CRM
Progressive Sales Opportunity Stages Can Keep You Honest
From the time it is identified, a sales opportunity goes through maturity stages. These stages depend really on how close the customer is to making a purchase decision. This in turn depends on how “in sync” you are, as a sales person, with the customer.
Assuming you are, and we have the B.A.N.T method to help you (and to keep you honest 🙂 ), Saleswah lets you know at a glance the sales opportunity stages you are in your deals. It has three benefits:
- You can get a one shot “quality check” of deals by the sales opportunity stages. So, if a Deal is in the “Investigate” stage, you know that you need to know a lot more about the customers and his purchase milestones. Whereas, if the Deal is in “Presentation” stage, then it is at the stage where you need to move towards a “Closure”. It is the final proposal or presentation or negotiation stage in the sales process- which will get you a decision.
- You can align your internal sales/ marketing processes to the sales opportunity stages. If a deal is in the Opportunity stage- your internal processes might dictate primary handling by marketing. Whereas, if a deal is in Presentation or Close, then it is very definitely driven by Sales.
- Finally, by aggregating the deals by sales opportunity stages, Saleswah can show the health of the funnel in the dashboard.
The Sales Funnel is a fairly mature concept and a Google search would turn up with hundreds of terms and variations. One thing everyone agrees on is the shape- wide at the top and narrow at the bottom. Don’t get stuck on the semantics; follow the funnel and you will do well in closing business.
Need a CRM software solution that will manage sales opportunities throughout their lifecycles?Browse the top CRM software solutions in our Top 40 CRM Software report.
[This post originally appeared on the Saleswah blog and is reposted with permission.]
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Anindya Chatterjee
Expert in Customer Relationship Management
