Not everybody has a correct understanding of what a good sales strategy looks like. Sales reps don’t have to be the annoying, pushy people who invade your privacy at every opportunity and hound you with offers, as portrayed in movies.

Most of the time, the sales process in small- and medium-sized companies is disorderly and unstructured, making it difficult to predict revenue. This affects other things like setting revenue goals, generating cash flow, and determining hiring needs.

Essentially, without a pipeline, you’re going into selling wearing a blindfold—with no idea of where you’re going to end up. Building a well-defined sales pipeline can help sales leaders develop a sound sales strategy and gain insights into the sales process. 

Here, we’ll take you through the sales pipeline definition, discuss the different sales pipeline stages, outline the steps required to build a sales pipeline, and describe best practices in sales pipeline management.

What is a sales pipeline?

“A sales pipeline is a visual representation of the progress of multiple leads (opportunities) through the different stages in the purchasing process.”

Reps use the information in a sales pipeline to determine which leads they should focus on, where they need to put in the effort, and how much sales they’re likely to make in the next few months. 

Prospects move through the sales pipeline depending on factors like the degree of urgency, level of interest, amount of research done, and so on. 

Note that a sales pipeline includes all the prospects that reps are dealing with, whether new or mature, whereas a sales forecast is an estimate of the opportunities that are likely to close within a given time period.

Also, the sales pipeline includes all the steps that a rep takes as part of the sales process to move deals from start to close, but a sales funnel includes the stages in the buying process that your leads go through before becoming customers.

What are the stages of a sales pipeline?

There are 7 stages in a sales pipeline:

1) Lead generation/Prospecting – Through promotional activities like public relations, advertisements, and non-paid campaigns, you let potential customers know about your business. You create an ideal customer profile and use targeting parameters to communicate your message to potential buyers who fit that profile.  

2) Lead qualification – You offer lead magnets like ebooks, white papers, and webinars to see if the prospect is interested in learning more about your business. 

3) Initiating contact – You contact the prospect to have an initial conversation to know more about their requirements.

4) Schedule a meeting or demo – If the prospect shows interest, you schedule a demo to showcase your offerings or a meeting with the decision-maker to make a start toward negotiations.

5) Negotiation – You negotiate with respect to price, the scope of work, expectations, and so on to arrive at a mutually beneficial decision. You submit your proposal that states your competitive advantage and demonstrates value. 

6) Closing the deal – If the negotiations are successful, you close the deal and consider the opportunity won. 

7) Post-purchase – You continue to nurture the prospect even after the contract has been signed. You find opportunities to cross-sell, upsell, renew contracts, or ask for referrals.

These stages may vary from industry to industry, but the basic framework remains the same. 

Now let’s see how you can build a sales pipeline that suits your business.

How to create a pipeline for your organization?

There are 8 main steps you can take to build your sales pipeline:

1) Define the stages of your sales pipeline

You can define the stages of your pipeline by taking a closer look at your typical buyer’s journey. A customized approach will save you time, effort, and money down the line. 

Customers go through these steps when making a purchasing decision: 

• Awareness – Realizing they have a pain point
• Consideration – Researching potential approaches to resolve the pain point
• Decision – Deciding to purchase a solution

The stages of your sales pipeline could be:

1. a) Connecting 
2. b) Demonstrating value 
3. c) Handling objections 
4. d) Closing the deal 
5. e) Post-purchase follow up 

2) Identify how many prospects typically continue through each stage

How long does a prospect typically spend at each stage, both for those that close and overall? 

This information will help reps predict which prospects are more likely to close. For instance, typical prospects may spend a week at each stage, but prospects that become customers typically spend three weeks.

It also helps to know the percentage of prospects that usually move on to the next stage. 

Determining a conversion rate for each stage will help you set monthly/quarterly revenue estimates. For example, 60% of prospects in the demonstrate value stage are likely to close, whereas 90% of prospects in the negotiation stage are likely to close.

3) Calculate the number of opportunities you need at each stage to hit your goals

Back-calculate to determine how many prospects you need at each stage to meet your revenue goals. 

• Divide your target monthly/quarterly revenue by your average deal size to get the number of deals you need to win every month/quarter.
• Divide your target number of deals by conversion rate for each stage to get the number of opportunities that must reach that stage.

