How Do You Build (and Manage) Your Pipeline?

If you’re a new or very small business, the idea of creating and managing a pipeline may seem unnecessary, unimportant, and/or overwhelming — but there is great value in tracking your leads, prospects, clients, and lost business opportunities. If you’re planning to do any sort of marketing whatsoever, it’s worth it to establish a process to manage what’s coming your way as a result of all of your marketing spending and efforts.

So first, let’s take a step back.

What is a sales pipeline?

According to Pipedrive, it is: 

…an organized, visual way of tracking multiple potential buyers as they progress through different stages in the purchasing process.

Now, let’s break that down.

• First, “…an organized, visual way” can be achieved through a simple, well-organized spreadsheet or a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool (we’ll get to that below).
• Next, “…tracking multiple potential buyers” means tracking people who you’ve identified as potential buyers (customers/clients), people who have shown an interest, referrals from others, people you’ve met with, or those who you’re closing business with.
• Finally, “…as they progress through different stages in the purchasing process” means tracking where a lead/prospect is, where they’ve been, and what you expect from them. Perhaps they started as an unknown newsletter sign-up, and then, there was a phone call, a meeting … and now they’re considering buying/contracting your services. It’s good to understand their “customer journey” (and it’s even better to lead them through it).

So, that brings us to the Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.

A CRM is simply a tool that gathers customer interactions – across all channels – in one place. Managing data in a centralized place helps businesses improve customer experience, satisfaction, retention and service. Further, with a CRM, you can track how much revenue you expect from that business (and when), so that you can generate a more accurate income statement forecast.

Pipeline organization and management will vary greatly depending on the type, size, and stage of the business (amongst other factors), so choosing the right CRM tool to manage your pipeline — along with an appropriate process for your business — is important so that you don’t create something that’s basically useless or more work than it’s worth.

For most small start-ups or small service businesses, a simple, low-cost, or free CRM (or even a basic, well-organized spreadsheet) should do the trick. You can see some of the better CRM recommendations here. You should have a basic understanding of how you’ll be using it, before you invest any time or money into one, so that you can be sure you’re getting the right tool to meet your needs. [Tip: This is where a virtual assistant can be very helpful. They can help you to choose the right CRM for you, customize it for your business, and train you on how to use it.]

Either before or once you’ve chosen a CRM, you’ll need to decide how you’re going to incorporate it into your business (which will most likely be an evolving process). Basically, you’ll want to figure out a few things, such as:

• Who will you capture in your CRM?
  • People typically include leads, prospects, customers/clients, partners, and even vendors in their CRM.
• What will you capture in your CRM?
  • Will you keep notes in the contact record of your CRM for conversations, ideas, etc?
    • Some people use records in their phone or email to keep notes, others use handwritten notes, or notes tools, such as Evernote or OneNote. Whatever makes sense for your style/business, with the understanding that the less centralized information is kept, the more likely it is to be “lost” or forgotten (without some sort of integration) and the harder it is to make use of.
  • Will you track past and planned activities in your CRM? Will you reference the activities daily to see what’s coming up?
    • Some people just put activities and planned calls (or even executed calls) on their calendar. That’s great, if you’ve synced up your CRM and your calendar, but otherwise, it’s tough to see the whole picture for a prospect/client when the activities and data are spread across systems. Further, it’s much harder to “slice and dice” (tag and segment) your list, when the data isn’t in a tool that can do this.
• What are the right/appropriate sales stages for your business?
  • Does the very first contact usually result in business closing or is there more of a nurturing process that happens?
  • Do you go after target clients or receive referrals from others?
  • Answering these questions will help you to determine the right sales stages for you to effectively and appropriately track your sales stages/process. Typical stages include:
    • Target / Idea [Nothing has happened yet]
    • Initial Contact [Email, call, text contact made]
    • Lead Qualification [Determined it is a viable lead]
    • Meeting Set [Substantive meeting to discuss business.]
    • Proposal [A clear and defined offer for services presented]
    • Closing [Final stages to close the business]
    • Closed/Won or Closed/Lost [Did it happen?]
• How often will you update/reference your CRM?
  • It’s typical to build out the CRM and then either forget about it or neglect it, so incorporating it into a regular routine will allow it to serve its purpose.

