{"id":6125,"date":"2023-11-03T09:50:52","date_gmt":"2023-11-03T09:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.klenty.com\/blog\/?p=6125"},"modified":"2024-04-11T12:36:54","modified_gmt":"2024-04-11T12:36:54","slug":"sales-pipeline","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.klenty.com\/blog\/sales-pipeline\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Build a Sales Pipeline in 5 Simple Steps"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

There\u2019s an old sales joke that goes like this: A sales team\u2019s success is known by three things: <\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The thickness of the carpet in their office
2. The square footage of their desk
3. The sound levels from their car\u2019s engine<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We\u2019d like to add a fourth one to it – the health of their sales pipeline.
Sales, contrary to the popular belief that it\u2019s all talks and dinners, is a lot more calculated. Before you close a deal and shake hands, every deal is broken down into several stages, each stage has a set of predefined activities that reps need to execute, each of these activities are tracked using metrics, and the cycle continues.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A sales pipeline is like a kanban board of your sales process all the way till a deal has been closed – that is whether a deal is won or lost.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

We explain below what the different stages in a sales pipeline are, templates you can use in spreadsheets or CRMs and the best ways to manage your pipeline.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2160. What Is a Sales Pipeline?<\/strong><\/h2>\n\n\n\n
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A sales pipeline is a kanban board-style visual representation of your company\u2019s sales process that is used to track the prospects\u2019 progress through its various stages<\/em><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

You get to see how many prospects have been contacted and how many of them have moved further down the sales process all the way till the deal has been closed. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

By setting up all the different stages in the form of a pipeline, you can track the number of sales activities executed for each lead at each stage. With such a granular view of where your prospects are throughout their sales journey, sales leaders and reps alike looking at the pipeline can pinpoint issues like deal rots, changes in buying behavior, the strategy fails, inflated revenue forecasts, etc. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Not having a sales pipeline is like driving a car at the night with no headlamps or street lights. But with one, you no longer have to keep mental notes of your leads or remember to follow up on time or draw up guesstimate revenue forecasts.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

In a snapshot, a sales pipeline helps you view – <\/p>\n\n\n\n