For example, if you need to win 150 deals and 60% of your prospects in the demonstrate value stage are likely to close, 250 prospects must reach the stage each month. 

You can calculate this value for each stage and determine the total number of milestones that need to be reached. 

4) Determine activities that move customers forward in the sales pipeline

Define the moments and customer actions that tell you when a prospect is ready to move ahead. Assign sales activities to reps for each customer action. 

E.g., you would send emails, speak with the prospect over a call, share promotional content, or track email metrics in the connecting stage.

A tool like Rafiki can help you determine exactly which actions are closing calls and leading to more revenue. 

5) Fit your sales process around your sales pipeline

Create a strong sales process with the information obtained so far. This will help reps close deals consistently because they’re following a structure that’s proven to work.

It takes several iterations to build a pipeline that suits your organization perfectly. 

6) Keep prospecting to keep your pipeline stable

If reps get busy with the current quarter’s business and neglect prospecting, they will face an empty pipeline in the next quarter. 

There should be more prospects on the left side of your pipeline than on your right because the number of prospects in each successive stage decreases as the likelihood of closing increases.

7) Maintain the health of your pipeline

A standard follow-up process will ensure that no leads are lost and reps know when to disqualify a lead. 

Reps should assign tasks to each prospect as they complete one activity and move to the other. e.g. call after 3 days, send a meeting agenda

Use the following metrics to measure the health of your pipeline:

• Number of deals in the pipeline = Number of qualified opportunities in the pipeline
• Average deal size = sum of the value of all deals won/number of deals won
• Win rate = Qualified leads/opportunities
• Sales pipeline value = Total value of all deals in the pipeline
• The average length of sales cycle = Amount of time (days) taken by a lead to move from contact to close
• Sales velocity = number of deals in the pipeline X overall win rate percentage X average deal size/length of sales cycle (days)
• Probability to close
• Lead response time

8) Periodically review and clean your pipeline

Sales forecasts use data about each opportunity’s stage (and not age) to determine the likelihood of closing. So remove stagnant or dormant leads periodically.

Tools you’ll need to build and maintain your pipeline

Sales tools are meant to either increase the value provided or decrease the time required to perform tasks. Ideally, they should do both.

Your best bet to build and maintain a good sales pipeline is to automate sales processes using suitable tools.

There are 6 categories of sales tools that you’ll need:

1) Customer relationship management (CRM)

A CRM tool is the most important tool in your sales stack, so choose one with care. It facilitates a better workflow and integrates with all the other platforms you use. Some well-known CRM tools are Salesforce, Airtable, Close.io, and Alore CRM.

2) Sales and market intelligence

These tools help you determine if a prospect is likely to be a qualified buyer for your offerings, so you can make informed sales decisions. Examples are ZoomInfo and LinkedIn Sales Navigator. 

3) Lead handling and prospecting

You need the right tools to help you quickly recognize promising opportunities, qualify them, and send them to the right reps to propel them forward in the pipeline. Some tools that can help are Salesloft, Outreach.io, Mailshake, and LeanData.

4) Analytics and reporting

A large volume of data is meaningless unless you can glean insights from it. Analytics and reporting tools help decision-makers visualize and analyze data. e.g. InsideSales.com, Tableau, and Clari

5) Process and training

These tools speed up sales processes and ensure that they’re working smoothly. They onboard new sales team members quickly and efficiently, reduce friction and move common tasks along fast. Some popular examples are Rafiki, Gong, Dooly, and Chorus.ai.

Rafiki uses state-of-the-art AI technology to capture conversation highlights and provides valuable insights to increase predictable revenue. It takes the guesswork out of sales pipeline management by analyzing rep’s performance at an individual level and helping decide what type of training is the most effective. It also helps assess pipeline health and productivity by offering activity analysis of each rep. Rafiki works in a three-step process:

1. Captures calls, transcribes with AI technology and organizes call content
2. Analyzes topics involving lead-rep interactions and relates to pipeline stages
3. Connects topic patterns to revenue

6) Automation and integration

Automation tools help the sales team work more efficiently by performing steps like pre-qualifying leads, pulling data from various sources, or answering support questions instantaneously. e.g. Stitch, Zapier, Tray.io.

How to manage the sales pipeline for your organization?

