that they had to conduct before turning in the proposal. At the same time, companies must also maintain a record of all the proposals sent to the client, which transformed into closed deals. Both these values give birth to the proposal-related KPI for inside sales.
Why Does it Matter?
If your sales team is submitting an appreciable number of proposals, it is always a good indicator. It means that they have been successful in generating the prospects’ interest and garnered a positive response. Furthermore, it is a sign that you are connecting with your target audience, and your sales activities are heading in the right direction.
However, simply measuring the number of proposals submitted is not enough. You must also measure the impact that it has on the overall output. Compare the number of proposals submitted with the number of proposals accepted. If the ratio is too low, it could highlight the issue with your sales team’s proposal writing skills.
In this case, it would be wise to review the proposals that failed to deliver and set it side by side with the successful ones. It will make it easier to identify the red flags that may have scared off the prospect.
Wrapping it Up
As one can see, the transition towards inside sales has been taking place for decades. However, situations like the COVID-19 outbreak, the proliferation of technologies, and the employees’ desire to work remotely have accelerated the adoption of inside sales.
Naturally, as businesses venture in this realm, they will have to define inside sales KPIs to stay relevant and make the most of their remote sales activities. Further, as remote selling becomes more ubiquitous, there will be a need for an intelligent platform, like Clodura, that connects you with qualified leads, intelligently sieved according to your company’s customer-product fit.
The above KPI for inside sales is a great place for businesses to get started. However, you will eventually have to pick a perfect and balanced set of inside sales metrics that is intrinsic to your business.
According to a 2017 survey by Gallup, about 43% of Americans admitted to working remotely. Clearly, work from home models had been gaining traction even before the COVID-19 struck. Remote working allowed companies to tap into the global talent pools, harness their skills at an appropriate cost, limit expenditure on physical infrastructure, and even reduce their carbon footprint!
Thus, working from home and remote working are not hyped-up trends but sustainable adaptation in response to technology. If anything, the Coronavirus pandemic has accelerated this adoption of remote working opportunities. Thus, it is only a matter of time as we witness a behavioral change that makes remote working the new normal.
While some fields that are more open to remote working opportunities, concepts like remote sales may sound novel. Selling without meeting people face-to-face sounds like a distant, futuristic dream. Interestingly, remote selling is taking the industry by the storm!
Here is a complete guide on remote sales, along with a list of highly recommended inside sales tools that will make your task easier!
What is Remote Selling?
Remote sales, also known as inside sales or virtual sales, was first defined in the late 1990s and early 2000s to differentiate it from the practice of outside or on-field sales. Remote selling takes place when the prospect and the salesperson are not present in the same geographical location during the entire sales process.
So while you may connect with the client through various digital channels, remote sales lack the personal face-to-face interaction that is characteristic of sales.
Pros and Cons of Remote Sales
Here is a snapshot of the advantages and disadvantages of remote sales:
One of the greatest benefits of remote sales presents itself in the form of increased productivity. It cuts down on the commute times, which allows them to plan their meetings in a more efficient manner.
A great salesperson is an invaluable and irreplaceable asset to the organization. Thus, by granting them flexibility, work-life balance, and a nurturing environment, you are converting them into loyal employees, who are immune to churn.
Decreased operational overheads allow for increased cash flow along with better revenue forecasting.
According to Silent Messages by Dr. Albert Mahrabian, a salesperson utilizes 55% body language, 38% tonality, and 7% spoken words while communicating with a prospect. With physical interaction out of the picture, there is a possibility that some information gets lost during transmission. Fortunately, video conferencing tools are helping overcome this issue.
Most salespeople thrive on social fuel. Thus, cutting them off from the external world impacts their productivity and motivation as they start losing personal contact. However, building daily routines and habits can help overcome this issue. At the same time, communicating with colleagues can help overcome loneliness.
Role of Inside Sales Tools
From the above, one can gauge that there are several reasons to transition to remote sales. However, you need to make use of robust technology to emerge victorious in this ambitious endeavor.
Typically, here is a list of the basic inside sales tools that will help you with sales team management and remote selling:
Documentation and Collaborative Tools: You need to establish a collaborative platform for your sales team to share data, communicate, and handover tasks. In addition to supporting internal communication, cloud-based collaborative platforms will also contribute to sales-marketing alignment.
Sales Team Management Tools: Project management tools keep your team on track and help them in their tasks, right from prospecting to outreach. The best way to manage the sales team is through an AI-powered application like Clodura, that takes a bulk of the sales activities off your shoulders.
Instant Messaging Platforms: While emails are more professional, they are time-consuming. If you need a quicker response, try using instant messaging applications like Slack to communicate.
Productivity Tools: Time-, progress-, or performance-tracking applications, budgeting tools, calendars – all of these help in enhancing the productivity of your sales team. So keep them close.
Video Conferencing Tools: Video conferencing allows your sales team to add a touch of personalization to the remote sales process. Use it to your advantage to connect with prospects and build a rapport with them.
Learning Management Systems: The overnight transition to the digital medium can come as a culture shock to some individuals. Further, you will have to impart some amount of training and orientation to help your sales team adapt. Thus, LMS tools will help with onboarding.
10 Best Sales Prospecting Software Tools for Remote Sales Management
In the previous section, we discovered the various tools that enable remote access software for remote selling. Let us take a look at some of the best sales prospecting software tools that will help you reach your goals:
1. LinkedIn Sales Navigator
LinkedIn’s Sales Navigator is the remote sale tool for B2B companies that make use of social selling. This sales prospecting software grants users advanced search capabilities paired with highly effective and customizable filters. As a result, companies can leverage it to gain visibility and insights into their professional networks to connect with prospects.
Key Features
The paid version of the Sales Navigator offers three main account types: Professional, Team, and Enterprise. It also offers a free version with limited capabilities.
Powerful search and filtering capabilities depending on the industry, position, location, and other parameters to build high-quality leads.
InMail feature that allows you to establish contact with a LinkedIn profile holder directly. Companies using LinkedIn Sales Navigator have 20 InMails per month for professional accounts while offering 30 to 50 InMails for Team and Enterprise accounts, respectively.
It lets users save leads and create triggers to stay up to date on any industry-centric changes.
CRM integration with platforms like Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics.
Advantages
LinkedIn Sales Navigator can seamlessly integrate with other inside sales tools and customer management platforms. Thus, having a unified platform makes it easier to manage and operate.
Salespeople can conduct granular searches on the LinkedIn Sales Navigator. As a result, users can narrow down on their target leads and also identify other related connections.
Sales Navigator offers Lead Recommendations, an automated lead generation feature that saves you time by filling out the organizational pipeline with connections.
The tool adapts according to the usage frequency, making its insights more useful and accurate after every cycle. In addition to making spot-on recommendations, LinkedIn Sales Navigator also attempts to maintain a fresh and up to date database so you will no longer have to face bad data.
It also allows you to grow your network and connect with individuals who are outside of your direct work network.
2. Clodura
Clodura is a B2B sales prospecting platform that harnesses the power of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning to ensure that your pipeline is brimming with high-quality leads. It is a comprehensive platform for lead generation, sales intelligence, and sales sequences. Since Clodura is a fully SaaS platform, it makes insightful sales data available to every member of the remote selling team without any need for installation. The software offers a free 7-day trial.
Key Features
Clodura offers Standard and Professional accounts, with monthly and annual pricing plans.
It grants global coverage that offers companies access to over 200 million verified contacts, emails, and 90 million direct dials.
Custom sales triggers based on 25 sales intelligence filters allowing you to set up granular level alerts and capitalize more sales.
REAL-TIME INTELLIGENCE BY CLODURA ON 25+ BUYING POINTS
Helps increase sales and revenue by capturing sales-ready leads.
Conference attendee tracking, technographics, install-base data, real-time sales intelligence triggers, anti-spam email campaign manager, company recommendation engine, and other such features help in generating more meetings and build a sales pipeline.
Advantages
Clodura offers a 95% accuracy with regards to contact data, emails & direct dials, helping businesses connect with the key decision-makers.
This feature-rich sales prospecting software allows you to get sales opportunity triggers, actionable sales intelligence, recommendation on similar companies on the basis of 25 vital buying signals.
Clodura offers technographic information on the user install base of over 15000 software and hardware technologies for hyper-targeted campaigns.
Clodura lets you running effective email sequences, follow-ups to ensure maximum replies and more meetings.
Clodura’s unique ability to bypass spam filters and data accuracy allow you to hit the bull’s eye on every occasion.
3. CrunchBase
CrunchBase is an open, online database that hosts a wealth of information on entrepreneurs, investors, salespeople, and other professionals. Individuals can make submissions on CrunchBase to register their company details. It allows users to conduct competitive and market research on private companies.
Key Features
CrunchBase offers CrunchBase Basic Free and CrunchBase Pro accounts. The former offers only five viewable results, while CrunchBase Pro allows unlimited access.
It contains detailed firmographic data and M&A to gain insights into the company and its interests.
Feature-based advanced filtering options to sort, save and download search results and related reports. The “Trending” section suggests companies that fall into your search categories.
Conduct profile-based searches to find investors and board members.
Use the “My Follow” feature to add companies and individuals to this list. Further, the daily newsletter keeps you up to date on industry updates and tech news.
Advantages
Its user-friendly interface allows for quick and easy navigation based on various data points.
It contains up to date information on any funding, mergers, and acquisitions, which may help identify any sales triggers.
Apart from aiding sales efforts, marketers can also make use of CrunchBase to build brand awareness and credibility.
In addition to generating and prospecting leads, CrunchBase also helps in establishing a professional network.
Company profiles contain external links to websites and official profiles of the company.
4. Owler
Owler is a business portal that offers community-based industrial insights. In addition to delivering the latest news and updates, Owler allows businesses to scope out their prospects before contacting them.
Key Features
It has a customizable user dashboard for users to set customized alerts and follow companies.
The Weekly Showdown feature offers insights into your Owler usage and how it fares against your competitors.
Daily Snapshot feature keeps the user up to date on any news, events, or updates in their area of interest.
Instant Insights issues emails to the users in case of any trigger events, such as leadership change, funding rounds, acquisition, etc. occur.
Its Competitive Graph visually maps out the relationship between vendors and companies.
Advantages
Intuitive and user-friendly interface that makes it easier to locate company data and relevant information.
Email alerts allow companies to capitalize on any low-hanging opportunities in real-time. Plus, they only send limited emails.
In addition to sourcing company details, it also offers excellent competitor analysis.
Apart from the target company personality assessment, Owler makes recommendations on the channels of communication.
5. Calendly
While managing remote sales, you may have to keep track of following up on prospects and maintaining a meeting schedule. Calendly is your personal assistant that can record, organize, and maintain this information.
Key Features
Calendly offers automated scheduling and synchronization of events with your calendar.
Dedicated URL to facilitate appointment booking. Salespeople can easily share calendars with prospects to schedule appointments as per their preferences. Plus, it also shares relevant documents, remote meeting links, and links to accept business cards.
It sends out text messages and email reminders regarding any upcoming meetings. Plus, users also get alerts on meeting status in case it is rescheduled or canceled.
Calendly enjoys easy integration with other tools such as Google Calendar, Zoom, etc.
Advantages
Sales representatives can share their calendar availability with prospects without exposing any private events.
Sharing Calendly links with prospects offers them the chance to book an appointment as per their availability, which enhances customer relationships.
Since remote selling can pose timezone issues, Calendly addresses it by updating the time zone automatically.
Allows salespeople to issue follow up notes, surveys, and questionnaires to attendees, which enables post-meeting analysis and future agenda formulation.
6. Mailtrack
As the name suggests, Mailtrack offers email tracking facilities for Gmail and Google Inbox. Companies can use it to test whether their emails have been read. It is a highly effective productivity tool that lets you assess your email sales and marketing strategies.
Key Features
Mailtrack offers a free and a Pro version.
It offers quick and real-time event-based notification regarding whether your email has been opened or not.
Users get to know how many times their mail has been opened.
Mailtrack comes with an equally useful Google Chrome extension that offers updates within seconds.
Advantages
Mailtrack has a clean, no-frills user interface that uses green ticks to indicate whether the email has been opened or not.
Users do not have to download any software or application to activate Mailtrack as they can install the Mailtrack Chrome extension that does the job.
Depending on the updates offered by Mailtrack, sales and marketing teams can decide the further course of action. They no longer have to cold call prospects to know whether their mail has been opened or otherwise.
Receivers who open your emails could be your future customers.
7. Boomerang
Boomerang is an email productivity application available for Gmail users. It sends out real-time notifications to the sender upon the opening of their emails. Sales professionals use Boomerang for campaign management during remote selling.
