In our last article in the B2B marketing and sales structuring series, we will talk about the sales process from the moment the lead is received, including the commercial stages, the reasons for loss, the flow of a smarketing process and the reverse funnel concept.
Sales Pipeline Stages
When structuring a company’s marketing and sales, it is very common to have doubts about its elements, components, stages and other characteristics of the process. This generally results in two scenarios: a lack of knowledge to get started or inaction resulting from an excess of information, which we call choice paralysis.
Each company must have a funnel that is suited to its particularities and needs. This is very important because only with this idea in mind can the structuring process begin. Remember that, since this is an initial structuring process, the main objective is to test quickly and learn quickly.
In this way, we have separated some job function email database conventional steps of a commercial process. This will help you establish a starting point. Also remember that the more steps, the longer and more complex the process becomes, and the fewer steps, the less information is generated to identify and enhance possible existing levers. The best option, as usual, is to find a balance between a process that is neither so short that it is vague or superficial, nor so long that it is complex to use and interpret.
Building the Pipeline
Start building your pipeline by defining overemployment: diagnosis or superpower? the steps your customer goes through until the sale is made. Longer sales cycles tend to have more steps, as more progress is generally required before the sale is made. After defining the steps, associate each step with an action expected from the sales team.
Check out the example below of steps and expected action per step, in a generic way:
No contact (action -> get in touch) : the lead received, regardless of its origin, is waiting to be contacted. This is a critical stage in the sales process, as a lead that is approached quickly has a greater chance of contact and progress. We recommend that all leads be approached at least once a day, but ideally within 1 hour, with less email list than 5 minutes being the most effective recommendation.
SQL (action -> present proposal) : SQL is a lead that B2B Marketing has been qualified and diagnosed, that is, it has a need and conditions that your product or service can solve. Therefore, a proposal must be presented.
Opportunity (action -> follow-up) : after presenting the proposal, the salesperson must maintain the relationship with the potential client. Follow-ups usually occur every one or two weeks, and can become monthly in cases of longer-term decisions. Even monthly and certainly above this frequency, follow-up becomes too distant and the chance of loss increases significantly.
WON : the sale only happens when the contract is signed. Therefore, the objective of carrying out follow-ups is to obtain verbal acceptance or to lose the negotiation.
Reasons for Loss
Each step defined above must have the reasons for loss duly analyzed and entered into the system (or control spreadsheet). There are two classes of reasons for loss:
Inherent : these are natural to the sales process in a broad sense, such as the number provided not existing, the lead not being answered, the sales team not approaching or the potential customer choosing not to hire.
CRM software usually has its own lists of loss reasons. Use them or start from scratch and ensure that all loss reasons are properly recorded. Finally, since not all software allows you to assign a loss reason to a specific stage, if possible, number your reasons starting with the stage number. This way, even if the software aggregates all the reasons in general, you can still view the loss reasons in stage order, making it easier to record the information and perform subsequent analyses.
Smarketing Process
After defining the steps, creating a flow can be B2B Marketing very useful for aligning all the steps of your process with your teams, partners and investors, as it demonstrates the process in a very visual way.
Below, we have created a generic visual flowchart, taking into account the steps suggested in our article. The first part has a branch for lead scoring when there is an inbound marketing process, that is, attraction marketing, with a significant volume of leads so that the pre-sales team can prioritize the leads with the highest scores.