Now that you’ve created a sales pipeline, the next logical step is to manage it. Here are a few ways to effectively manage the sales pipeline for your organization – 

1. Track your sales metrics diligently. This can be used to improve your sales processes.
2. Keeping your pipeline clean is crucial for good pipeline management. This helps improves overall efficiency and helps plan the next steps.
3. Analyzing the processes that drive your sales team is an integral part of sales pipeline management. This carries over to people management and the overall success of your sales team.
4. Proper pipeline management also makes it effortless to forecast and increase your overall revenue.

Every opportunity in your pipeline occupies a designated stage within the sales cycle, such as connecting, demonstrating value, handling objections, etc. Effective pipeline management helps you track and assess the activities associated with all the leads in those separate stages.

You can then chart out impactful next steps such as :

1. Follow-ups via email
2. Connect with them over other channels if the prospect is cold
3. Sending them a revised proposal or price document
4. Contact another point of contact/ or decision-maker

A few benefits of good sales pipeline management include:

1. Identify and do away with bottlenecks in your sales cycle
2. Better understanding of deals that are won
3. Better understanding of deals that are lost
4. Prepare for periods that are characterized by slumps
5. Increase your overall conversion rates 

Finally, you can use several tools to assist you with effective pipeline management. Here are some of the most popular tools – 

Closing thoughts and some tips

However solid a sales pipeline may be, it still needs to be managed well to keep it functioning smoothly. A few best practices in sales pipeline management are:

1. a) Follow up with leads 
2. b) Monitor pipeline metrics
3. c) Update your pipeline regularly
4. d) Keep your sales cycle short
5. e) Create a standardized sales process
6. f) Use a CRM to manage your sales 

Most importantly, try Rafiki to leverage revenue and conversational insights to boost your sales pipeline. Contact us now.

Would you allow a surgeon to operate on you using a kitchen knife? No, right?

Then why would a smart customer entertain an unprepared and ill-informed sales representative?

This is why you need sales enablement!

Customers research your products and brands using the Internet and compare your offerings with those of others. Sales representatives are no longer in the driver’s seat. Unless reps can show that not only do they have product knowledge, but also an understanding of what the customer wants, they’ll be squandering opportunities.

Google searches for the term ‘Sales enablement’ have increased by 61.1%, an increase from 51.2% in 2019. This is a clear sign that more people want to understand what is sales enablement and how it is useful.

In this article, we’ll do a deep dive into sales enablement and understand why you should invest in it.

What is Sales Enablement?

Sales enablement is a powerful tool to improve the performance of sales representatives. It is defined as

A long-term, ongoing, and technology-driven sales strategy that involves equipping sales teams with the right resources to engage and convert high-quality leads.

These resources may be content, training, processes, tools, or technology. Sales enablement focuses on training and coaching to help sales representatives meet quotas and improve interactions. It also creates a bridge between sales and marketing so that both functions can work smoothly, creating a seamless experience for customers.

Who needs it?

Companies like IBM and Oracle have been vocal about sales enablement. However, don’t be under the impression that it is not for SMBs and startups.No matter what the company size or stage is, they need revenue—and sales enablement will help a growing company shore up its resources and capitalize on every available sales opportunity. 

Also, when you have only one sales representative, you will want to ensure that every minute of his/her time is spent productively. Over 70% of companies with a salesforce of 50+ people have a dedicated sales enablement person. In smaller companies, the founder or the sales manager is usually the sales enablement, sales strategy, and sales leader all rolled into one.

To summarize – Everybody needs sales enablement—because it helps close more deals.

Why is it important?

Remember – Sales enablement is not the same as sales training. Simply providing training once during onboarding does not make a salesperson better or keep him/her motivated. What sales enablement does is allow managers to work with reps individually and in groups to work on their areas of improvement. It helps them learn, grow, and stay relevant in the changing business environment.

Thus, sales reps can sell to the right prospect at the right time with the right information.

With and without Sales Enablement

The stark difference in results with and without sales enablement should convince you of the need to have a dedicated sales enablement function. For example

• Companies with sales enablement see a 27.9% increase in win rates.
• 59% of companies that have surpassed their revenue targets have a defined sales enablement function.