Key Features
It allows users to postpone sending of emails, schedule reminders, snooze emails, and track emails that have already been sent.
Email stat updates that give users critical information every 10 minutes.
Boomerang users can pause the arrival of new emails and receive alerts when the recipient does not reply or opts out of receiving communications.
AI-powered features allow salespeople to respond and take actions depending on the recipient’s response.
Advantages
Users can schedule emails for a future time or date rather than sending them in real-time. This facility is vital when working across timezones.
You do not have to install any software or tools to use Boomerang.
The Boomerang extension is available for Google Chrome, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, and Safari.
It works effortlessly for Gmail and GSuite account holders.
8. Microsoft Office Teams
Microsoft Teams is a cloud-based business communication app from tech-giant Microsoft. It makes it easier for virtual teams to collaborate with each other in the Office 365 environment. Microsoft Office Teams facilitates group messaging, conferencing, and file sharing.
Key Features
Microsoft Office Teams offers a tiered subscription plan as Business, Business Essentials, Business Premium, and E3 (for enterprises).
Users can schedule a video or audio meeting with an entire team or with a single employee. Video conference comes with facilities like screen sharing, call recording, live captions, and instant messaging.
Microsoft Teams administrators can create webinars or large-scale events that admit 10,000 participants.
Companies can create different teams for dedicated processes, such as sales, marketing, etc.
Advantages
Microsoft Office Teams offers complete administrative control over the channel and groups.
The mobile application for Teams is as effective as the desktop application, making it suitable for users to attend meetings while on the go.
It offers top-notch security features such as multi-factor authentication, end-to-end encryption, and HIPAA-compliance.
Microsoft Office Teams enjoys seamless integration with the complete Microsoft ecosystem.
It comes with an easy screen-sharing facility that allows users to share their entire screen or only a specific application.
9. CallHippo
CallHippo is a VoIP-based (Voice over Internet Protocol-based) virtual phone system. Companies can make use of CallHippo to establish local, toll-free numbers for customers to contact the organization.
Key Features
It offers a Basic Free version along with a Bronze, Silver, and Platinum subscription packs.
Companies can gain access to local or toll-free numbers in more than 50+ countries around the world.
CallHippo offers a blended call center, which connects salespeople with customers, and also team members with each other.
It comes with a wide range of features such as call forwarding, call transfer, hold music, ring all, voicemail, call analytics, etc. Call recording acts as records for historical data on prospects.
One does not have to download or install any application for CallHippo, as companies can use it directly from their browser.
Advantages
Since other employees can collaborate and access call records, sales managers can follow a data-driven approach while prospecting and strategizing.
Real-time caller details allow salespeople to be better-prepared at managing and handling calls.
Companies can integrate it with their CRM and other sales prospecting software.
Organizations can add credits to their CallHippo accounts, depending on their business requirements, which makes it suitable even for cash-strapped businesses.
CallHippo offers excellent voice quality along with robust customer support.
10. Zoom
Zoom has emerged as everyone’s go-to platform for video conferencing during remote sales. The cloud-based solution offering stability and reliability makes sales-marketing or inter-team collaboration easier.
Key Features
Zoom is available in the Basic Free version as well as the paid PRO version.
Its electronic hand-raising feature that allows users to request their turn for speaking during the meeting.
Zoom has recently rolled out the background blur feature to prevent any Zoom bombings.
It offers a waiting room for attendees if they attend the meeting before it has started.
Users can choose between dedicated Meeting IDs or share personal Zoom IDs to schedule video meetings.
It comes loaded with useful features such as screen sharing, record meetings, presentation tools, on-demand webcasting, and scheduling.
Advantages
Zoom overcomes buffering issues and makes automatic adjustments in two-way communication so that users can enjoy a smooth experience.
In addition to contacting prospects and engaging with them, companies can use Zoom for internal training purposes, giving pet-talks to teams, or simply replicating their digital water cooler and having a fun time bonding with each other.
Zoom invitations also contain your company details such as your name, designation, and the dial-in number. As a result, the invitees can directly contact you before, during, or after the meetings.
Salespeople can conduct polls, live Q&A sessions, live stream content, and even record videos on Zoom to ensure prospect engagement.
Wrapping it Up
While remote sales may make sense in the current scenario, it also becomes clear that it will support sustained, long-term growth for the organization. Hence, now is a good time to transition to a digital medium and invest in a few useful sales prospecting software.
The inside sales tools list presented above is the best place to get started. Training your employees to tap into various remote selling opportunities will prepare them for the future in digital sales! Once your sales team adapts to the change, it is only a matter of accelerating these activities to register exponential growth!
So go ahead and up your remote sales game with these cutting-edge tools!
Popularity and consumption of podcasts continue to grow year-over-year in the United States of America according to the Infinite Dial 2020® study from Edison ResearchandTriton Digital. A whopping 55% of Americans, that is 155 million Americans have ever listened to a podcast according to the study in 2020.
The reason behind the growing popularity of podcasts is the format itself. Podcasts allow listeners to multitask while listening to it. Listeners can indulge in a podcast of their choice while carrying on their usual routine activities like commuting, cooking, working, or exercising. The available choices for topics of podcasts today are vast enough to cover almost any topic imaginable. News, Stories, Tech, Art, Education, Spirituality, Sports, and the list can go on… But you will most likely always find that podcast that fits your choice. For sales professionals, this is good news indeed! They have a plethora of worthy choices for sales podcasts at their disposal. Sales professionals can now keep learning, upgrade their skills, stay motivated, and stay abreast of new sales technologies & latest news by subscribing and listening to podcasts any time of the day.
Let us have a look at the best sales podcasts which every sales professional must subscribe & listen to.
About: Sales Babble is a sales podcast that shares Selling Secrets for Non-sellers. You can learn sales for startups, business development, cold calling, prospecting, closing and referral selling by subscribing to Sales Babble by Pat Helmers. If you’re a sales rep, account executive, SDR, BDR or even a sales manager, Sales Babble is your best 30 minute investment each week.
About: Modern Sales helps client services professionals sell more services to big companies. Every week, you’ll get an episode that covers a topic that’ll change the way you think about selling, and give you ACTIONABLE insights you can apply the next day at work. Occasionally the show features series of guests that shed led on one of these three big questions: * How do people and companies make buying decisions? * What’s the most effective and ethical way to sell? * What’s the best way to help others improve their selling capabilities?
About: The B2B Sales Podcast is a bi-weekly show where Ara & Thibaut interview thought leaders, experts and top-performers in B2B sales. Their goal is to help B2B tech founders and sales people discovering new tactics and implementing them within their sales organisations.
About: In this podcast, Author, speaker, and business consultant, Victor Antonio discusses how people buy by using the latest studies in consumer behavior and neuroscience to sell more effectively.
About: Institute for Excellence in Sales Co-founder and President Fred Diamond interviews top business-to-business sales leaders about their sales journey, career highlights, mentors, and lessons learned while asking them to offer tips to help emerging sales professionals and leaders to grow their careers. It’s a great podcast for sales leaders, young sales professionals and anyone who sells to subscribe to. Great stories, implementable tips and powerful lessons.
About: Creator of the Sales Success Stories Podcast, Scott Ingram brings to you a podcast for B2B sales professionals featuring a new tip every day, 7 days a week. All tips will be 5-10 minutes or less so that you can binge through a week’s worth of tips in less than an hour.
About: This podcast will help you become an Exceptional Sales Leader. It will guide you in developing a highly functioning & highly engaged team and driving consistent, sustainable and replicable results.
About: The Sales Lift is a podcast for revenue leaders ready to scale. Revenue leaders are founders, executives & managers responsible for the bottom line and creating a repeatable sales system. Listen as Tyler Lindley talks to thought leaders in marketing, sales, and customer success to give you actionable strategies to drive your revenue engine forward.
About: Scale Your Sales is a weekly podcast by Janice B Gordon, dedicated to learning from amazing experts to help you on your sales journey to scale your sales. Janice interviews Strategic Sales Experts and Influencers. So if you are looking for a lively debate and conversation with proven sales know-how on what’s changing in strategic sales and driving buyer behaviors’ then you are on the right podcast.
About: Tune in to INSIDE Inside Sales with Darryl Praill for actionable strategies and tactics from top sales experts to increase your sales development success. Darryl has unscripted conversations with the leading sales experts, from veteran sales pros to the newest rising stars. If you’re looking for lively debate, spirited conversations, and proven sales know-how, you’ve come to the right podcast.
About: SalesPro weekly podcast brings you tips and ideas to improve your lead generation and sales. Tune in each week for great content and interesting interviews with those at the top of their game in sales.
About: ‘Your Daily Dose Of The Deej’ from Dan Jourdan AKA The Sales Energizer gives you real life examples, practical skills and training expertise that will help generate an incredible pipeline of profitable new clients. Dan gives you the fundamental steps in order to determine the difference between the $30,000 salesperson and the $300,000 sales person – it is just the implementation of a few tools, learnable skills, and some special secrets available to you in this podcast.
About: Every week join Dr. Connor Robertson on “The Prospecting Show” where he interviews small business owners, salespeople and health professionals who excel in their field. If you are looking to hone your message, reach your perfect audience, and explain what you do, this is the podcast for you.
About: Explore the dynamic world of elite B2B sales enablement professionals who support solution sellers at scale while running sales enablement as a strategic function to the C-Suite. Discover the winning mindsets, strategies, and executable insights sales enablement leaders follow to elevate their role and function to simplify sales conversations. Engage with other listeners looking to evolve their function to commercial enablement, talent enablement, message enablement, pipeline enablement, or organizational enablement.
About: The Catalyst Sale Podcast is a weekly podcast to discuss real stories with practical application, in the context of B2B Sales. Other topics discussed include – Sales Strategy, Revenue Operations, Training, Onboarding, Sales Enablement, Organization Enablement, Workforce Development, and Execution.
About: The Salesman Podcast is the world’s most downloaded B2B sales and selling podcast. Will Barron interviews the world’s leading influence, body language, psychology and sales experts to give you the information YOU need to close more deals and make. The Salesman Podcast reaches 20,000+ sales professionals per episode and is a Top 100 iTunes Business Podcast. The show has also been awarded the title of New & Noteworthy by iTunes and gets over 500,000 monthly downloads.
About: How to best contact your prospects? In this podcast, Jeff and CeCe break down the rules of outreach when it comes to calling cell phones, all the way to knowing when to mention you both went to the same college.
About: A seasoned sales guru with decades of success behind her, Nikki Rausch has a passion for the art of selling – and it shows. The founder and CEO of “Sales Maven”, an organization dedicated to authentic selling, Nikki has the unique ability to transform the misunderstood process of “selling”. With over 25 years of success selling to such prestigious organization as The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Hewlett-Packard, and NASA, Nikki shattered sales records in many industries, receiving multiple “top producer” awards along the way. Today, solopreneurs, entrepreneurs, and business owners hire Nikki to show them how to sell successfully and authentically, without being pushy or “salesy.”
About: The Sales Gravy Podcast has been described as “passionate, motivating, and essential for Sales Professionals and leaders who want to win and win big!” Jeb Blount is the bestselling author of People Buy You.
About:The Sales Evangelist is a podcast designed to help new and struggling sellers find more ideal customers, build stronger value and close more deals. Donald produces 5 episodes per week ranging from 10-30 mins. The Show is apart of the Sales Podcast Network.
About:Sales Hacker is the leading community for modern sales professionals, and this podcast is an extension of that. When you subscribe to this show, you’ll get access to the latest sales tips, tactics, and strategies from thought leaders and practitioners. As a host of The Sales Hacker Podcast, Sam conducts interviews and discussions with leading sales practitioners from high growth companies around the world.
About:From quick tips to interviews and discussions, host Julien Recoussine guides you to better client conversations and a smart strategic approach to put the wind in your sales. Julien gives an insight into how to leverage psychology and science in interpersonal communications, which is crucial to selling effectively.
About: The sales podcast is designed to help you sell more effectively and with more confidence. If you are looking for actionable, practical, and easy to implement strategies that will increase your sales skills then you’re in the right place.
About:This podcast features the brightest minds in B2B sales and marketing, sharing secrets to driving greater volume, velocity and conversion of sales pipelines in any industry. Topics cover the entire pipeline– demand generation, lead management, sales effectiveness, technology and more– all focused on helping you find, manage and win more business.
About:In Between Sales Calls is your quick listen for a sales podcast that’s packed full of proven sales methods and techniques to help sharpen your sales skills. Throughout these episodes, Derek Shebby shares his firsthand experience of over 16 years in the sales field.
