Sales pipeline template: The benefits of using It with your sales team

The Benefits of Using a Sales Pipeline Template

According to the Harvard Business Review, businesses with well-defined sales processes see a 28% higher revenue growth than those without?  If your pipeline isn’t working for you, read on!

Using the sales pipeline template, you can gain a complete understanding of how your sales process works so that you can make adjustments as necessary. The sales pipeline shows each prospect's status throughout the sales process. as well as every deal your sales rep is working on at any given time.

Your sales operations will be streamlined, churn will be reduced, and revenue will be maximized as a result of this increased visibility.

A sales pipeline review can help you improve your overall sales process and revenue growth, track the success of each stage, and increase the conversation rate with prospects. The best thing is that you don't have to worry about it being complicated.

What is a sales pipeline template?

A sales pipeline template is an organized visual way to track each stage of your sales process, from prospect to paying customer. It allows you to clearly define and map each stage in the pipeline so you can gain an understanding of the important details of each sales opportunity - and make changes based on successes or failures.

By managing a sales pipeline, a sales rep can track all opportunities, prioritize, follow up steps, improve sales strategy, and identify the most likely sales.

Visualizing your sales pipeline data also makes it easy for your teammates to understand where things stand. Sales managers may have point-in-time data, but they often lack trends for the entire period. When you use a template, the entire sales team can easily be on the same page.

In your sales process, you need to clearly define stages in the order they occur. Effective sales pipeline management leads to higher sales, so it's important to get it right. When you define your opportunity pipeline template, you'll no longer miss leads and opportunities. 

What goes into a sales pipeline template?

To effectively forecast sales and monitor progress, your pipeline stages should match up with your prospects' purchasing processes. Generally speaking, a more sophisticated product will have a longer sales cycle and possibly more stages.

Depending on their sales procedures, organizations, and even teams, might have different pipelines.

Make sure to focus on the crucial phases that have the biggest impact. You shouldn't stress too much over building the perfect pipeline the first time. Your process's pipeline could change dynamically over time.

Here are some common terms found in sales pipeline templates: 

• Deal: This is the agreement between you and your client. 
• Win: You win when you close a deal that means a profit for your company.
• Customer/Client: It is the person who has invested in your services.
• Prospect: An interested party or company is a prospect.
• Lead: This is a person who has expressed an interest in your services. 
• Probability Percentage: This number indicates the likelihood of closing a deal. 
• Closing date:  Refers to the date when a deal is closed or when it becomes impractical to continue negotiating. 

Why do you need a sales pipeline template for your sales team?

It can seem overwhelming to reach annual goals or close a big deal, but breaking down the daily steps your reps take will give you a starting point and a roadmap.

Sales pipeline templates allow your sales team to collaborate seamlessly, identify the most important deals, and flag them for further action. Your reps are more likely to achieve their goals with clearly outlined, step-by-step sales pipelines. Furthermore, you can assess your team's individual and overall performance by monitoring specific steps in your sales pipeline management processes.

You can easily digest and understand your team's performance with a sales pipeline. Suppose one sales rep is performing significantly better than the rest of the team, and you want to integrate those tactics across the team. 

Keeping track of pipelines helps sales reps stay organized. They can improve their sales performance by seeing where each deal is and what activities are next by looking at their pipeline.

Lead nurturing can be easily identified by sales reps. They can prioritize their efforts when they know who to approach when to schedule meetings, and when to follow up.

Furthermore, they can differentiate hot leads from cold leads more easily, saving them time spent on prospects who don't fit their ideal customer personas.

In the end, a well-managed, accessible sales pipeline document simplifies and automates your process, sets realistic goals and key metrics, reduces bottlenecks, improves your sales results, and increases revenue.

What are the key benefits of a sales pipeline inside your company?

Custom View - You can create a customized sales pipeline at any stage. Display only important fields with custom sales pipeline templates. Your sales pipeline template can be filtered out and sorted to focus on deals with a higher probability of success and to increase revenue.

1. Manage your sales with clarity and comprehensiveness - Keep track of all your leads, prevent them from falling through the cracks and gain a clear picture of the stages of your business's lifecycle. 

2. Enhance deals and project management. You are better able to prioritize tasks when you have all your opportunities and leads in front of you.

3. Effective marketing-sales collaboration - Marketers and sales managers can combine sales and marketing data and link it to future conversions to make the entire process more efficient using the marketing pipeline template.

4. Promote teamwork - A sales pipeline template makes team collaborate fast and smoothly, so they can focus on what matters most: closing deals.

5. Make informed data-based decisions - Calculate conversion rates, and forecast, and provide instant, data-driven insight into sales performance.

6. Forecast your sales - View up-to-date deal details so you can analyze revenue streams and make predictions about which deals are most likely to close, forecast your sales and calculate your deal won amount.

Spreadsheet vs CRM as sales pipeline template?

Start with a spreadsheet.

Spreadsheets are a great initial tool for managing all of your team's business data, including deal size, sales stage, profitability, weighted sales forecast, key prospect information, and more.

With a simple spreadsheet template, you can stay organized, identify areas for improvement, and manage your team more effectively. It will be a good solution for sales managers managing a small team with a few deals.

The biggest advantage of spreadsheets is that they are free. If you don't have Excel, there are many free alternatives (such as Open Office or Google Sheets) that can be used instead.

Making data-driven decisions is easier when you have an overview of all current deals in your spreadsheet pipeline. Besides tracking your team's progress, this will streamline your own daily operations, allowing you to reinvest valuable time and energy into managing your team.

The sales pipeline spreadsheet template can also be customized to meet your unique business requirements. You can easily add stages and modify formulas to suit your process and potential clients.

Transition from a spreadsheet to a CRM in order to scale.

Switching from a sales pipeline spreadsheet to a CRM

A CRM with full functionality becomes more important as your business grows and your sales process becomes more complex.

Spreadsheets are an excellent way to organize all of your team's business data for a business in its early stages. But, with your team growing, it's essential that leads and prospects are documented and easily accessed in real-time.

To track sales and find the information they need, sales reps need to be able to search individual and team-wide records quickly. CRM, cloud-based systems keep everything up-to-date automatically as your prospects move through the pipeline by integrating with your email, calendar, and other tools.

Switching from a spreadsheet to a CRM can gain huge rewards for small businesses and startups alike, regardless of their size.

Additionally, CRMs can be accessed and updated from both desktops and mobile devices allowing reps to enter new information on the go, improving timeliness, accountability, and collaboration.