What is a Sales Pipeline?

When you think about a sale, the first thing on your mind is how to conclude the deal. To understand selling, you must have a thorough grasp of the entire process from beginning to end. A sales pipeline can assist you in doing this.

A sales pipeline can aid the portrayal of the sales process. It will show you where all of your sales are in the sales funnel, where they are stagnating, and which marketing efforts generate the most income. Breaking down the sales process into separate, trackable methods provides a feeling of accountability and makes goals easier to attain.

Sales Pipeline VS Sales process

A sales pipeline lists the prospects' names, predicted sales volume and amount, estimated closure date, and win probability. The sales pipeline is used to create a sales forecast.

The sales process, on the other hand, refers to the procedures involved in making a transaction. Prospecting, sales calls, solution presentations, and closing are some of the phases. A sales pipeline entry is created and may be changed during the sales process.

Sales pipeline

A sales pipeline depicts a prospect’s stages to become a client. The prospect is forwarded to the next level after each pipeline stage is finished.

Stages in a Sales Pipeline

1) Lead generation

The practice of sparking and attracting a customer’s interest in a product or service is lead generation.

2) Lead qualification

The process of determining which prospective customers are most likely to buy, those who aren't interested are weeded out.

3) Lead Nurturing

Lead nurturing is the act of cultivating connections with leads and nurturing them through the purchase process.

4) Lead Conversion

It is converting nurtured leads into paying customers.

5) Quote and Invoices management

A sales quotation is a document that lists the pricing of goods and services. Fixed quotes are available, as well as thorough item-by-item breakdowns. Quotes are also used to estimate the cost of a project.

6) Deal or Opportunity management

The process of organizing, managing, keeping, prioritizing, and analyzing opportunities to convert a prospect into a customer - Learn more.

7) Contact Management

The process of keeping, organizing, and managing data about your customers, prospects, and sales leads is referred to as contact management - Learn more.

8) Attached processes

Billing, Delivery, Inventory process, After-sales service

Importance of a Sales Pipeline

The sales pipeline assists the sales representative in understanding the status of the customer and their accounts so that the sales representative can address each client appropriately.

The firm can anticipate potential revenue via sales pipelines. As a business, having a method to predict your potential income is essential. A sales pipeline helps you achieve the same thing by highlighting sales areas that are behind and need to change the strategy.

Sales pipeline enables your sales department to work more efficiently. It demonstrates the client’s progress in each phase before a sale is completed successfully or not. As a result, your sales team's productivity improves since they have numbers and analytics to provide solutions to their queries.

Sales Pipeline in Vtiger CRM (Pipeline Management)

Vtiger’s Pipeline Management makes it easy to track your sales progress and supervise the sales team accordingly. You can also check which leads are more willing to buy your product or service, allowing your sales team to focus on those and increase sales.

Vtiger’s Pipeline Management is divided into two sections:

Deal Management

Do you have trouble managing and tracking clients or having difficulty with deal closure? Thankfully we have Vtiger’s Deal Management which keeps all the tools that you require to execute a deal in one place.

Vtiger gives you the option to see your deals in various ways, such as a listing in a list view or as cards in a kanban view. You can create deals from any screen and check the detailed information in one place.

Using Calculus AI, you can check which deal has the highest chances of closing. You can also create a quote instantly for the ongoing deals. With Vtiger’s mobile application, you can keep track of all the deals.

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Forecast and Quota

Every company might benefit from a sales forecast to help them make better decisions. It helps with the general design, budgeting, and risk management. With Vtiger’s Forecast and Quota module, you can create forecast stages and specify sales targets depending on your sales structure.

You can set and revise monthly or quarterly forecasts for your team members to help you manage your sales quota. Important modules such as Quota, Won, Gap, and Pipeline can help you methodically preserve your data. Financial period, forecast type, currency, and forecast periods can all be used to filter forecasts and quotas. Details of the forecast can be exported for analysis.

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