About:The Sales Prospecting School podcast is hosted by John and Ted Stevenot. This is a weekly podcast that focuses on helping individuals and companies free themselves from obscurity and start generating leads. Topics covered are cold calling, email marketing, direct mail, SEO, PPC, social media, marketing automation, and more.
About:Outside Sales Talk is a podcast dedicated to helping Outside Salespeople improve their skills, reach peak performance and crush their quota. Steve interviews top leaders and experts in Outside Sales and pick their brain on the strategies and tactics that have made them successful. In each episode, you’ll
In B2B sales, there is very little scope to play it by ear.
Every action, every decision, and every plan must rest on a well-defined and well thought out process. In fact, a Harvard Business Review study highlighted that companies that define and follow a formal sales process register an 18% increase in revenue growth.
So now is a good time as any to get your B2B sales processes organized.
Several activities form the backbone of a sales process. However, sales pipeline creation and maintenance are among the foremost and most crucial aspects worth addressing first. A successful B2B business rests on the foundation of effective sales pipeline management. It is a tried and tested organizational strategy that can put your business on the fast-track to success!
Hence, unsurprisingly, a study conducted by Vantage Point highlighted how 72% of sales managers conduct sales pipeline review meetings several times a month. Naturally, such review meetings can only bear fruit when your staff has a clear understanding of the sales pipeline and the B2B sales pipeline stages that are intrinsic to your business.
Therefore, to aid you in this quest, here is an elaborate guide on sales pipeline, sales pipeline stages(with example), and the best practices for sales pipeline optimization.
So, without any further ado, let’s get started!
What is a Sales Pipeline?
In simple words, the sales pipeline involves the systematic mapping of a prospect with respect to their position within your sales process. It gives you an insight into the number of open deals available and prioritizes the ones that call for immediate attention. Using these inputs, the sales team is capable of meeting their quota and delivering appreciable results.
On the other hand, B2B sales pipeline stages are a visual representation of the steps that a prospect clears to transition from a lead to a customer.
A sales pipeline eliminates the need for any guesswork required in driving your sales process. It offers a data-driven overview of the effectiveness of your sales process and the sales team. A clearly-defined sales pipeline will:
How is Sales Pipeline Different From Sales Funnel?
At first glance, Sales Pipeline and Funnel may appear similar. However, they differ from each other based on extremely minute details.
A sales pipeline is typically represented by a straight pipe indicating the flow of different stages of the sales processes. As a result, it marks the customer journey as leads learn about your company, enter your sales process, and losslessly become paying customers. Thus, it is a blueprint outlining the various steps that your sales team must follow while qualifying leads to subsequently closing deals.
On the other hand, the sales funnel is denoted by an inverted pyramid representing the number of prospects advancing through the sales pipeline. It operates on the assumption that the volume of prospects that your salespeople will work on will progressively decrease at every B2B sales pipeline stages as the sales process continues. Therefore, it fortifies the belief that salespeople require 3x as many prospects at the mouth of the funnel as they may need at the bottom.
In simpler terms, you can say that a sales pipeline is an idea or a hypothetical situation, where there are minimal to none losses. On the other hand, the sales funnel is a more practical approach as it represents the loss of prospects along the sales process.
However, the sales funnel does not necessarily have to hold a funnel shape. Some sales experts also suggest that a wide-brimmed champagne glass would be a better metaphorical representation of the sales “funnel.”
The idea is supported by the fact that successful sales rep have a 1.25 to 1.5 times the ratio of opportunities to deals within the sales pipeline. In their case, the drop off takes only at the qualification stage of the sales pipeline phases.
Hence, if you have a set of skilled and well-trained sales representatives, who are given a set of cutting-edge sales intelligence tools like Clodura, you can expect better sales pipeline and funnel alignment.
For most B2B businesses, a pipeline is a lifeline.
Here is a quick overview of why sales pipeline must be given the importance that it truly deserves:
According to Harvard Business Review, companies with effective pipeline management witness an average growth rate of 5.3, which is a 15% increase.
The same study also highlighted that companies with well-defined sales pipeline phases register a 28% increase in their revenue growth.
It allows companies to review the individual performance of their sales representatives and the overall performance of the whole team. Therefore, they can use it to forecast the 30, 60, and 90-day revenue generation projections.
By mapping the position of a prospect against the B2B sales pipeline stages, companies can carry out targeted resource allocation. Further, it enhances sales team performance through hands-on management.
In addition to revenue projections, sales pipeline analysis can highlight the bottlenecks within the sales process that are stagnating the flow of your deal velocity.
B2B Sales Pipeline Stages: A Systematic Breakdown
Typically, sales pipeline stages are a reflection of your sales process. However, there are a few core principles that define a healthy sales pipeline and remain consistent across all business and sales models. So, implementing a standardized B2B sales pipeline stages and refining it according to your business requirements is one of the best places to get started.
Here are the typical sales pipeline stages that every sales pipeline must include:
1. Prospecting
Naturally, you need to fill your sales pipeline with prospects for it to be effective. Hence, [sales prospecting] (The Complete Guide to Successful B2B Sales Prospecting – Steps, Methods, Tools & Tips) is one of the first sales pipeline phases.
In this B2B sales pipeline stage, the sales representative carries out the preliminary research on the people or businesses that would be interested in purchasing your product or service. From creating a buyer’s persona to rounding up the target audiences – this stage allows you to feed the best prospects into your sales pipeline.
For those looking for the prospecting sales pipeline stages example, here is a list of the activities involved:
Creation of an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP)
The quality of leads entering your sales pipeline will determine the accuracy of your revenue predictions and the efficacy of your sales process. Hence, you need to create a persona of your ideal client based on key demographic factors such as industry, geographic location, profession, budget, etc.
Through tools like Clodura, companies can search their customer and prospect details to filter in the prospects that share common traits with your Ideal Customer Profile. It also offers you insights into the various channels that supply high-quality leads to your sales pipeline.
Lead Generation
While prospecting follows a one-on-one approach, lead generation will allow you to adopt a one-to-many model to improve your prospecting efforts. It makes use of your ICP to add a broad set of prospects to your sales pipeline. Inbound lead generation is also more effective since it allows you to reach out to warm inbound leads that are already checking out your offerings.
Common techniques for lead generation includes capturing visitor data through websites, webinars, advertisements, social media posts, and email campaigns.
Sales Outreach
Defining and searching for prospects is not a one-off task. Your sales team needs to inculcate it as a habit and dedicate a set amount of time daily for prospecting. Prospecting techniques include cold calling or warm calling, cold emailing, events and webinars, and referrals.
2. Qualification
After you have filtered in your prospects, it is time to see if the leads are ready for sales engagement. Only 27% of B2B leads are sales-ready. Therefore, lead qualification is one of the most crucial B2B sales pipeline stages in identifying these leads. In this stage of the sales pipeline, your sales rep can determine whether the lead is capable of converting into a paying, long-term, and satisfied customer.
Efficient lead qualification saves your bottom line and your sales teams’ time. They can make a smart allocation of resources depending on the value and state of a lead.
The qualification sales pipeline phase involves the following activities:
Research
Now that you have shortlisted the prospects, you need to fill out all the details that might be missing in your database. Make use of platforms like LinkedIn to check on your lead, their industrial background, their pain points, their existing solutions, etc.
You may also make use of a lead scoring technique to assign points to assess their sales-readiness. As a result, you can ascribe priority and capitalize on the low hanging fruits before moving on to the leads that need more time.
Qualifying Leads Through a Framework
Lead qualification frameworks, like BANT, are a quick and straightforward strategy to locate the prospects that are worth your time and effort. The BANT framework was conceived by IBM and is an acronym for:
Budget: Do they have the budget to purchase your product or solution?
Authority: Do they possess the authority to make purchase decisions?
Need: Does the prospect need your product or service to solve their problem?
Timeline: When does the prospect intend to buy?
These qualifiers can help you assess whether the prospect is fit for your business and sales-ready or otherwise.
Engage
Sometimes, the lead may need to be nurtured to make them sales-ready. Your sales team can achieve this goal by amping up their marketing efforts and engaging with them. Directly approaching them could also give you an insight into what may be holding them back from going ahead with the purchase.
Ensure that every contact extracts and adds value to all the information you already have on your lead. Conversing with your leads may also push them along your sales pipeline. However, understanding their pain points and in-depth knowledge of your product/service is a pre-requisite to initiating contact.
3. Proposal
If your lead has made it through to the proposal stage, they have cleared the toughest of the typical sales pipeline stages. In this stage of your B2B sales pipeline, you ask your well-qualified lead to become your customer, a process that often requires strong sales contract management to ensure all terms are clearly defined and mutually agreed upon.
Sales reps forward the proposal when they notice sales triggers indicating that a lead is ready to buy. A standard proposal contains the key details such as what your company offers, the price at which these products/services are available, and the period for which it will be supplied.
You may also put forth your business proposal through a live demo, a face-to-face meeting, call, or even chat. According to research conducted by the University of Minnesota, proposals containing visual aids are 43% more likely to convince your customer.
Here are a few more tips and best practices to maximize your chances of getting your proposal signed:
Use a standard proposal template to expedite the time taken to forward it. However, put in the effort to customize the proposal for the lead.
Keep the proposal short but loaded with crucial information.
Stick to simplicity rather than including complex language or jargon in your proposal.
Follow a customer-centric approach to pitch your product/service as a solution to their pain points.
Create a tiered pricing package for varying business requirements and list these from highest to lowest.
Include an FAQ section to address common queries.
Detail the next line of action, the steps to take, timeline, etc. to keep the process moving.
Ask for a sale.
Remember, while it may feel that you have reached the final stage of your sales process, even the slightest of details can derail your efforts. Such a curveball brings us to the next phase of the B2B sales pipeline stages – Negotiation.
4. Negotiation
Negotiation may seem like one of the most vicious sales pipeline phases in your sales process. However, it is not the time to lose hope just as yet! It is rare for the first proposal to get approved without a hitch.
It takes an average of 84 days of pursuing a lead to convert them into customers. So you may just be on your 82nd or 83rd day, which is basically inches away from success!
To stand the test of negotiation, your salespersons can employ the following tactics:
Planning and preparing for the negotiation even before the offers start doing their rounds.
Allowing the prospect to speak first so that you do not offer more than what is required to close the deal. However, lead the negotiation from the front.
Reading between the lines to understand the sales objections and addressing them to keep the conversation flowing.
Creating a sense of urgency by offering attractive, limited-time concessions. However, avoid giving a range and stick to defined figures.
Building value for the product by offering solutions apart from discounts.
Developing mutual trust and respect by asking for an equivalent trade in lieu of a concession.
Keeping the conversation light-hearted and lively to establish an amicable environment for negotiation. In doing so, you can develop a rapport with the client.
Reviewing and creating a new contract only after all the rounds of negotiation are over.
Walking away if the demands are unprofitable or unrealistic for the company.
5. Closing
Now that both parties have agreed on the final proposal, it is time to sign the dotted line!
However, even at this crucial B2B sales pipeline stage, the deal could go either way – the lead converts into a customer, or they hold off the purchase for some reason, making it essential to apply the best closing techniques effectively.
After successfully closing the deal, here are a few ways through which you can follow up on your new customer:
Send them a polite “Thank You” message (or a hand-written note for a more personal touch) immediately after closing the deal.
Offer post-sale customer support such as training or onboarding to get them up and running in no time.
Follow up on the customer after 15 to 30 days of purchasing the product to accept their feedback and to check on their user experience.
As you can see, it is not only about acquiring a customer and closing a deal. Sales also include building a memorable customer purchase journey and nurturing happy, satisfied customers.
If you were unable to close the deal for some reason, you can once again qualify the lead and assess where they stand as a prospect. Refeeding them into the intermediate B2B sales pipeline stages could also be a smart move.
Here are a few ways to stay visible to these leads without getting on their nerves:
Follow up with the lead and check in on them to nurture personal relationships.
Review the content of your previous interactions, such as mails, presentation materials, and call recordings, to decipher where you may have committed a mistake.
Encourage the lead to share feedback regarding what they enjoyed with the sales approach and what could be improved.
6. Retention
Customer retention is one of those typical sales pipeline stages that companies may skip or forget to prioritize.
You need to ensure that you keep your new and old customers even after closing a deal. Considering that 20% of your existing customer base will contribute to 80% of your profits, you need to keep your customers happy!
Therefore, customer retention should be a fitting end to your sales pipeline. It grants you the following benefits:
Your customers will emerge as brand loyalists and advocates.
Engaged customers are more likely to purchase add-ons and additional services.
Positive brand engagement improves your brand positioning.
