The basic purpose of a sales pipeline is to estimate the upcoming sales you’re about to close in a given month, quarter or year. Over time, this information becomes your sales forecast.
Forecasts provide critical planning information in terms of managing resources, ordering raw materials, supplying components, etc. No wonder why forecasting is the top priority of most managers, and why your pipeline is what guides your day to day priorities.
During the process of building up your pipeline with leads, you’ve determined the real potential of each opportunity in terms of total sales money and volume, and you may have even identified the key decision makers in the company. But, the job isn’t done yet. Now comes the work of managing your pipeline by following up on all the opportunities.
The best way to keep track of what’s going on in your pipeline is through your CRM system. With SuperOffice, you can document all follow-up actions that you agree upon with customers and prospects. When you create the follow-ups, make sure to choose the action required, contact name and the date of estimated completion. Then, a tool such as the Sales Secretary will help you to track and complete these actions accurately and totally within the agreed upon timeframe.
Start using the Sales Secretary to keep your sales moving forward
The Sales Secretary in SuperOffice helps you to get a great overview of all your open sales – and helps you to prioritize your opportunities, as well as plan how to reach your budget.
You enable the Sales Secretary when you register new sales in SuperOffice. As long as you consistently register a new sale on each company or customer you are planning to close a deal with, you can surely benefit from this feature. Want to enable the sales secretary to manage your pipeline? Learn how to register sales
Get an overview of your pipeline at a glance
The Sales Secretary can be found in the Sale section tab in the Diary, and it works as a sales-oriented task list, which ensures you are moving your sale through the pipeline in a way that you don't forget to follow up on agreed next steps and promises.
Different pipeline reports give you snapshot views of your pipeline to help you manage it. This overview of your pipeline is valuable because you see it every time you look in your diary. This means that you get a constant reminder about the state of the total pipeline as well as each individual sales opportunity.
For example, by looking at the total list, you can identify whether you have enough new opportunities. If you don’t, then you’ll see that you will need to take the initiative to get more opportunities. In addition, the list will also help you to identify which opportunities you need to qualify more and even show you which ones are stalled.
The Sales Secretary shows you:
1. Which opportunities you have going on at the moment:
2. How big the deals are:
3. When the prospect is likely to make a decision:
4. What the probability of closing the deal is:
5. What activity is planned next in order to move each sale forward:
Always stay ahead of your game
As a salesperson, you primarily want more time in a day so that you can sell more and reach your sales targets faster. Prioritizing tasks, finding the most promising prospects, and still keeping track of your sales pipeline can become quite challenging, even for the most organized of people.
There is a lot to stay on top of, and the Sales Secretary works as your own sales assistant to help you manage lead volume, statuses, next moves, reminders, etc. for you. In this way, you can spend most of your time on the most promising prospects, while the Sales Secretary manages the rest for you. As long as you keep registering all your sales opportunities and keep updating them with relevant data, you’re on your way to closing deals faster and not letting any opportunities fall through the cracks.