On that note, let’s quickly see the difference between two organizations; one with sales enablement and another without

With sales enablement	Without sales enablement
Sales reps spend more time engaging prospects than in tasks like sending emails, scheduling meetings, or researching.	Sales reps spend only 1/3rd of their time selling, with the remaining spent in administrative tasks.
Sales reps use all the marketing content available because it is easily accessible at a central location.	Nearly 90% of the marketing content is not used simply because sales reps cannot find it. What a shame!
Marketing content is tightly aligned with the needs of the buyers.	Marketing content fails to perform because it does not consider the buyer’s journey.
Marketing and sales are aligned and work towards a shared revenue goal.	Marketing and sales do not see eye to eye and waste time and resources playing the blame game.
High-performing sales representatives prefer to work in such companies, reducing attrition and strengthening the team.	Sales representatives tend to leave companies with disorganized, misaligned processes and strategies.

The 3E principles of Sales Enablement

The goal of sales enablement is to individually coach sales representatives with customized information relevant to their prospects to help close the deal faster. 

Sales enablement runs on the principles of the 3 Es:

Education

Training and coaching of salespeople cannot be a one-time event; it should not be restricted only when onboarding. It should be customized, ongoing, and evolving. Buyers today are smart and well-informed. Their minds are 57% made up even before they interact with a sales representative. 

To fully convince them, sales representatives need to be well-prepared and tightly aligned with the buyer’s journey. Real-life examples, regular reinforcement of learning, and training based on actual performance will help them deal with customers confidently.

Empowerment

Without the right resources, education alone cannot accomplish much. Did you know that sales representatives are spending up to 43 hours per month researching instead of doing their job—selling? They need sales enablement tools, technology, and up-to-date content to help them sell effectively. They should also be able to find this content quickly when required. 

Efficacy

It is worrying that 47% of sales enablement professionals do not measure the ROI of their program. You will be able to justify the value of your sales enablement strategy only when you measure the impact in quantitative terms, and tweak it as necessary. Monitoring sales enablement efforts will also ensure that fresh and relevant information is available at the right time.

Who Owns the Sales Enablement Process?

Even though the name has “sales” in it, sales enablement is owned by both sales and marketing. Marketing provides high-quality content to help sales representatives improve each interaction with prospects and push a sales opportunity forward. Sales teams provide inputs to the marketing team about the buyer’s objectives, key metrics, and pain points so that they can produce targeted materials.

Sales enablement takes a holistic view of the company by deriving inputs from all teams, including sales, marketing, product, and executives. It uses these inputs to create content, processes, and training materials for sales representatives.

How to Choose a Tool?

Sales enablement tools will optimize your sales enablement strategy by automating tasks and bringing all processes to a central location. Forrester Research says that the “cost of inaction is higher than the financial investment in sales enablement tools.”

To choose a sales enablement tool, ask these questions to yourself and decide which sales enablement software is the best fit for your purpose:

1) Is the tool user-friendly and provides sales value?

If you want your reps to use a tool, make it easy to use. It should not burden them with yet another subject to learn. If it frees them from the shackles of boring data entry work and time-consuming administrative tasks, they will voluntarily adopt it.

2) Can the tool be integrated with the current CRM? 

The goal of a sales enablement tool is to make things simpler, smoother, and easier. So, it should seamlessly integrate with the CRM and other platforms that your reps use regularly.  

3) Does it have easy-to-use content creation tools?

Time is of the essence in sales. See if marketing can create personalized content quickly and easily, and in tandem with the needs of sales.

4) Does it facilitate inter-departmental collaboration?

The tool should help departments like sales, marketing, and human resources to coordinate with ease. 

5) Does it have a training facility?

Ongoing training is an important component of sales enablement, so a tool should help deliver training content to reps.

6) Will the tool help measure internal results? 

The tool should have features to generate insights from content performance analysis to determine how, when, and where reps are winning (or losing) deals.

7) Does it support virtual interactions with customers?

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, nearly 90% of sales have moved to a remote sales model via videoconferencing, phone, or the web. Even with the “new normal,” customers are choosing to interact with reps virtually. Thus, sales enablement tools are evolving to adapt to the changing business landscape. 