Feedback collected from your clients will improve your product/service, business model, or sales process.
Increased ROI and an improved bottom line even after making the sale.
Pro Tips on Sales Pipeline Stages Best Practices
After incorporating the above sales pipeline stages example, you need to develop a discipline that standardizes and revolves around tracking the progress along the B2B sales pipeline stages.
For this purpose, here are a few sales pipeline stages best practices that sales managers can implement to use your sales pipeline better:
Inspect your sales pipeline periodically and conduct regular reviews with the sales rep to identify the opportunities and obstacles that are present within the pipeline.
Collaborate with the salespeople to check the status of the prospects within the pipeline, and the inputs or resources required to keep them moving.
Prioritize active leads and remove the stagnant leads. You may not necessarily eliminate them from your sales process, but it would be smarter to store them away from the high-potential leads to avoid any distractions.
Follow up and check on the promising leads to stay on top of their minds.
Measure all the KPIs that will allow you to evaluate the results and performance of your sales team. Typically, the key metrics worth monitoring is sales velocity, sales close-ratio, lead response times, leads-to-qualified leads ratio, deal fallout, etc.
Make use of high-tech tools and platforms to automate non-sales related activities and minimize redundancy.
Analyze the data generated by the different B2B sales pipeline stages to make data-driven decisions and changes.
Optimize and streamline your sales pipeline to keep your sales cycle short. Implement active management to keep the prospects moving through the pipeline.
Continue feeding high-quality prospects into your sales pipeline to maintain a steady flow of leads.
Final Thoughts
A sales pipeline is an excellent tool to visualize your business’ sales process. Clearly defining each stage of the sales pipeline will make it easier for your sales team to deliver results.
Now that you understand the six main B2B sales pipeline stages, you can implement a robust strategy to seek out prospects and close more deals. Once these typical sales pipeline stages have gained traction, you can build your own custom sales pipeline, depending on the feedback you receive and the results that you observe. Finally, make it a point to refine and maintain your sales pipeline to avoid sales stagnation.
To learn how Clodura can streamline and add value to your sales pipeline, sign up for a free, personalized demo.
Pipeline management is one of the most daunting aspects of the job of a sales leader.
In the past, communication only took place through phone, snail-mail, and in-person meetings. Cold calling was the strongest tool in your sales arsenal.
In the last decade, sales reps could get through to prospects on the phone in about 1-4 attempts. Today, the same process takes at least eight tries to reach out and get through to a prospective buyer on the phone.
While the role of a sales leader is crucial, they usually don’t get to from prospective buyers until when they are almost ready or about to buy. It takes tremendous fortitude and tenacity on the part of the sales leader to track potential leads. Not to mention that the jargon in the industry has metamorphosed to become much more complex. For the sake of this post, we’ll take a look at the concepts that form the crux of the article to understand how to manage your sales pipeline more effectively.
Sales pipeline: Conventionally, a sales pipeline was known as the stages that a prospect had to pass through in their buyer journey from prospect to customer. The sales reps were the ones responsible for facilitating this process. Sales personnel also referred to the term sales pipeline as simply pipeline and defined it as the monetary value current leads would yield after they moved through the different stages of a pipeline. While it’s a fine term to use to describe the dollar value of prospects, sales forecasting is a more appropriate way to refer to the potential revenue in your sales pipeline.
Sales funnel: A sales funnel is a series of stages that a prospective buyer passes across in their journey from prospect to customer. The sales funnel is often confused for a sales pipeline. However, they are very different concepts, and the stages in a sales funnel are markedly distinct from the pipeline, with the prospect being the one in control of how they choose to move across those stages.
Sales process: A sales process is the procedure of helping prospects move through the sales pipeline. The sales process is not to be confused for having stages as it doesn’t contain any. It is a process of specific actions undertaken by the sales reps at various touchpoints to convert a prospect to a customer.
The greater control you can wrest with your sales pipeline, the better visibility you will have, and the more revenue you will be able to bring in. In fact, the number of opportunities in a sales pipeline was directly linked to revenue health. The greater the number of opportunities that a business has in its pipeline, the more probability it has to achieve or surpass its revenue goals.
Your sales pipeline is the difference between a regular deal flow and a challenging quarter. According to statistics from a Hubspot study, only 22% of businesses are happy with their conversion rates.
Sales pipeline management is the fulcrum that balances your sales team and helps you determine their performance over a period. Apart from that, it also aids you in forecasting the amount of revenue that you could bring in a specific quarter. Companies that implement sales pipeline management, especially in the initial stages, should move from the start to the end so that they can build meaningful relationships with customers and to grow their sales substantially.
Sales pipeline management is such an effective process that almost 72% of sales leaders or managers have claimed to host sales pipeline review meetings sporadically every 30 days.
The conclusion derived from this is thus: effective sales 0ppipeline management is essential for any business as it helps them increase revenue. In fact, a Harvard Business Review report found out that companies with strong pipeline management practices rated their YoY increase in revenue as 5.3 (on a scale of 1 to 7), registering a 15% increase over companies who didn’t have effective pipeline management practices. What’s more interesting is that organizations who kept an even pulse on the following pipeline practices saw 28% increased revenue. These practices are:
Defining a clear sales process
Spending time reviewing the process and modifying it
Coaching sales leaders and managers on pipeline strategies
Effective sales pipeline management is about continually rehashing the entire process itself, and improving the skills of your sales reps. Your whole aim should be to facilitate the expeditious movement of the pipeline from one stage to the next, and, of course, to convert deals and close sales.
A well-managed sales pipeline allows your sales team to locate sales opportunities that are still open that are at the risk of withering away while also concentrating on their existing opportunities. It aids them in singling out their challenges and have a resolution strategy ready for them at each stage of the sales funnel, helping them generate revenue in a more expected manner over the course of a quarter.
It is also a great method of organizing your sales process and mobilizing your sales team, making them more efficient as a result. There are a host of ways to formulating a healthy sales pipeline to capitalize on potential leads, all the while monitoring leads that have to be warmed up in order to be converted. You have to perform a bona fide analysis of how healthy your current pipeline is before you can take measures to make it better. Here, we’ll look at how you can build and manage your sales pipeline from scratch while ensuring a perpetual flow of high-quality opportunities.
Sales Pipeline vs. Sales Funnel vs. Sales Forecast: What’s the Difference?
Consider a scenario with a client where they ask if the difference between a sales pipeline, sales funnel and a sales forecast matters at all or not. The obvious answer is that, while salespersons may use these terms words interchangeably, the distinction between them matters because they have to do with varying perspectives. To help you understand these terms better and what they entail, here is a brief rundown on them, their stages, and their differing contrasts.
1. Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is nothing but a graphic representation of the number of open opportunities and the average conversion rates of qualified leads. It helps you visualize prospects as they make their way through the sales process.
A sales funnel is aptly named because of the shape of the process – as it resembles a funnel. Just like a funnel, the process narrows further and further as prospects move through the steps of qualification, and some of them are converted from leads to customers.
Sales funnels are usually represented by a conventional five-stage (sometimes six) sales model that harbors many similarities with the sales pipeline framework but is presented from the perspective of the customers as they are the ones in charge. The stages include:
Awareness: The first stage is all about attracting the attention of the customer to your products and services, even before they have realized the need for it. You can accomplish this with the help of tactics designed to help build awareness, such as videos, free subscriptions, etc. Centering your marketing around building awareness specifically with mediums like blogs, paid ads, and more also go a long way in garnering customer interest.
Interest: Once you have attracted qualified leads, you have to rear these prospective buyers by enlightening them about your service or product. You can use various tactics like case studies, testimonials, and email drip sequences to build the trust of leads in your product and enable brand appreciation in their minds.
Evaluation: Once you have a foot in the front door — it means that the lead is prepared to hold a conversation with you over a sales call. This stage thus involves cashing in on the opportunity to show your leads that you understand and can solve their pain points. Undertake research on your potential customer and look in your CRM for possible data and prove to them how your product/service can help them.
Engagement: Don’t stop paying attention to the lead once you are convinced that they are going to buy from you. You should do anything but that and continue to engage them and provide support wherever and whenever they might need it. Help leads as much as you can to enable to them to the last yard of the sales funnel aligning their priorities, securing their commitment, and keeping the relationship alive.
Purchase: This is the part where most sales reps make or break their next deal. Did you know that attracting a new customer costs five times more than retaining a customer? If you continue to maintain a relationship with the customer even after the sale, you massively boost your chances of retaining them. Not only that, but it can also help you increase your profits from 5-95%. Conduct periodic check-in(s) with existing customers with the help of email follow-ups(s) and surveys. This not only gives you an idea about what customers love about your brand, but it also builds a positive brand image in your customers’ minds.
2. Sales Pipeline
While the pipeline also depicts the movement of a customer from prospecting to winning them over and converting them to a customer, it is envisioned from the perspective of the sales rep. Unlike the sales funnel, the sales pipeline focuses more on the gradual progression of prospects from one end of it to the other.
This is the reason why a sales pipeline is explained as a series of premeditated steps seen from the eyes of the sales rep that involves converting a prospective buyer from a lead to a customer. After the completion of every step or stage, the leads progress to the next stage in the pipeline until when they successfully make a purchase and become a customer.
While every business has a unique sales pipeline, the common stages of it include:
Qualification: After contacting prospective buyers, sales reps first have to qualify candidates to be able to determine if they need your product or not and have the required budget for it to successfully make a purchase. After the sales team has learned about the goals of the lead in more detail, they can then decide if they want to move forward with the sales process or not. Since qualified leads often represent their company and are usually decision-makers like presidents, managers, and CEOs, it takes bearing that the first step should be carried out scrupulously. You don’t want to send an unqualified lead through your pipeline that will not only waste your efforts but will also end up wasting away valuable time of your sales team.
Sales meeting: The step that comes next after qualification in the sales pipeline is the interpersonal meeting or the sales phone call. This phone call serves as the medium to discuss the value that your company and its product/service can provide to the prospect. If this call goes well and the prospect is willing to move further along the pipeline, the sales rep can move them along and on to the next stage in the process.
Sending the proposal: This is the part where the prospect is really intrigued by your offerings and requests a proposal that the sales rep can put together after comprehensive proposal detailing that includes the product/service capabilities, fees, and other relevant information.
Closing the deal: When the qualified lead has agreed to the proposal and has signed the deal, their journey through the pipeline has come to an end with them effectively being converted to customers.
3. Sales Forecast
A sales forecast is a completely different entity than the other two mentioned above. It is described as the most appropriate estimate of which sales opportunities will be converted at a certain point in time. Usually, companies produce monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly forecasts.
The most defining difference between the sales forecast and the sales pipeline is that the prospective buyer must meet a set of pre-established criteria to be eligible for the sales forecast. The prospects or leads in the sales forecast are nearing the end of the sales cycle. Another important difference is that the sales forecast helps determine a company’s revenue and cash flow in the near future. In other terms, it helps a company understand if and when they can generate revenue.
What Are the Stages of a Sales Pipeline?
Since sales processes differ from company to company, their sales pipeline stages differ too as a result of them undertaking different activities to enable and help leads move from the initial point of contact through to the sale.
For example, a software company will offer free trials of their product so that prospective buyers can test the lite version of the product before they are ready to spend. Since they signed up to try out the lite version or the trial version, they made it clear that they are interested in the product and are a qualified lead.
Comparing it to a different line of business, say real estate, for example, would require the real estate agent to get on a phone call with the prospect during the qualification stage because building a personal relationship with the prospect is a crucial part of the sale.
That said, the sales pipeline can be broken down into the following top-level stages.
1. Contact
Before you can pitch your product to someone, you need to get through to them and ensure that they are interested in what you have to sell to them.
The sales pipeline journey commences whenever a prospective buyer learns about you and your product/service. You can enable and expedite that discovery in two ways:
Lead generation: Lead generation is the process of utilizing marketing strategies to attract buyers and generate interest around your service or product.
Sales prospecting: The sales prospecting is an active approach to searching out customers that are most likely to pay for your service or product.
Given below are a few ways that can help you generate prospects and leads for your business.
Cold calls: Cold outreach through cold email marketing and cold calls are a very effective way of reaching out to customers. With a targeted outreach approach, you can find prospective buyers quickly and introduce relevant value to them to make your outreach program successful.
Advertising: Advertising is the lifeblood of your business as products either live or die based on how successful their advertising campaigns are. When done right, you don’t even have to find potential customers, and you will see them come to you.
Networking: As many salespersons will tell you, there is nothing quite as powerful as networking. Building relationships whenever you have the opportunity as it gives you an ideal starting position in getting through to decision-makers quickly since you already know them.
