What is a sales pipeline and how can you use it to optimise your sales cycles?

Building your sales processes is the first step in your sales strategy. These must be adapted to the needs of your customers and your company in order to encourage acquisition and conversion. These processes, known as the " sales pipeline", represent a real performance driver for your sales teams.

The sales pipeline will give you a clearer overview of all your sales stages, from initial contact to contract signature. It's an essential tool for managing your sales effectively. Thanks to it, your teams can monitor the progress of their prospects and put in place potential corrective actions.

But what is a sales pipeline actually used for? How can you build it effectively, while adapting it to the needs of your prospects? Find out in this article.

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Sales pipeline: definition

What is a sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline, or its synonym " sales pipeline", is a sales tool that enables you to visualise your sales process, from making contact to closing the sale. The aim of these processes is to turn a prospect into a customer. Your sales pipeline is therefore an essential tool for converting your customers.

👉 A sales pipeline is particularly useful for sales teams who have to manage and follow up many prospects and customers.

How the sales pipeline works

How does it work? It's very simple. It breaks down your sales processes into a number of small, easy-to-follow tasks. This makes it :

• find out more easily what stage your prospects are at ;
• know at what point in your sales process your conversions are failing;
• better manage the development of leads;
• identify the key stages in your conversions.

3 examples of a sales pipeline

How do you create a sales pipeline in 5 steps?

Step 1: Understand your offering and your customers' needs

Before defining your sales process, and therefore your sales pipeline, it's essential to know and understand..:

• The product or service you are selling : this will enable you to present your offer more confidently and counter potential objections from your future customer.
• Your customers' needs : knowing your potential customers is essential to the success of your negotiations. You'll know exactly which levers to use to trigger a sale.
  👉 The SONCAS method enables you to improve your knowledge even further by identifying your prospects' personality traits.
• Your sales pitch : your sales pitch must be convincing in order to prove to your prospect that your solution is the one that will best meet their need.

Step 2: Define the stages of your pipeline

The stages in your sales pipeline should correspond to your customer's buying journey. The more complex the product, the longer the sales process and the more stages in your pipeline.

There are 3 main phases through which the prospect passes:

• Awareness: the prospect becomes aware of their needs and/or issues.
• Consideration: the prospect has defined their problem, they now determine the evaluation criteria and find out about the solutions available to them.
• Decision : the prospect is now ready to take action and make a purchasing decision.

The various stages in a sales pipeline can be as follows:

• Making contact: the prospect makes contact with your company. This can be done by :
  • attending a webinar
  • a download
  • opening an email, etc.
• Making an appointment: following a canvass or telephone conversation, the prospect agrees to an appointment to find out more about the solution you are offering.
• Meeting over : the prospect now has all the information they need to make their choice.
• Solution proposed: the prospect is genuinely interested in your product.
• Offer sent: the prospect studies your offer.

You are then faced with two situations:

• The deal is signed.
• the deal is lost.

Step 3: Monitor and analyse your prospects' behaviour

Your sales teams need to assess how long your prospects spend at each stage of the sales pipeline. This will show you approximately how long it takes for your prospects to be converted into customers.

It will also help your teams to :

• forecast the next stages of the pipeline;
• predict which opportunities are most likely to turn into deals;
• estimate the percentage of prospects who go on to the next stage (the average conversion rate).

Step 4: Identify and improve the actions that are most effective in converting your leads

It's also important to assess which tools and types of content have encouraged your prospects to convert into customers. But that's not all. Identify the actions taken by your teams that enabled the prospect to move on to the next stage in the pipeline. This could be :

• Watching a video,
• reading an article
• help and guidance from a salesperson or online advisor,
• customer reviews on the official website,
• a CTA (call-to-action) button in the mailbox or on the site,
• a newsletter, etc.

💡A little tip: using a solution that specialises in converting leads can be a big help. In fact, thanks to visual dashboards that are updated in real time, you can simply measure the impact of your actions on your sales pipeline.

Examples of software:

• Sellsy is a French sales management solution for VSEs and SMEs. Sellsy's dynamic and intuitive pipeline views help you monitor sales and ensure you don't miss out on any business opportunities . Everything can be configured according to the stages of your sales pipeline, as well as the probability rate to be assigned to each stage. And thanks to the automation and tracking systems, you can be sure that you'll follow up your prospects at the right time!
  
  
• Webmecanik Pipeline is a free, French-language, highly intuitive CRM that helps you build solid customer relationships through effective sales pipelines. With features powered by the intelligence of Big Data, you can organise opportunities simply and easily using modern views in the form of pipelines, including the stages specific to your conversion cycle. What's more? Webmecanik Pipeline tells you the percentage of future sales based on the progress of your opportunities, your conversion rate and the average time to close.
  

Step 5: Create or adapt your sales process

Now that you have all the information you need to create an optimal and appropriate sales pipeline, define your sales funnel. You may also find these additional tasks useful:

• analyse all the sales you've made to identify your strengths;
• Improve your overall business strategy based on your pipeline data;
• evaluate the effectiveness of your sales pipeline on your sales.

Creating a sales pipeline is not an easy task.

You can use a specialist sales pipeline automation tool such as Blacksales. This complete, stand-alone, made-to-measure prospecting solution enables you to :

• constantly generate new opportunities
• structure your sales pipeline in real time.

What's more? Thanks to an automated outbound marketing system , the platform can follow up prospects directly and in a personalised way, so that your sales reps never miss an opportunity!

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Why build a sales pipeline?

Are you still wondering how useful a sales pipeline is for your sales strategy? Here are the main benefits:

Define your objectives more clearly

A sales pipeline will give you a clearer picture of your objectives at every stage of your sales process. This makes it easier to monitor your progress, which in turn makes it easier to take corrective action if your targets are not being met.

For example : you know that your conversion rate is 25%. When an opportunity is detected, you know that you need X opportunities in the pipeline to achieve your objective. You can analyse the conversion or evolution rate by stage and determine the number of opportunities required at each stage.

👉 Tip: Set up outbound marketing "push actions" to speed up the conversion of your prospects.

Prioritise the opportunities to be relaunched

Time is money. So what better way than to prioritise your sales opportunities and deal only with the most relevant ones?

👉 The sales pipeline enables you to detect opportunities quickly so that you can define the actions to be taken. In this way, you quickly identify time-consuming tasks, which you can automate using a specialist tool.

Better track your prospects' buying journey

Of course, sales reps are supposed to have a good understanding of the buying journey of each type of prospect, but creating a sales pipeline will make their job easier and give them a much more optimal view.

👉 Knowing in detail all the stages a prospect goes through will enable sales reps to activate the right levers at the right time.

Identify the weak points in your sales cycle more quickly

Knowing at which stage the most leads are lost enables sales reps to quickly implement corrective actions.

For example : if you realise that a large proportion of your prospects are lost at the "Proposed solution" stage, you need to start carrying out research with your sales people and with these prospects in order to identify what is holding them back. Ask yourself the right questions:

• How is the solution not suited to their needs?
• What are the most common obstacles?
• Should sales rethink their sales pitches?

Define the stages that convert best

The opposite also applies. It's important to identify the steps or actions that considerably improve your conversion rate. This will enable you to focus on the right actions and thus encourage their success.

For example : you've realised that the "Appointment setting" stage helps your prospects to move on. This shows that your sales people have an effective sales pitch that convinces prospects and moves them on to the next stage.