Why do I need this?

There are a lot of people who keep their prospects in their phone contacts, in their email marketing tool, or in a file that they never look at. Your email marketing tool (if you have that) will tell you who’s opening your emails and if they’re clicking on anything, but then what? Are you going to reach out to them? Will you remember that you did a few months down the road? What you talked about? That follow-up you promised?

Knowing where your prospects/clients come from, keeping notes on your interactions with them, setting activities for them, identifying where they are in the sales process, what you did right, why you lost an opportunity, when you last spoke (or perhaps even… when is their birthday, so that you can send a card or note) can make all of the difference in developing the kind of trust and relationship that helps to close business and improve upon your process and service.

OK, I’ve got a short list of names and emails, but how do I build this pipeline, now that I’ve got the tool and process to manage them?

There is a wealth of information out there about effective sales and marketing techniques and tools, so in order to keep it short, we’re going to stick to the basics. If you are interested in learning a lot more about effective marketing, you can check out a great book called Get Clients Now! We actually offer this training to our Divorce With Dignity Providers!

Depending on your business, you should likely have at least the following in place to effectively market your business (assuming you’ve already settled on your basic branding):

• A clearly defined target market.
  • If you start by being very clear and specific from the beginning (this may change over time), you can strategize your marketing efforts around reaching your target market.
• A clear and searchable website that’s designed with your target audience in mind
  • What’s their problem?
  • What do you do to address their problem and help?
  • Why should they trust you? (Offer social proof as testimonials, credentials, and/or experience.)
  • What can they expect?
  • How can they quickly and easily have their questions answered? (Contact information or page and/or FAQs)
  • What do they do to get started? (Include a clear call to action.)
  • Include ‘Keep in Touch’ options (such as newsletter subscribe, blog subscribe, and links to social media pages/profiles)
  • Don’t forget your Privacy Policy and Terms of Use
  • Make sure people can find you!
    • Register your business on Google via Google My Business and set-up Google Search Console
• Social Media Pages/Profiles
  • Offer educational content.
  • Let them get to know more about your business.
  • Ask questions and post topics that will let you connect with your audience and easily engage with them.
  • Include a prominent “Subscribe” call to action, so that you can capture their email.
  • Most common venues: LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Yelp
• Email List
  • Capture emails on your website and social media sites.
  • Offer freebies for signing-up.
  • Produce regular, quality distributions with content designed to educate, inspire, and support the subscribers.
• Professional Network
  • Join and be active in your professional community. Whether it’s just LinkedIn Groups or local chapters of professional organizations, get to know other professionals who may serve as referral sources and targets for you.
• Ads Budget
  • With all of these wonderful places for people to learn about and connect with you, it would be a shame if no one ever finds you, so consider running a few smaller ads on Facebook, Google, or LinkedIn (depending on where you’re focusing your marketing efforts and where your target audience “lives”).

Now, as you’re setting up your “Lead Source” choices in your new CRM, be sure to list the marketing venues you’ve developed as sources, so that you can see where your business is coming from. As you’re regularly reviewing your Profit & Loss report (as we talked about in a previous blog post), it’ll be good to compare where you’re spending your marketing dollars vs. where the revenue is coming from.

We’re going to stop there. There’s so much information on this topic, but we hope that what we covered here helps you to feel better equipped to begin to build your pipeline. We know that developing and managing your sales and marketing strategy can feel quite overwhelming, so, when Providers come onboard with Divorce With Dignity, we provide comprehensive training and a wide variety of resources and support to ensure your success. You can learn about all of the things we provide during your free consultation call.

Contact us to learn more!

The author of this blog is not an attorney and the information contained in these blogs should not be considered legal advice. Please do not hesitate to seek the advice of an attorney if you have any legal questions.