Social media: social media is one of the most powerful tools for marketing. A platform that is more prevalent than any other, it can help you find your customers easily. You can also use social media channels for conducting marketing research and connect with leads.
Events: Industry events and trade shows are a pot of gold for possible leads because it essentially gathers all your target market in one place for you. Not only that, but they are also there to learn about products. That makes the job a lot easier.
2. Qualification
Without a healthy lead qualification process, you are going to be spending the same amount of time on everyone — even if they are not a prospect and are not interested in buying from you.
This can have disastrous consequences and result in a profusion of lost opportunities. If you don’t know your high-quality opportunities, you can’t make extra time for them. In fact, research shows that almost 67% of lost sales opportunities arise from sales reps not being able to qualify their prospects efficiently before moving them through the sales pipeline.
Lead qualification is very important because it helps you save time. Instead of investing your energies into someone who is not going to buy from you and drag the sales process, it helps you single out those prospects that are most likely to buy so that you can allot more time to them.
But how do you carry out a lead qualification process to churn out leads that are worth your time?
Here are a few qualification tactics that can aid you in identifying a lead that has the most potential to convert to a customer.
I. Research
The initial encounter of a prospect with your company doesn’t leave you with much, it does give you valuable information about them, especially if they have filled out a form for you on your website. Even with a name and email address, you can undertake quite a hefty bit of research, thanks to the internet providing a digital trail for anyone who comes across it.
You can use the information you gain from the internet to understand your prospect’s pain points and capitalize on them so that you don’t have to spend too much time convincing them.
You can also use social media channels like LinkedIn to research the professional background of a lead and use that knowledge to find similar new leads. You can visit other social platforms to understand what they talk about, which kinds of products do they like, which products do they recommend, etc.
To take it a step further, you can score your leads for your sales team to create a priority order, i.e., which prospects to pay the most attention to. Adopting a lead-scoring approach can help you tremendously and also increase your conversion rate by as much as 20%.
II. Use the BANT approach
A very straightforward way for qualifying leads further is through the popular framework BANT. BANT is an acronym for a sales lead qualification strategy that is used to recognize prospects that are worth pursuing.
What does BANT stand for?
Budget: Does the prospect meet the budgetary requirements of the product or service?
Authority: Is the prospect in an authoritative position to make purchase decisions, or are there other people that you should talk to?
Needs: Can your product fulfill the need of the prospect or the lead?
Timeline: How soon does the prospect plan on making the purchase?
III. Talk to them
Even with everything mentioned above, there is only one way to truly qualify a lead, and that is by holding regular conversations with them. While you may have already hosted conversations with them while actively approaching them in the past during prospecting, you need to go above and beyond and hold that one meaningful and in-depth conversation that helps the prospect get all the information they need to be convinced to go ahead and make the sale.
Before planning to meet in person, schedule the right venue, select the right conference room, test your equipment, and know the attendees either side. You do not want to be scrambling around for something while providing a demo presentation.
3. Meeting
Once you have qualified your leads, it is time to arrange for a meeting – whether it is on phone, face-to-face, or on live chat. This meeting helps you:
Know your potential customer better.
Understand the goals that they are trying to achieve.
Learn more about what they’ve already tried to achieve those goals.
This stage is also where your customers know more about you and your product. To ensure that they are impressed by your offerings, prepare for the sales meeting by:
Research: More than anything, conduct thorough research on your potential customer. Do a background check on the representative from the client’s company that you are supposed to meet, study the client’s market, and turn to Google for more news about them.
Review: Review your pitch and try to be concise. Ensure that it addresses all the pain points of the customer and that the solution is readily evident to them.
Rehearse: Rehearse your pitch after you are done creating it before going for the real thing. Practice the product demonstration in advance as it will help you calm a lot of the pre-meeting jitters beforehand.
4. Proposal
This stage of the sales pipeline is when you send a proposal to the prospect and ask them to become a paying customer.
If the prospective buyer indicates that they are ready to purchase, they are provided with a detailed proposal. While the details of it vary depending upon your offering, a few common best practices for making one include:
Keeping the proposal short
Keeping the language simple and jargon-free
Personalizing the proposal template for every lead
Pitching a solution to the problem they are facing
Proposing options at varying price levels
Listing price points from the highest to the lowest
5. Closing
Once your proposal is out, you have done the hard bit of the job and reached the final stages of the pipeline.
This stage has only two possible outcomes: either the prospect is impressed by the proposal and agrees to turn to a customer, or they make the decision not to continue with the purchase.
Irrespective of the outcome, you should ask your sales reps to do a few things to close the curtains.
If your proposal clicks and the prospect makes a sale, follow up by:
A thank-you note as soon as the purchase is made. You can also go for a handwritten note depending upon the kind of engagement you want.
If required, you can carry out a regular training or onboarding process for your customer to get them up and running quickly.
A check-in email at the end of the month to check how things are going.
Never underestimate the importance of ongoing customer service and support as they are the beacons that light up the path to future opportunities.
6. Retention
Now that you have made a sale, it’s time for a well-deserved break, right?
Not quite. Today, making a sale isn’t the end of the pipeline. But what are you missing?
A lot. Did you know that 80% of your future profits depend upon and are derived from 20% of your existing customers? This only goes to highlight the importance of the last stage in the sales pipeline, i.e., retention. You should make retention a part of your sales pipeline to:
Engage your customers
Generate opportunities for providing feedback
Turn buyers into advocates
A retention stage also massively helps your business bottom line as it enables a positive brand image in the mind of buyers to turn them to loyal customers. And as it so happens, loyal customers buy more and are more likely to recommend your products to others that they know.
How to Build a Sales Pipeline for Your Business
Irrespective of your organization’s industry or size, each one of them needs a robust sales pipeline to have a healthy close rate. However, most leads don’t close right away. This requires constructing and maintaining a pipeline full of healthy deals because there is nothing worse than closing a number of deals only to later realize that you have overlooked the top of the funnel, and you have nothing more left in the pipeline.
The following tips will help you build a strong sales pipeline and be more effective while you work away towards the close.
1. Identify your ideal customer
Before building your sales pipeline, you should know what your ideal customer looks like.
And in order to know what your ideal customer looks like, you have to ask yourself loads of questions depending upon your product and the interest it has garnered up until this point. Ultimately, there are a couple of crucial questions that lead everything else:
What does the customer require?
How do they talk about what they want?
After you have resolved the pain points of your customers, you can move to ask other questions like:
What is your ideal customer like?
What are their values?
What are their priorities and goals?
Which demographic do they belong to?
Which channels do they visit online?
What kind of jargon are they familiar with?
What kind of language do they use?
What form of correspondence do they like?
Which brands do they favor?
What are the pain points of your ideal customer?
What kind of challenges do they face?
What kind of problems does your product or service solve for them?
What is the most important benefit of your product to them?
Which specific pain points does your product or service solve for them?
What are your ideal customer’s objections?
Which concerns should you avoid from popping up that could potentially keep the customer from doing business with you?
Why should they purchase from you and not from others?
Historical customer data
Which kind of customers has the best conversion rate?
Which bracket of customers purchases services or products with the highest purchase value?
How long does it take for current customers to close?
Ideal customer forecast
How will your service or product improve the quality of your ideal customer’s work?
What will happen if they don’t use your service or product?
2. Select your pipeline stages
The thing that makes or breaks your product is how the customer feels about it. If you build a sales pipeline without giving it proper thought, it won’t match the customer journey that your leads have to go through. That’s why it is essential to first identify the principal steps of the customer journey that your buyers will go through. Here’s how to determine what the stages of your sales pipeline should be:
Awareness: In the awareness stage, the prospect realizes that they have a need or a pain point that requires resolving.
Consideration: In the consideration stage, the prospect has identified their challenge and looks for possible solutions.
Decision: In this stage, the prospect weighs solutions against each other and makes a decision.
Discuss each of these stages with your sales team. If you are the lone sales representative of your company, then ask a friend or your peers in the community. A second opinion will help you locate weak spots at the earliest in your sales pipeline.
3. Identify triggers
Once you have decided how to construct a sales pipeline, timing is of the most important consequence. If you don’t move a potential buyer who has indicated that they are ready for the next stage of the pipeline, you might lose contact with them, and your potential buyer will move on to another solution that recognizes that they are ready to purchase.
While finalizing your pipeline stages, identify actions that indicate that the prospect is ready to move on to the next stage in the process.
After that, you can trigger your follow-up practices on the basis of actions that the lead takes, such as signing up for your mailing list, ordering samples, asking for quotes, requesting demos, or completing a trial period.
4. Calculate the ideal size of the sales pipeline
How large does the size of your sales pipeline have to be for me to accurately meet my targets is one question all sales leaders should ask themselves. If you set lofty goals for yourself, they might become impossible to hit. If you keep them just right, you will have leads with one foot through the front door already.
Calculating the ideal size of your sales pipeline doesn’t require averaging the stats of your previous sales goals to define a new number. You can easily use a formula to determine your sales targets closed monthly and the number of leads required to achieve those targets. From there, you can easily distribute those leads among the salespersons working your pipeline.
Leads needed every month = Monthly closed sales target number/Monthly percentage of sales closed
First, you have to determine the number of how many closed deals you need each month to reach your sales target.
Use the first formula to find the monthly sales targets closed. The number you arrive at is the number of closed sales you need to make every month to achieve your monthly target revenue.
The question that naturally follows this is how many many leads do you require to achieve your closed sales target?
Divide the monthly closed sales target number by the monthly percentage of sales closed. This will give you the number of leads needed per month to achieve your closed sales target.
What Are the Most Important Sales Pipeline Metrics?
How fast do leads move in your sales pipeline? Every sales leader will agree that the longer a prospect stays in the pipeline, the less likely they are to convert. Apart from knowing the total value of the sales pipeline, you should also know how fast do these opportunities go through every stage of the buying process. By reviewing the following pipeline metrics, you will be able to keep a pulse on your pipeline velocity and ensure that it is always at desirable levels.
1. Number of deals in the pipeline
The first metric that you should check is the number of deals you have in your pipeline. You can even break this down into the number of deals in every stage of the sales pipeline.
2. Average Deal Size
The average deal size is calculated as the sum of all previously mentioned deals divided by the total number of deals. While calculating deal size, it is important to keep track of the amount of money that is entering your pipeline every quarter.
3. Win Rate
The win rate is calculated as the total number of sales qualified leads divided by the total number of customers. It shows you the percentage of leads that convert to customers.
4. Total Pipeline Value
The total pipeline value is the cumulative sum of all the deals in your pipeline.
5. Average Length of Sales Cycle
The average length of the sales cycle is the average length of time it takes for a deal to convert from the moment your sales rep contacts the prospect to the moment the prospect signs the proposal. Find the length of time it took for every deal in your pipeline to close, add them up, and divide the result by the total number of deals.
6. Probability to Close
This is the likelihood of an opportunity to close at any particular stage in the sales pipeline. The further they move towards the end of the pipeline, the more likely prospects are to close. This metric is, in essence, the time it takes for sales personnel to connect with an inbound lead.
How to Run a Sales Pipeline Review Meeting?
Sales pipeline review meetings are used by high-performing teams to keep their pipeline in sync with their sales goals. Its purpose is to hold brainstorming sessions on how to help prospects move through the sales pipeline as effectively as possible.
Sales Pipeline Review Agenda
Based on the size of your sales team, the average length of the sales process, and how soon do new opportunities enter your sales pipeline, you can choose a weekly, monthly, or bi-monthly cadence.
Review meeting should not last more than 60 minutes. Every review meeting should focus on the deals that are the most important or the survey of all opportunities in the starting stages of the process.
Use your CRM before every pipeline review meeting to evaluate the performance of your sales reps. Don’t walk in unprepared and end up wasting valuable time forming the agenda of the meeting on the spot.
Ask your sales reps to summarize every deal and provide them with positive feedback before delving into their assessment with the help of the questions mentioned below.
Come up with an action plan for the deal and verify the next steps. Add these steps to the CRM to keep your sales reps accountable and help them sidestep lapses in memory.
Sales Pipeline Review Questions
Here are a few sales pipeline review meeting questions that you can ask as sales managers to your reps to make the most out of them:
How much genuine progress have we made since the last review?
How many new leads have entered the pipeline since the last review?
How can we facilitate the lead’s decision-making process for a deal?
Which current opportunities in the pipeline are most likely to close?
What kind of risks are we facing, and how can we alleviate them?
Who are our competitors, and how can we stand apart from them?
How many objections have surfaced thus far, and how can we include them in our closing strategy?
