Selling the product is only one part of the prospect that has many stages. Each stage is equally important because it makes the entire buying process painless for the customer. Sounds pretty familiar? Well this is exactly what the sales team uses and it has a name, it's called Sales Pipeline Tracking.

This is not just a random buzzword, this is the lifeblood for the sales team. Stages are much needed to understand bottlenecks that happen more often. If the stages aren't there, issues will go uninformed and may cause long term losses for the company. That is only one of many reasons why Pipeline Tracking is so important, and here are a few more of them:

1. Precision: It provides precise data backed information about what causes a deal to close and at which stage. This one realisation can change the entire sales team overnight.

2. Coaching: Bottlenecks help figure out which employees are lacking in training which is causing the issue. Then the brand can provide them personalized training to counter that and delete the root cause.

3. Resource Allocation: Each stage is managed by a different person, or at least the employee knows where the most effort goes. This helps them reallocate their focus on a certain part, while making it easy for the others. 

4. Strategic Planning: Business grows as the sales ramps up, and it goes down along with it as well. Pipeline tracking provides crucial data that helps prevent that ladder, and provide long term business growth.

Read More: How to Track Sales Commissions Easily [Free Template Included] 

Click on one of the three available links and download the pipeline templates now. This is the easiest it can get, and the best part is that our temple comes with commonly used words and a dedicated set of examples to understand which column represents where. So what are you waiting for?

These practices help the morality of the sales pipeline stay intact and they look as follows:

1. Define Your Stages Clearly: Make sure that each stage is easier to understand and doesn't use Acronyms more often.

2. Regular Updates: Encourage regular updates at least once a week or daily if possible. Force it if you have to.

3. Conduct Pipeline Reviews: Review the pipeline on a regular basis. Take meetings and also provide necessary training if needed. It's all about growing, nothing in between.

4. Focus on Next Steps: Pipeline must define the Next Stage properly once a particular stage ends. This is important to fight off stagnation.

5. Qualify Relentlessly: Focus on what sales, and remove what doesn't. Zombie Deals never worked for anyone, so it is pointless to think it will for us. Put it in the garbage dump and move on.

Read More: Performance Review Toolkit: Free Template & How-To Guide

The importance of pipeline tracking is so much that companies always focus more on these than other departments. Because the entire chance of survivability depends on the overall sales. So, this is a wake up call for those who never thought of this before, or if did but never gave it their full attention. Sales pipeline has the potential to make or break a name, and yours may be next if it's not taken care of within due time.

Frequently Asked Questions

Q1. What is the sales pipeline and why should I track it?

Ans. Sales Pipeline visualizes the buying process as a tunnel with many turns. Each turn represents the stage which goes all the way to the closed deal. Tracking it is crucial which doesn't only help the marketing team figure out how much time is left till the end deal, but also for customers where each stage unfolds without any delay. 

Q2. What are the most important KPIs I should be tracking?

Ans. Focus on Key Performance Indicators or KPIs like: Number of Leads on average, Win Rate vs Total Calls, and finally Volume and Weight average. These three key KPIs will give you the insight you were looking for.

Q3. How often should my team update the Pipeline?

Ans. Daily is the ideal way of doing things. But if that's too much, then make sure that the pipeline is dealt with at least once a week. Delays will only increase the pile of pipeline data needed to be updated, which may waste significant production hours.

Read More: Sales Objection Playbook: Template & Tips for Closing Faster

Q4. Is the provided template enough for this?

Ans. It is more than enough for small scale business. But if you have a large team, it is ideal to use dedicated tools from the market like DataBuck or Hevo.

Q5. How to deal with constantly stuck deals in the pipeline?

Ans. This is the biggest use case of Pipeline Tracking. Find out exactly which stage is causing this issue, and once identified, start digging deep. Maybe there is a lack of objection handling skills, maybe qualification isn't enough for the employees or maybe the value proposition isn't getting through with the current ways of things. This will allow you to implement targeted training for those individuals who are causing the bottlenecks to happen.

Sources:

1. Pipeline tracking: best tips and practices | Revenue Grid

2. Pipeline-Tracking-Merge Object Detection Dataset and Pre-Trained Model by CEFETRJ

3. Sales Pipeline Tracking and Reporting | Smartsheet Learning Center

4. What Is a Sales Pipeline Tracker and Best Practices

5. Pipeline Track