You may be aware that HubSpot offers a tool called pipeline management? But what is it and how can it assist with your sales pipeline management?
The term “sales pipeline” is all the leads your sales team are currently working on. So when you have your sales process overlaid with the performance, your reps can analyse deals and how close they are to getting them closed in that specific week or month. The best way to track this? A very good CRM tool of course…
Essentially, the HubSpot pipeline management lets you seal sales and never let them slip out of your hands. You can add deals, track progress and assign tasks with the software quickly and smoothly, via your dashboards.
Creating new deals is simple and can be done in a jiffy. Simply add deals from a company record or contact, and you can populate deals with the latest information, via the HubSpot CRM. These deals are automatically recorded and remove the need for manual data entry. This essentially allows you to save time to make more phone calls, go to more meetings and send more emails in this time – ensuring you hit your targets every month.
Your sales team can gain insights from the system efficiently as HubSpot automatically pulls company details from their database, which again, saves you time. You can even have emails tracked, and send follow-ups based on the status of that email. We all know that sales follow up emails are tedious and time consuming, but with HubSpot, you can use effective email templates to help you send repetitive emails quicker. You can even share this with the rest of your sales team, so everyone is on par and being more productive.
HubSpot also constantly syncs your sales productivity tools with your inbox, so you can check figures, progress, and statuses at any given time. You also have the ability to keep your team’s contacts and data all in one place.
You may have an issue with your sales process, and you may not even have a sales process in place. If you don’t, there’s no need to stress. HubSpot CRM is designed to be able to define your sales process and edit, add or delete deals quickly and easily. The best part? You can do all of this without the need for an IT department to help you – saving you a tonne of time. This also means that your pipeline is controlled, and you can spend your time on product and deal development for future sales.
With HubSpot CRM, you are able to get absolute transparency in that you can view team and individual performance, so you can see where your capacity shortfalls are. Your dashboard is designed to check your quotas, including the progress of it, in relation to monthly trends. This shows you the overall value of your pipeline, in one easy-to-find dashboard.
We all know that as a sales team, the most tedious and disliked part of the job is the administration behind it. This is also the area where omissions and errors are most frequently made, with the result that valuable leads sometimes ‘slip behind the sofa’ So, this is why software like HubSpot exists. The sales pipeline organises and streamlines all your data entry and admin requirements, letting you get on with the job at hand. Selling gets more and more competitive by the minute, and it’s important to have the processes outlined, in a digital way so that everything is captured as quickly as possible, and matched back to targets at any given time.
So, here are a few ways to boost your sales pipeline:
Do your milestones for your sales pipeline make sense? When we say this, we mean that you literally need to go to your current status and ask yourself questions like “is the qualification process complete?” and is it marked this way or is it just marked as “qualified”? The more general term would not be so useful, as your team may not be sure what is qualified. Milestones and ‘qualification’ itself need to be clearly defined, and you may want to make sure that your milestones are specific enough to act as an incentive to sales progress.. They need to tie into core activities and make sense to everyone on your team.
Always take the time to seek out your sales activities and match them back to your milestones. This is done by accurate mapping and through the qualification stage of the sales process. You want to ensure that your daily activities are aligned with the progression in your pipeline.
You want to automate your CRM systems so that when you build documents into it, everything is integrated with your tools. CRM systems should be used to update your sales processes, as well as the activities and milestones with it. This will allow you to pull status reports at any given time for your management team. More importantly, the CRM system should be set up so that it is able to show you opportunities and remind you of what next steps to action.
Your sales team should be able to accurately forecast based on a system like HubSpot. This type of CRM system is designed to help you save time and focus on doing what is important in the day, rather than manually emailing, syncing and collaborating within your sales pipeline management.
JDR Group are a Platinum HubSpot agency, and one of the leading HubSpot partners in the UK. By working with a certified HubSpot partner you can get the most from HubSpot, and get more traffic, more leads, and more sales for your business.
At JDR we provide tailored business growth support that includes sales pipeline and CRM management. To find out about our services, please get in touch with one of our sales & marketing specialists today for an informal chat.