Sales Pipeline Excel Template for Tracking Pipeline Growth
Sales pipeline is a commonly used visualization of the stage where prospects are in the sales funnel. Sales pipeline can help sales teams show the deals which are expected to close in the coming time period.
A proper sales pipeline analysis can help sales teams:
Predict expected business/revenue
Test and analyze various sales and marketing strategies
Be on track for your sales targets & crush sales quotas
Click Here to Download the Sales Pipeline Excel Template for Tracking Your Pipeline Growth.
Conclusion
Sales pipeline management is ultimately an active process, and your sales pipeline will only be as effective as you make it. Take the above guide to the heart and use it to build a system and a result-oriented sales process that helps you drive conversions and generate revenue.
How does one optimize their pipeline to make a successful sale?
In his whitepaper, 9 Tips to Leverage the Sales Funnel to Achieve Plans, Mark Sellers, CEO and founder of Breakthrough Sales Performance®LLC, a sales consulting firm, provides genuine pointers to get the most out of your sales funnel/pipeline. Begin by making sure that each person on the team understands and knows why the pipeline is so crucial for everything that salespersons do every day – from lead nurturing to key account strategies to forecasting and more.
What Is Sales Pipeline Management?
Sales pipeline management is the process of organizing and tracking goals and quotas – as well as knowing whether some deals need extra attention or not as compared to others.
Another key aspect of successful sales pipeline management is the integration of business planning platforms like Pigment, which enable seamless collaboration between marketing and sales teams. These platforms offer real-time data analysis features, helping businesses remain agile and responsive to market changes while ensuring that they track their progress effectively. By leveraging such technologies, companies can establish a structured approach to forecasting business outcomes, ultimately enhancing their growth strategies.
Efficient sales pipeline management lets salespeople keep track of the deals that they have by knowing the stage that the deal is in, and if there are enough deals to meet the goals and the quota.
Pipeline management involves the design of the sales pipeline, how it is measured, and how it is used to enable the performance of sales reps. It allows you to review the blockages in your sales funnel and devise measures to remove them. After you have identified the blockages that are choking your funnel, sales pipeline management becomes a cakewalk. Now, we will look at 15 best pipeline management best practices to help you build a robust B2B sales pipeline.
15 Proven Tips to Build B2B Sales Pipeline
1. Create a Standard Pipeline Management Process
What does a standard pipeline management process mean? To begin with, it means having specific milestones and clearly defined stages that are commonly understood by your sales team. Your sales reps should not have to be made to guess the stage a particular deal stands at or how do they manage the deals at every stage.
In addition to that, your process should be in resonance with how your prospects move through the buying stages. Your ideal target customers will have a lot of common characteristics. Their underlying reasons and needs for purchasing from you are largely similar – and it is this fact that you can use to your benefit to standardize your pipeline management process.
This is not to mention the fact that the best sales performers follow a standardized pipeline management process, which helps them scale and constantly get new business.
This is the reason why 33% of sales managers consider optimizing their sales process as a priority of the highest order.
You can begin by knowing all the stages in your pipeline. Size up what you are already doing – what works for you and where do the gaps lie? Gather with your sales team every now and then and quiz yourselves on:
How to qualify leads?
How to contact leads/prospects?
What are the buying stages, and how does a prospective buyer move from one stage to the other?
Should we be using CRM? How, and why?
The answers to these questions will help you define the different stages in your pipeline and build a process for moving buyers forward. Follow a shared vocabulary and train your sales reps in staying steadfast and true to your design.
Spend at least four hours per month on pipeline management. According to Salesforce, companies that spent at least four hours per month managing every sales rep’s pipeline saw a 14% greater revenue growth than those that spent fewer than four hours per month.
2. Sales Marketing Alignment
As per a study conducted by McKinsey, there will be six different interaction channels used throughout the buyer’s journey. Making the sale will now require sales and marketing teams to work in tandem to apprehend customer motivations.
This translates to having your marketing teams conduct customer research With the help of the insights and the expertise of those on the front lines, i.e., your sales reps.
The marketing teams can craft better content pieces, emails, and all-round communication that leads look forward to perusing.
It also means delivering better customer service on both the sales and marketing fronts.
3. Use the Right Sales Pipeline Stages
Having the right pipeline stages helps you guide your sales teams in the right direction to close deals more efficiently.
While the sales pipeline can vary from organization to organization, the seven basic stages of the B2B pipeline provided by Technology Advice present a great example of the right pipeline stages.
The stages are:
Lead generation: This stage involves drawing and engaging prospects by event marketing, email marketing, content marketing, and many other campaigns.
Lead nurturing: In this stage, you qualifying leads with the help of automated marketing messages and funnels that help you sieve the best leads for a follow-up from your sales teams.
Sales accepted leads: You take the leads that were provided to you by marketing, and then you follow up with them.
Sales qualified leads: You then qualify the leads further through repeated contact to specify the timeline, budget, and other miscellaneous needs before handing them over to an account manager.
Closed deal: You convert an opportunity when a lead makes a purchase.
Post-sale: You then continue to engage the customer after the sale is completed to increase loyalty that can then lead to repeat purchases.
4. Use a Clean Database of Leads
A lot of times, wrong or incorrect prospect information leads to botched sales endeavors. Sales reps can easily call a wrong number or make other easy mistakes. Such blunders have a negative effect on your sales pipeline’s health because reps won’t be able to contact as many leads as they could have with the right information.
Utilize the tools that are accessible in your CRM to preserve a clean database. You can use features like duplicate lead merging to keep your data clean. This will help reps avoid losing time to incorrect phone numbers when they have to call a lead.
5. Qualify Your Leads
Sales reps can also make use of the vast amount of data in their CRM to rear leads in the sales pipeline. Sales reps will know which content the prospect has consumed and which web pages have they visited.
With the help of that knowledge, they know which products and topics prospects are interested in so that they can base their lead conversations on those interests. This naturally results in higher lead conversions.
As per a Forbes study, 61% of reps said that their sales managers were not well-trained in managing their pipeline. The same study also showed that sales teams with properly oriented managers earned 23% more revenue in comparison to those without.
Make sure that every team member knows of your sales process. Don’t leave each rep up to themselves to do it their way. Your team should know the action items at every stage of the sales process and be confident about adjusting based on industry, company size, and market.
7. Automate & Minimize Administrative Tasks
Sales reporting forms the spine of the sales process. However, spending a lot of time on repetitive, administrative work eats into your productivity. Many a time, salespersons are made to document long reports that are of hardly any use to the management.
The Industrial Performance Group conducted a study on North American salespersons and asked them what consumed a salesperson’s time the most. They found that, on average, salespersons spent only 36% of their time selling, while the rest of the time was spent dealing with problems, administration, emails, making reports, etc.
You can use sales automation tools to deal with most such administrative tasks that directly affect productivity. You can easily compose sales emails and create immediately available email templates that are professional. With sales forecasting, you can determine future revenue and close rates through the sales pipeline activity. After you have freed up your sales teams from administrative tasks, managing leads in the pipeline becomes easier.
8. Monitor the Right Sales Pipeline Metrics
Your sales pipeline is constantly undergoing steady changes all the time. That’s why it’s important to monitor key sales metrics produced by it, which include the following:
Number of opportunities in the pipeline
Average Deal Size – The average size of the deals in the pipeline
Win Rate – The average percentage of deals that you close
Sales Cycle Length – The average lifespan of a deal before it is closed
Sales is made up of numbers, and how well you manage your pipeline depends upon how well you understand its metrics. It is due to this fact that sales managers always try staying on top of these statistics. The right sales metrics to track depending upon your business could be lead definition, the number of new leads generated in a month, opportunity definition, the conversion rate of lead to opportunity, the opportunity to closed deal conversions, loss rate, win rate, and more.
Having the right data at the right stage matters. Any error in the data can have an impact on the overall efficiency. That’s why it is important to dispose of manual data entry and instead have a CRM in place so that salespersons can input quality data into the system. A careful analysis of your accurate historical data can also help you predict your future pipeline.
Ensure to set aside time every week to periodically review these metrics, and they will give you an overview of the health of the sales pipeline along with the business.
By tracking the results over a certain length of time, you will also get a strong indication of how any improvements or changes that you make to your sales process will contribute towards overall growth.
9. Use the Right Sales Pipeline Technology / CRM
When you have a sales pipeline that is full of leads – and if the leads are all in various stages of the sales process – you then have to make sure that you are managing it efficiently.
If you have a small team and a tight budget and are only closing a few sales every month, you can then use a simple Excel spreadsheet to monitor the details in your pipeline. However, as your business will grow, you will have to consider using a CRM system to track your sales activities.
As per a report by Nucleus Research, companies that used a CRM saw an average return of $8.71 on their technology investment for each dollar spent. The same report also revealed that 65% of salespeople who adopted mobile CRM met their sales quotas while other salespeople who didn’t leverage mobile CRM met only 22% of their quotas.
The 2019 Sales Tech landscape of various sales software available now includes 950 different products.
10. Update Your Sales Pipeline Data Regularly
It’s not new knowledge that sales pipelines are constantly changing.
Whenever new leads are added, the leads are made to move through from one stage to the other, and then deals are closed.
If you are not careful with it, your sales pipeline can start to feel a little discombobulated and chaotic – which can lower your productivity and lead to lost sales.
To prevent this from happening, you need to ensure that you are keeping every single lead’s details updated by feeding regular data and information for every stage of the sales process.
While this does mean that you have to spend more time on administrative tasks, it will help you remove dead leads and update outdated contact information.
11. Follow Up with Leads
In almost every industry today, purchasers have a greater number of options to choose to buy from than ever before.
This means that between your first meeting and the next, your prospects are going to be inundated with several requests from competitors with similar offerings.
So one way to keep them engaged and keep your offerings in the back of their mind is to follow up with them often.
Earlier, four calls were enough to close a sale.
However, it is recommended that salespersons make more than eight calls to convert an opportunity today.
But don’t just call to follow up always.
Set reminders to connect with leads and try sending them an email first. Move on to calling them later when emails don’t work and then use your best communication channel for other interactions going forward.
12. Clean Up Your Sales Pipeline
It’s important to maintain the hygiene of your pipeline by cleaning it out regularly.
This is why it is extremely important for management to be involved with leads early on in the sales reps’ pipeline.
This is when you help them chase hot leads and sift through the bad leads.
Bad leads are those leads that expressly tell you that they are not interested in your offerings after the first meeting and loads of other interactions to combat their objections.
Or you have met with these leads several times, and they always decline whenever you ask them to take the next steps.
Or even those leads that you have never been able to schedule a meeting with because they don’t answer your emails and calls.
If any of the above is the case, it is wise not to waste any more time behind them and instead focus your attention on the leads that are more likely to say yes.
The sooner you weed out bad leads that waste your time, the more time you can provide to leads that you can definitely convert.
13. Review Your Sales Pipeline Regularly
The end goal of managing a pipeline is to grow the number of qualified leads and deals won.
This means that you need to supervise the pipeline’s health as often as you can.
Sales managers usually spend their time and energies behind forecast meetings. While those are really important, they only take into consideration the deals that they are expected to close in a relatively short period.
By reviewing your sales pipeline regularly, you can analyze deals at the top and middle of the funnel and help your sales reps to:
Examine the quality of new prospects entering the fray and then rank them accordingly.
Aid salespeople in directing the result of any given opportunity in the starting stages better and help them avoid common mistakes.
Offer a more expansive view of the whole pipeline for making the most amount of conversions possible.
Investigate the quality of every lead, ask questions about which decision-makers are involved, what are the next steps, and learn more about their own management processes and practices.
Always try to ensure that each of your sales reps has good sales pipeline hygiene so that they are not wasting any time, and they are always chasing the best leads.
14. Fix Bottlenecks in Your Pipeline
CRM is a wonderful tool, and it can help you keep track of where each lead is in the sales pipeline with the help of system tags. These system tags will update the status of every prospect in your system every time a lead progresses to the next stage in the pipeline.
You can also conduct checks to see the number of leads in each stage at a particular time of any day. If you see that leads are getting held up at a specific stage, you can ask yourself on which pain points to address for them in order to keep them moving from each stage to the other.
After you have recognized and singled out the bottlenecks in your pipeline and have considered different ways in which to clear them out, you can test and run sales experiments to try and enhance the efficiency of each part of the process.
15. Post-Sale Follow Through
A good post-sale follow-through strategy is a good way to improve revenues by selling more to your existing customers and also getting referrals to new prospects while you are at it.
