-1.png?width=200&height=71&name=Black%20And%20Beige%20Modern%20Simple%20Aesthetic%20Minimalist%20Dialogue%20Agency%20Logo%20(1)-1.png)
By
The Importance of a Streamlined Sales Process
A streamlined and efficient sales process is paramount in a fast-paced sales environment. A well-designed sales process not only influences the techniques used by sales reps but also informs broader strategies such as hiring and coaching. Utilising a tool like HubSpot CRM can significantly enhance the effectiveness of your sales team, but only if you set it up in a way that supports your ideal sales process.
Your sales process should be accurately reflected in your HubSpot Deal pipeline. This pipeline, consisting of various stages, represents the journey of a deal from initiation to closure. You can customise these stages in HubSpot CRM to align perfectly with your sales process.
So, how do you define your Deal Pipeline?
1. Map Your Sales Journey
The first step towards a streamlined Deal Pipeline is to map out your entire sales journey, detailing every touchpoint between your sales team and the buyer. This process includes both parties' actions, showing a comprehensive journey overview.
The process map is not only the first step in developing your HubSpot Deal Pipeline but also serves as a valuable document to understand the steps taken by your sales team. This process map can be used to pinpoint areas for process improvement and automation and also as a tool to identify the root cause of problems that may arise.
2. Remove non-key steps
Not every step in your sales process should be included in the HubSpot Deal Pipeline. The pipeline should primarily focus on key milestones that indicate the progression towards a sale. While necessary in the sales process, preliminary steps such as prospect identification or initial contact are not milestones and, thus, should not initiate a stage in the HubSpot Deal Pipeline.
After removing the non-key steps, you should be left with only the key steps that absolutely must be carried out and cannot be skipped
3. Remove Steps before Your Deal Pipeline
It is crucial to maintain a focused and manageable list of deals in your Deal Pipeline to optimize the activities of your sales representatives. Having an excessive number of deals can make it challenging to keep track of your most significant opportunities, while too few steps in the pipeline render it ineffective.
To ensure an efficient sales process, we recommend that salespeople ideally have no more than ten deals at any given stage in the Deal Pipeline. This allows for better prioritization and focus on key opportunities.
Determining when your deal pipeline should start is equally important. It should commence when there is a verifiable opportunity to make a future sale or when a prospect demonstrates genuine interest through a key commitment. Some teams find it helpful to use a qualification matrix like BANT to determine when a deal should be added to the pipeline.
In our example above, this would mean excluding the steps "Identify Prospect" and "Connect with Prospect." Instead, the pipeline would begin once a prospect has agreed to a meeting, indicating a tangible level of commitment beyond mere speculation. However, this may vary depending on the nature of your business and its specific requirements.
Lead Status: The Pre-Pipeline Tracking Tool
You might be wondering how to keep track of the steps before your Deal Pipeline.
Before a prospect qualifies for a deal, their journey is tracked using the 'Lead Status' property in HubSpot CRM. Identify those steps that occur before a deal is ready to be generated.
This feature allows for detailed monitoring of a lead’s progression before it matures into a deal. You can create your stages, but we have found the 'out the box' stages suitable for most businesses.
If you have subscribed to HubSpot Sales Professional or above, you can leverage HubSpot's Lead Prospecting tool:
4. Remove non-inspectable steps
Non-inspectable steps refer to any steps that are not visible or traceable within your CRM. In our specific scenario, every step can be quickly inspected in the CRM. However, it is essential to avoid including steps that occur offline and are not recorded in any way within the CRM system.
5. Re-Write Your Stages From The Buyer's Perspective
To ensure that your sales process prioritises the buyer's needs, we suggest naming the stages from the buyer's perspective. This approach allows us to align our stages with the buyer's journey and create a more customer-centric sales process:
- Agree time to meet
- Evaluate product
- Approve
- Receive contract
- Sign contract
6. Re-Write Your Stages In Past Tense
To clarify for your sales team when a deal should enter each stage, it is recommended to write it in the past tense. Additionally, it is essential to define the stages of 'Closed/Won' and 'Closed/Lost':
- Meeting Scheduled
- Product Evaluated
- Quote Approved
- Contract Received
- Contract Signed (Closed/Won)
- Closed/Lost
7. Add Your Stages to HubSpot
You are now ready to create your Deal Pipeline in HubSpot.
Head over to the Deal Pipelines settings and add in your newly created stages.
Add Deal Probability Percentages
Deal probability percentages provide valuable insights into the likelihood of a deal converting into a sale at each stage of the sales process. These percentages are crucial in determining the value of deals in your pipeline.
Let's say you have ten deals, each worth £100, in a stage with a 20% Deal Probability. This would result in a pipeline value of £200. You can easily track this figure in the Deal Board under the 'Weighted Deal Amount' category. This feature allows you to assess the overall value of your Deal Pipeline based on these percentages, empowering you to make informed decisions about your sales strategy.
If you already have historical data, add in the 'deal probability' the average percentage of deals that turn into a sale at each step.
If you do not have historical data that you can use, make an educated guess. For your 'closed won' stage, choose 'Won'; for your 'closed lost' stage, choose lost.
We recommend that you schedule a review, about once a quarter, to review your deal probability percentages and update them based on the most up-to-date data.
8. Define Exit Criteria for Each Stage
Exit criteria are essential in clarifying what needs to be achieved before a deal can progress from one stage to the next. These criteria provide sales reps with clear instructions on the immediate actions, ensuring a smooth and efficient sales process.
9. Automate Deal Management in HubSpot
For users with Sales Hub Professional or Enterprise, HubSpot offers automation features that streamline various aspects of deal management. This can include automatic updates of deal stages when a deal progresses, making the process more efficient and reducing manual effort.