At this juncture, we want to introduce you to Rafiki, a state-of-the-art conversational intelligence platform that uses the latest AI technology to derive insights from call recordings. It does so by capturing and analyzing key topics. It seamlessly integrates with other platforms and enables easy playlist creation to train reps effectively. You learn exactly what is working and what is not when closing a deal.  In short, it is a tool that checks all the above seven points and can become your final destination in the search for the perfect sales enablement tool.

How Practices it?

Sales enablement will translate into increased sales only when implemented properly. The foundation of sales enablement is built upon three pillars – Training, Coaching, and Tools.

A few best practices to ensure that your sales enablement strategy is not going to waste are:

a) Focus on the buyer’s journey – To appeal to prospects, sales representatives have to engage them at the right time with the right content. Align the content with the buyer’s journey because 95% of customers buy from the person who gave them content at each stage of the buying process. 

b) Create high-quality content – Sales enablement content should be fresh, up-to-date, relevant, and useful. Experienced reps can offer inputs because they’re aware of the customer’s pain points, motivations, and needs. Internal content like customer personas, email templates, sales scripts, and industry research is just as important as external content.

c) Make content easily accessible – Sales representatives should not spend time searching for the right content instead of engaging with buyers. 88% of content goes unused, simply because people can’t find it. Use sales enablement software that organizes content at a single location and is easily searchable.

d) Offer continual training – Companies tend to spend more on hiring the best sales reps than investing in ongoing training. Sales enablement reaps dividends when regular training is prioritized, at least once a quarter. Ideally, weekly training sessions should test and reinforce learning and prepare the rep for real-world situations.

e) Choose the right technology stack – The right sales enablement software will help with training, goal-setting, forecasting, and so on. Align with marketing in terms of technology as far as possible. AI-driven tools have conversation intelligence and revenue intelligence capabilities that analyze and predict behaviors most likely to close deals.

7 Steps to Implement an Effective Process

Sales and marketing don’t always see eye to eye. But an effective sales enablement strategy can align the two functions such that they work towards a common goal – boosting the company’s revenue.

By taking these 7 steps, you can implement a sales enablement strategy that works:

1) Choose a strong leader – It is important to gain buy-in across all organizational functions for sales enablement.

2) Build a culture of alignment – Introduce the sales enablement program and make everyone aware of how they should be aligned with it. 

3) Be clear about the roles and responsibilities of sales and marketing – Define ownership of the program and encourage sharing of wins, processes, and structures.

4) Align sales and marketing on incentives – To improve cooperation and encourage teamwork between sales and marketing, they should have shared incentive-related goals.

5) Evaluate and refine – Sales and marketing should meet regularly (monthly, quarterly) to review content and tools to ensure alignment.

6) Choose sales enablement technology for end-users – All sales enablement software used should help sales representatives find relevant content quickly, should integrate seamlessly with other tools and platforms being used and should have analytics to provide insights to improve selling.

7) Measure results – To get a clear idea about the benefits of sales enablement, measure improvements around content performance and usage regularly.

A sales enablement strategy is not static. With each iteration, you will be able to fine-tune your strategy.

Trends To Watch Out For

2020 has seen most businesses pivot to the virtual space to stay afloat. The sales tech landscape has also transformed to embrace the latest trends:

1) Remote work 

The pandemic has forced virtual selling to take off. Widespread 5G adoption and the proliferation of Zoom-based tools have helped salespeople to conduct sales interactions via video calls. A sales enablement platform that supports call analysis and virtual training is more important from 2021 onwards.

2) Rise of AI 

AI-driven tools save time and effort in comparison to manual analysis of sales calls. Insights derived by predictive analytics improve productivity and boosts profits. Sales enablement tools that use AI harness customer data to offer companies a competitive advantage. 

3) Reinvestment in Sales Training

Sales is an evolving industry, and with the COVID-19 pandemic, the market has been in even greater flux. Regular training prepares reps to face changing circumstances with confidence and reinforces what was learned in the first month after onboarding.

Role of Rafiki

As we have already seen above, Rafiki is an AI-driven training and sales enablement software that uses real sales conversations to help prepare your sales representatives to face any real-world selling situation. Using state-of-the-art AI-driven transcription capabilities, it offers valuable conversation insights by analyzing revenue-driving topics and meeting comparisons. This can be used to scale the success of top performers across the sales team or help a struggling sales representative to identify and work on areas of improvement. To know more about how Rafiki can help your sales team, contact us today.