In the honeymoon phase that immediately follows after making a sale, you have to ensure to maintain the level of excitement on the client side about the product. The company has just closed a deal when a prospect has become a customer. To ensure to keep them hooked to your offerings, use the following five ways to effectively follow up after a sale:
Send a thank-you note: It doesn’t matter which method you adopt; it is important to thank your clients after successfully making a sale to make the entire buying experience satisfactory for them. You can also include messages like “We are here for anything you might need” in the thank you note. Also, it’s important to ensure that the thank you note contains the contact particulars of the person to be reached out to in the case of the client having an issue or a question.
Remember to check in: Think up a schedule to follow up with the clients after a week or two of making the sale with the goal to find out if they need help with anything or not. However, remember not to overdo it. More importantly, don’t try to make a sale at this stage. Listen to the customer’s opinions and needs, and try to help them if they need any help.
Keep communication lines open: Ask clients for their permission to correspond with them. Once you have their approval, send them helpful and relevant information that is advice-based for their various interests and needs. Try to focus on providing them with high-value content, such as articles, guides, webinars, etc.
Set a base for the second sale: Continuing to talk to clients who have already purchased from you might seem like a waste of time, but it is a key factor integral to future sales. By regular contact, you can understand the needs of the clients, gain ideas about improvements, and set the basis to provide a complimentary product.
Ask for referrals: When you have happy customers, they will refer you to other prospective buyers. More importantly, when a suggestion comes from someone who has actually used the product or service makes it extra credible and trustworthy.
Conclusion
Your sales pipeline is the lifeblood of your business. That is why you can never overestimate its importance.
This also means that not managing your pipeline properly can mean risking losing out on many new customers.
With almost 60% of sales managers of the opinion that their organization doesn’t do a good job at managing their sales pipeline, the chances are that you need to refine the way your sales pipeline works too.
The 15 best practices to build a robust sales pipeline mentioned above will help you keep organize your sales in a healthy manner, make your work more structured and organized, quicken up the speed of the sales cycles, and attain your sales quota sooner, all the while bringing higher revenue and growth to the business.
You start by locating an area that promises potential gold reserves. Then, you mine for the ores, and when you have enough, you smelt them to separate the gold from the fluff. This gold is further refined and processed to get the most from it. You may have to add value and features to it to increase its worth. Finally, you sell the end-product to the best buyer and make a hefty profit.
Does the process sound similar? You bet it does!
A B2B environment experiences the same while hunting for clients and making sales. Sure, sales prospecting sounds like a back-breaking process, but unless you do it, you won’t strike the purest form of gold!
In this post, we will take a look at everything that you need to know about B2B sales prospecting.
What is Prospecting in the Sales Process?
Let’s reel back to the gold mining reference (I promise, it’s relevant). Back in the days, a prospector was an individual who would manually scan rock formations and creeks to locate gold hotspots. When they identify an area of interest, the prospector would sift through the dirt, wash it, and extract the flecks and nuggets of gold.
Modern-day prospectors are no different! They go through a list of potential customers to locate the ones who may be interested or those ready to buy.
But how do they achieve that? Through Sales Prospecting.
So let us start from the very beginning – What is sales prospecting?
Sales prospecting is the foundational step of any sales process. B2B prospecting strategies encompass researching the market, examining the prospect, and interacting with them. Typically, it involves the following elements:
Building an ideal customer profile (ICP) or importing the same from the marketing teams
Using the ICP to identify potential customers, otherwise known as “prospects.”
Monitoring and identifying digital or market-based opportunities
Figuring out the best way to approach them; and
Systematically engaging and communicating with the new prospects to nurture them.
As you can see, all activities that revolve around building a relationship with a potential customer come under the ambit of sales prospecting.
Thus, in a nutshell, strategic Sales Prospecting is the first step in sales, which plays a crucial role in the sales process. It consists of the identification of ideal customer profiles, locating sales opportunities, searching for potential buyers, and reaching out to the prospective leads.
How is Sales Prospecting Different from Lead Generation?
At first glance, it may appear that sales prospecting and lead generations are one and the same thing. Sure, both functions help with the growth of the business. However, they are parts of two separate pipelines, which give varying results. Hence, it is crucial to know the difference between them to identify and employ the best strategy.
Here’s a quick table to help you differentiate between the two:
Sales Prospecting
Lead Generation
Sales prospecting helps connect with targets who may be interested in the products or services that you offer.
Lead generation helps create brand awareness and grow a potential client’s interest in the company.
Falls under the responsibility of the Sales Team.
The Marketing Team carries out lead generation.
It comes right after lead generation and before pitching.
It is the first step to marketing.
It follows a one-to-one approach, that is, it is two-way communication between businesses and customers.
Lead generation follows a one-to-many approach, which means that it is similar to a broadcast or a one-way communication where brands speak to customers but not vice versa.
It is a short-term activity as the sales team quickly identify and qualify clients to keep them moving through the sales funnel.
It is a long-term process where marketers work towards establishing a brand image, creating awareness, and engaging with a wide target market.
Examples: Emailing, Cold calling, and Social Selling.
Examples: Content marketing, Events, and Account-based marketing (ABM).
Therefore, while they may be different from each other, these are interlinked processes, and the alignment between the two can maximize your lead capturing and qualifying efforts.
The Importance of Sales Prospecting
“The 30-Day Rule states that the prospecting you do in this 30-day period will pay off for the next 90 days.” ~ Jeb Blount
To truly understand the importance of sales prospecting, let us break it down into two sections – how B2B prospecting benefits your business and the loss resulting due to the lack of it.
Let us first address what it adds to your business:
More High-Quality Leads: One of the most obvious advantages of prospecting comes in the form of more customers, most importantly, customers who are ready to buy at that very moment. Considering that about 62% of buyers wish to speak to a salesperson during the solution hunting stage, prospecting is the best way to strike the iron while it is still hot.
Know Your Customer: Through sales prospecting techniques, you can anticipate the customer needs and make a value proposition even before initiating contact. Naturally, if your business drives the client’s profitability and addresses their specific pain points, the prospect would happily convert into a buyer!
Personalization: In continuation of the above point, it is also pertinent to mention here that it is crucial to stand out in a highly competitive B2B landscape. Having in-depth knowledge about the prospect allows your sales team to tailor their pitch according to the customer.
Customer-Centricity: In addition to personalizing your pitches and targeted selling, choosing the perfect channel for communication also plays a vital role while establishing contact. Through sales prospecting, you can identify a prospect’s preferred channel of communication, be it cold-calling or outreach through social media.
Enhanced Sales Productivity: With effective sales prospecting strategies, your sales team would target the right set of people rather than chasing dead leads. Furthermore, it helps them connect with the decision-makers, which shortens the sales cycle. As a result, companies that employ sales prospecting experience higher productivity.
Market Research: Not all leads will qualify as prospects, and not all prospects will transform into sales. However, the corresponding data collected during the process can lend insights into the target market and consumer behavior. As a result, organizations can make data-driven decisions and re-evaluate their sales and marketing strategies that will help in the long-run.
Now, here’s what you miss out on if you fail to prospect:
Quick and Effective Lead Qualification: It is no secret that high-quality leads result in more revenue. Prospecting sets the bar for qualification, and failure to do so will result in wasted efforts and resource allocation to unfit prospects.
Sales Pipeline Management: On average, a salesperson typically loses about 15 to 20 percent of clients (per annum) from the customer base due to gradual attrition. Thus, it is essential to continue filling these gaps through constant sales prospecting to reach out to a larger customer base and ensure continuity. As they say, “pipeline is the lifeline,” and the lack of sales prospecting could result in an eroded database and outdated practices!
Attractive Revenue–Generation Opportunities: According to Gong’s data science team, salespeople rush to make an eleventh-hour sale to reach their quota, and the success rate of these calls are the lowest. Thus, employing sales prospecting methods right from the start can help avoid this rush.
Streamlined Sales Cycle: Shockingly, according to Implicit Insights, it takes 84 days to transform a qualified lead into a beneficial sales opportunity, followed by an additional 18 days to secure the deal! Moreover, it takes nearly 18 calls to connect with an actual buyer! However, businesses can bypass this long-drawn struggle through prospecting as it allows salespeople to prioritize leads based on several factors.
Major Sales Prospecting Challenges Faced by Salespeople
According to HubSpot, over 40% of salespeople agree that sales prospecting is the most challenging part of the entire sales process. Anyone who has spent enough time in sales knows this statistic to be true. In fact, it is safe to assume that B2B sales prospecting issues outweigh the challenges posed by closing sales, identifying leads, and qualifying leads collectively!
But what is it that makes sales prospecting difficult? Here’s an overview:
Lack of Prospecting Awareness
So, by now you may have figured out that prospecting is kind of a big deal. However, the problem starts when your sales team is unaware of it. The sheer challenge posed by sales prospecting is one of the greatest deterrents of prospecting. So much, that according to RAIN Group, a whopping 66% of salespeople do not have the time or energy to put into prospecting. Clearly, this issue could culminate in a greater problem!
While top sales performers are embracing sales prospecting, motivating others to follow a similar route is one of the greatest challenges that organizations face. Plus, prospecting is not as easy is merely selecting any random prospecting strategies and praying that it would work. What is required is strategic prospecting, and there are not many takers who wish to invest their time in it when there are pressing targets to meet!
Simply put, salespeople lack the motivation to carry out a task as intensive as B2B prospecting. The best possible way to overcome this issue is to introduce an excellent sales prospecting tool that not only complements their efforts but gets the job done!
Failure to Create a Prospecting Strategy
Would you step into a boxing ring without knowing how to throw a punch?
So, how would you go about establishing a sales prospecting workflow without having a working knowledge of the various sales prospecting methods? The purpose of strategic prospecting is to employ sales prospecting techniques that work.
The first phase of setting up an effective prospecting strategy starts with sourcing real-time and actionable sales intelligence. Having this data at hand will enable the salespeople to identify buying triggers, which is a part of the larger problem. Companies can seek the aid of tools that carry out the bulk of the research, set priorities, and offer customizable triggers for the company’s area of interest.
Following this, salespeople need to access the research data and work towards a channel of communication. Typically, a triple touch strategy could accelerate a prospect’s response. Remember, nobody is a fan of bulk emails or messages, so invest time and effort to customize your pitches and make them personal.
It is worth noticing that it takes six to eight touches to make a sale. So even after you have set off the communication chain, follow up and continue to engage with the customers. Depending on these interactions, you could review and reassign priorities for prospects that have more potential to convert into long-term customers. At the same time, salespeople should also keep an eye out to detect and capitalize on any buying triggers that may dynamically emerge.
The above is just a barebones overview of what your sales prospecting strategy should look like. In the latter half of this post, we will discuss sales prospecting steps at length.
Improper Targeting
Poor targeting is yet another problem that salespeople encounter while prospecting. Nearly 41% of prospectors fail to target the right people, while 43% of salespersons target too low in the organization (RAIN Group).
Salespeople are guilty of perceiving gatekeepers as annoying obstacles. Rather than working around them, they need to deal with them productively and work with them. Considering that they are the guys on the inside, and the ones who know the ins and outs of the business, they can offer you invaluable nuggets of information. Dismissing them would simply result in an untapped opportunity.
On the other hand, you might find advocates and develop them into brand champions within the target organization. However, if you fail to reach out to the ultimate decision-makers, it will essentially nullify your efforts. A good practice to avoid getting stuck in this situation is to follow a top-down approach than otherwise. Contacting the C-level and getting their referral will not only help you reach the big bosses but also earn you an impactful referral on the way.
Poor Quality of Leads
Sales and marketing may be two different entities, but that does not mean that they are independent of each other. In fact, the secret to successful sales prospecting and high-quality lead generation lies in sales and marketing alignment through blurring out the exclusivity. It not only drives the bottom line but also creates a better user experience.
However, feeding poor quality leads to the sales funnel will only bring down the productivity of the sales team. As a result, even your top-performing salespeople will find themselves engaged in non-productive prospecting, which will cause a drain on their time, efforts, and resources. The resultant frustration will again make them detest prospecting and cause them to fall short on their quota, which is basically a vicious circle.
Therefore, the best way to address this issue is to employ tools that can generate high-quality leads through marketing intelligence.
Inability to Land Sales Appointments
One of the greatest myths in sales is that it is impossible to land meetings. On the contrary, 82% of buyers are willing to meet with sellers who proactively reach out! However, in this case, it can be a bit of a problem to break through all the marketing noise and sales prospecting techniques used by your competitors.
The first actionable step to tackle this issue should be in the form of using market insights to review your prospecting strategies and select the best out of these. Next, to complement the B2B prospecting methods, marketers and salespeople should target and retarget buyers, and they move in and out of the sales funnel. As you must have noticed, the stat says, “proactively reach out,” which means that you will not only have to follow-up, but you will have to do it often! When it comes to prospecting, persistence is the name of the game, and giving up too early would only mean accepting defeat!
