What is pipeline management in CRM?
Sales pipeline management is often defined as the process of managing incoming sales opportunities and tracking them across the different stages of the lead's journey until they are finally closed as won or lost. A business that runs on spreadsheets can find it painful to track sales and follow-ups as they grow and evolve. The modern day solution for businesses looking to transition out of the messy world of spreadsheets is choosing a CRM with pipeline management capabilities.
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The importance of a sales pipeline in CRM
A sales pipeline gives you an instant glimpse of what stage each customer is currently at in your sales process. This information helps you decide what steps to take next in order to move closer to closing a deal. Your pipeline can tell you if you are on track to reaching your sales target for the week or month. You can also deduce the performance of your sales reps based on their lead conversion rates. In short, pipeline management software is the heart of every business' sales process. It is a living, evolving thing that needs to be constantly monitored to ensure it is healthy.
Do you need a tool to manage
your sales pipeline?
Does your current sales process allow you to perform these functions seamlessly? If the answer is no, you need a pipeline management CRM system like Bigin that lets you track different stages across your multiple pipelines.
Improve sales process
Identify the stages where leads stagnate or fall out. Brainstorm ways to enable smoother progress.
Predict financial health
Based on the total value of deals in your pipeline at any given day, you can calculate your future revenue in ballpark figures based on your current conversion rates.
Analyze sales strategy
If you lose a great potential, easily ascertain what went wrong and when. Recognize the flaws in your sales strategy.
Manage
Make important sales and product-related decisions based on pipeline reports.
Review performance
Track how your business is performing revenue-wise, and verify if it is growing as expected.
Allocate
Decide who should handle which deals based on their experience and skill set.
Who should use a
pipeline management CRM?
B2B
A study of B2B companies by the Harvard Business Review revealed an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that defined a formal sales process and companies that did not. Pipeline management system helps with designing sales pipelines, and formulating strategies to drive sales rep performance.
Small businesses
Small businesses are becoming smarter businesses. They are increasingly opting for a better alternative to unscalable, error-prone spreadsheet lead documentation.
Sales managers
With pipeline management in CRM, important metrics related to revenue and productivity can be accurately and easily measured. Managers can also keep an eye on larger deals in the pipeline, and intervene if necessary.
Sales reps
A clearly-defined sales process helps salespeople guide their prospects across all stages of the pipeline efficiently until the deal is won. Follow-ups are a breeze with timely reminders and notifications.
Benefits of using a
Pipeline Management software
- Define clear processes
- Juggle multiple pipelines
- Predict revenue
- Identify areas to improve
- Know your customer at a glance
- More sales, less expense
- Focus only on sales
- Zero scope for errors
- Precise customer data
- Measure salespeople's performances
- Engage with context
- Give priority to high potential leads
- Update sales strategy regularly
- Find ways to shorten sales cycle
- Generate pipeline reports
Key features of pipeline management CRM solutions
Customizable sales stages
Leads move through different stages in a pipeline, ending with a closed or lost deal. For example: Newly qualified > Analysis > Proposed deal > Negotiation > Needs approval > Won/Lost. These stages keep evolving as your business grows. The ability to customize stages according to the requirements of your current sales process is crucial.
Multiple pipelines
If your company sells different products to a diverse audience, you will likely need multiple pipelines in order to track unique sales processes for each product. Other scenarios include separate pipelines for domestic and international customers, or cases when a customer is won, and then introduced into another pipeline for upselling.
Reminders and notifications
Ten years ago, it only took a salesperson around 3 calls to close a deal. Now, it takes 8 or more! Businesses have more choices today, and so they take more time to arrive at a decision regarding a purchase. So, always be following up. With timely reminders and helpful notifications, you don't have to worry about missing a crucial call or meeting.
Sales automation
Automate routine actions like assigning leads to sales reps, sending welcome emails to leads from a particular source, and alerting the manager when a particularly large deal is proposed. This way, you have significantly more time to focus on your customers and the actual sale!
Analytics
Efficient pipeline management is directly related to strong revenue growth, so measuring key metrics is paramount to maintaining the health of your pipeline. You should be able to quickly gather data, like the number of qualified leads, conversion rate, acquisition cost, average deal size, and more. This will help you implement changes that will improve your sales process.
Easy implementation
A great pipeline management tool can get up and running in a matter of minutes! There is no need for staff training or tutorials, as the interface is simple and straightforward.
What's next? #JustBigin
Nurture your sales pipelines, and make sure that every prospect has a smooth journey from lead to customer. Bigin is built on top of the powerful Zoho CRM platform to enable growing businesses to smoothly transition from spreadsheets to cloud-based pipeline management.
Trusted by small businesses globally
We were so impressed by Bigin’s ‘perfect fit’ for small organizations and we have now consolidated all information about our clients and projects in Bigin. It's impressive to see that such an affordable product helps in managing duplication of records, customizing fields specific to our processes, providing dashboards to manage the performance of emails, and even linking up with the Twitter accounts of our clients. Read the full case study
I am super impressed with Bigin. I was looking for a simpler lead management and automation tool and I have finally arrived at the right platform after trying multiple tools in the last few years. It has completely transformed the sales process and I regularly recommend Bigin to my contacts.
I want to sincerely thank the entire Bigin Team for developing this excellent platform for SMBs who are quite keen on getting rid of excel datasheets. My primary requirement was exactly the same, and Bigin has offered so much more. This has increased the overall productivity of my sales team, and I have already recommended Bigin to friends in different sectors.
I found Bigin extremely easy to learn and utilise. I was bit scared if my assistants will able to learn it quickly. But to my surprise they have started using fully within 2 weeks of time. Mobile apps and its connectivity with server is superb and quick.
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