Thus, your teams need to be tenacious until you bag an appointment with the buyer.
Guide to B2B Sales Prospecting: A Step-by-Step Approach
According to HubSpot, 50% of sales time gets spent on unproductive prospecting. To avoid falling into that rut here is an elaborate stepwise guide on B2B sales prospecting:
Identify Your Total Addressable Market
Before you take on this expedition, it is crucial to get your treasure map in place. Researching the market is the most vital aspect of sales prospecting. For instance, if you are in the fashion industry, you wouldn’t suggest women apparel to a bodybuilder!
Hence, the first step is to define your total addressable market (TAM). TAM demonstrates the overall revenue opportunity that exists within the market for a product or service. It helps determine the viability of your offering and the target audience for it. Depending on the nature of your business, you can choose any one of the four TAM calculation methods to gain market insights. Alternatively, there are several automated tools available that can carry out this research.
Create an Ideal Customer Profile
Once you have defined your target market, it is time to sift out the organizations that truly matter. For this purpose, your team will have to create an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP). An ICP is a hypothetical company that would have been the focus of all sales and marketing activities. It acts as a standard base against which companies and compare and contrast the prospects. Naturally, the one that fits the mold is more likely to convert.
Companies can describe their top customers on the basis of factors like industry sector, company goals or pain points, geography, size, and budget. Furthermore, inputs collected from existing clients also contribute to creating an ICP. Overall, ICP lends direction to your sales and marketing team, thereby boosting their effectiveness in identifying high-quality leads.
Generate High-Quality Leads
While defining your ICP, you have started laying the foundation for generating high-quality leads. It goes without saying that every minute that your salesperson spends on a cold or dead lead is tantamount to a loss in revenue and poor allocation of resources.
Your existing customer base is one of the best places to start hunting for high-quality leads. Identify your best customers and locate the common denominator. Do the same for your worst clients. It will offer you an insight into which lead generation channels work well for you, and which fail to serve their purpose.
At the same time, it is wise to research your ICP to filter out the markers that will help you differentiate a good lead from a bad one. With these discoveries, you have a system in place that can guide the lead generation system
Collect Sales Intelligence Data
We are living in an era of smart prospecting, and intelligent data is the fuel driving this change. Thus, it would be foolish to miss out on opportunities that leverage data to drive sales and marketing decisions.
Sales intelligence, right from technographic data to a list of key personnel and decision-makers of a company, can help you predict or identify any market opportunity and capitalize on it. Through various sales intelligence metrics, your sales team can bring their A-game while monitoring prospects in real-time, staying up to date on all the happenings, prioritizing prospects, and pushing for sales.
Here is an example of How We Sky-Rocketed our Email Campaign Reply Rates Using Technographics. Watch the video below to learn more.
However, it is worth noting here that merely constructing a systematic database is not enough. Companies need to maintain this database to ensure relevance and data hygiene periodically.
Craft a Sales Pitch for the Perfect Outreach
After laying all the groundwork, now comes the fun part – pitching!
Sales prospecting is not about you, your company, or your product; it is about the prospect. So try and incorporate as much value as you can during the first contact.
The sales pitch must be a perfect blend of all your research and your charm. Thus, dedicate the time to get it right. Once you have created the first draft of your sales pitch, go over it again and again until you have a refined end product. It needs to be relevant, timely, and specifically address your prospect’s problems. At the same time, make sure to keep it fun and casual while also including your personality as you craft your sales pitch. Nobody wants a robot reading out a script!
Next, use your client information to pick the perfect communication channel. Irrespective of the B2B sales prospecting methods, the outreach must always be customized according to the prospect. Let’s keep it personal!
Follow-up and Schedule Meetings
Sure, you may have made a stellar first impression. However, do not be disheartened if you notice the prospect stagnating in the sales funnel. So how do you keep the conversations flowing? Through follow-ups!
Pursuing a prospect does not necessarily mean that you have to stick to the same mode of contact. You can try to diversify the channels to encourage a response from the prospect. Stay persistent (without being annoying) and try to schedule a meeting. As we discussed earlier, as long as the buyers perceive you as valuable, they will not only agree to meet but will also more likely convert into sales wins!
So, get proactive and block a date on your prospect’s planner!
Educate and Qualify Prospects
Now that you have established contact with your prospect, it is time to take one hard look at your prospect. Consider everything that you know about them, their location, decision-making process, organizational requirements, pain points, competition, etc. This is the last stage of qualifying the prospect and matching them to your ICP before you invest time in nurturing them.
It is possible that you can push hard and land a sale. However, bad-fit sales will only result in unhappy customers and negative experiences.
Once you are satisfied that the prospect qualifies, add value to every touchpoint. Start by addressing their pain points and how your product or service is an apt solution for it. Sell them what they want. You can then move on to introduce case studies of similar clients, videos, how-to guides, market research reports to reel them in.
Handle Sales Objections Like a Pro!
According to Marketing Donut, about 80% of prospects say “no” four times before it gets converted into a “yes.”
So what differentiates the fourth “no” from the “yes”? Sales objection.
And how can you deal with it? Simple, erasing the fundamental doubt that is acting as an obstacle in the way.
Sales objection is not a new concept. However, how you handle the sales objections could steer the conversation uphill or downhill. You don’t have to be a veteran salesperson to know how to deal with objections; you only have to be thoroughly prepared. Anticipating the sales objection and crafting an appropriate response can help your prospect make up their mind.
ABC – Always Be Closing
Congratulations on making it this far! Now, it is only a matter of time to do what you came for – Close!
One of the greatest cardinal sins in sales is not asking for the sale. If you ask too soon, the fear of rejection looms ahead. However, if you delay closing a deal, a competitor swoops in and devours your lead.
The best technique for closing a deal is explicitly asking for a sale. There is no sugarcoating this fact. Even if you receive a “no” as an answer, follow up with questions to get to the root of the objection and overcome it. However, if you end up in a stalemate, then take it in your stride and move on. It is a valuable learning experience to know when to give up!
Best Sales Prospecting Techniques
Let us take a look at the top B2B prospecting methods that can enhance your sales and marketing efforts:
Email
Nearly 41% of B2B buyers wish to be contacted over emails, making it the most preferred channel for communication. But that’s not all, according to a survey by Aberdeen, personalized emails attract a 14% increase in their click-through rates and a 10% increase in conversions.
Cold Call
“Cold calling is dead!”
You may have come across articles sensationalizing the demise of cold calling, but guess what? After email, calling is the second-most effective sales prospecting techniques that continue to stay relevant.
So don’t get cold feet on making that cold call.
Referral
In a B2B environment, referrals are a golden opportunity waiting to be exploited. A referral is an indication that a client is impressed by your services and recommends it to their peers. Thus, you need to offer more than a sale to count as a trusted resource, which means robust after-sale services!
Fortunately, all the good karma will pile on as you use these referrals to introduce your company to a new prospect.
Conferences
Exhibits at seminars, trade shows, and conferences are one of the oldest sales prospecting strategies in the book. Start by listing out the right events that are worth attending. Get a hold of the guest list and the agenda to formulate a networking strategy.
Webinars
An attendee who has shown an interest in your webinar indicates their interest in the topic. Thus, webinars are the best place to establish your brand as a thought leader or a domain expert. Capitalize on the opportunity by including a poll at the end of the webinar to capture the details of those who wish to know more.
Social Selling
Social media is teeming with potential prospects. Hence, it is no surprise that social selling is a worthy up and coming trend. Considering that buyers are already researching sellers, you can meet them halfway. Still on the fence about social selling? Consider this – B2B sellers who use social selling are 72% more likely to exceed their quotas.
Tried and Tested Sales Prospecting Tips
Here are some sales prospecting tips that will help you acquire more customers:
Rejection is a part of the game. One of the biggest mistakes that you can make is giving up too soon. So, try to stay consistent during your sales efforts.
Mistakes are inevitable. Transform the failure into a learning opportunity so that you can hone your selling skills.
Maintain a steady pipeline to ensure that you keep up the sales velocity.
While it may be tempting to overpromise or exaggerate the benefits of your product, it is essential to stay honest. Sales success should not come at the cost of a customer’s trust.
Try complementing your sales prospecting techniques with inbound operations, and they will add to the common goal of qualifying, growing, and nurturing the pipeline.
Keep your prospects engaged by making interim offers that may nudge their decision in your favor.
It pays to be helpful. In addition to adding value at every touchpoint, use social media to nurture trusting and long-term relationships with clients and prospects.
We cannot stress upon this enough, choose B2B prospecting tools according to your business model. These tools offer a handsome ROI and will boost your efficiency right through the roof!
Selling is a tough job. So, make it a point to celebrate the wins, no matter how small.
Finally, be unafraid to experiment with different B2B prospecting methods to improve your overall strategy.
Top Sales Prospecting Tools
To drive your lead qualification, sales prospecting, and prospect management processes, consider the following tools that can come handy at different stages of sales prospecting:
1- LinkedIn
LinkedIn and its Sales Navigator is the tool that can help you source high-quality and relevant information on your prospect. And the best part? It is absolutely free! Plus, it is a great way to introduce yourself to a prospect.
LinkedIn comes with advanced search capabilities that allow you to enter specific keywords, such as company name, personnel name, or role title, in the search bar. The filtering feature allows users to narrow down the result to a single individual!
After you have located your contact, you can make use of the Sales Navigator sidebar to populate the account-associated user information right to your inbox!
2- Clodura
Sales prospecting platform that can accelerate your lead-to-meeting journey. It can carry out a wide array of actions such as identifying Total Addressable Market, generating high-quality leads, generating sales intelligence in real-time, crafting sales pitches, and automating sales sequences and follow-ups.
Powered by its AI capabilities, Clodura gathers sales intelligence data and offers actionable insights for customizable sales triggers. Clodura offers you a competitive edge that allows you to extract the most from your sales and marketing activities.
3- CrunchBase
CrunchBase is a widely popular platform to discover ongoing industry trends. It is a repository of all the details of public and private companies located over the world! So whether you are looking for Fortune 500 companies or budding startups, Crunchbase grants you access to all the details that will allow you to gain new prospects. While free users can add two filters, pro users can use as many as 25 filters to make their search more granular and specific.
In addition to scoring new prospects, CrunchBase can also help you stay updated on all the latest news and happenings, which may help identify sales triggers.
4- Owler
“Keep your friends close and enemies closer.”
In a B2B landscape, it is vital to keep a close eye on your competitors. Owler allows you to do just that! It not only allows you to analyze your competitor’s strategies but also helps you target their prospects even before they are ready. Owler’s features, like Daily Snapshot and Instant Insights, allow you to track other companies and receive customizable alerts about them.
5- Calendly
Remember when we asked you to make an appearance in your prospect’s planner? Calendly will get you there!
It allows your business to connect with leads. You can transform the lookers into bookers by scheduling meetings in real-time and in accordance with the local time zone. Including a Calendly link in your emails as a CTA is an effective outbound marketing strategy that can help you easily engage and convert prospects. Plus, once the user has scheduled a meeting, Calendly follows up by reminding them of the upcoming meeting, thereby reducing no shows at the meeting!
6- Mailtrack
Sometimes, silence speaks louder than words.
However, in the world of email marketing, silence could either mean that the client is not interested in your mails and is ignoring them or not opening them at all! Mailtrack can differentiate between the two. It helps in sending out fewer but more meaningful messages and follow-ups. You can modify your outreach depending on the kind of response offered by the receiver.
7- Boomerang
Are you too busy to send out an email at a specific time? Then Boomerang could be the perfect tool for you! It allows you to schedule emails for a later time. Furthermore, it provides follow-up reminders and lets you know when your emails have been opened. You can even track which links in your email have been opened, and which ones have been ignored. The basic plan of Boomerang is free, but you can also enjoy a 30-day free trial.
Putting it all Together
The success of any business depends on sales, and sales require a full pipeline. The ultimate way to grow a pipeline of well-qualified leads is through constant sales prospecting. It is worth noting that sales prospecting is not a standalone process. It is a series of actionable steps where one thing leads to another.
However, there is no standard blueprint that can help you achieve the desired outcome. For best results, you need to try out different sales prospecting techniques and mix it up with various outreach methods. Try out different prospecting strategies, measure the results, and continue improving it. Interestingly, your team’s prospecting skills will get better with practice.
Use the tips and best practices outlined above to stay at the forefront of your prospect’s mind. Soon enough, you will notice a significant improvement in your bottom line.
So go on and claim your pot of gold through prospecting!
