CRM Pipeline

Does your business have a lot of leads in your sales pipeline?

Is keeping track of those leads taking up a lot of your time?

Are you losing leads because your sales team isn’t prioritizing them properly?

Then you need a CRM pipeline.

What is a Pipeline CRM?

Before we dive into all the ways a pipeline CRM can help you, let’s define what a sales pipeline CRM is.

If you’re not already familiar with the acronym, CRM stands for Customer Relationship Management. Basically, this software helps you manage all facets of your interactions with customers in your business.

CRMs have evolved considerably over the past few years, and now offer a robust suite of tools to make sure you’re doing everything you can to make your customers happy and transform them from potential clients to brand evangelists.

Pipeline CRM is basically software that allows you to focus on everyone currently in your sales funnel.

From the newest leads to customers who are at the point of making a purchase, everyone is tracked in a pipeline CRM system.

This allows you to know a lot of different things. And that’s what we’ll talk about next.

Why is a Sales Pipeline CRM Important?

The sales CRM pipeline can really help you take your sales to the next level by providing huge amounts of detailed data about all of your currently in progress deals.

The pipeline CRM can give you a bird’s eye view of your entire sales operation or you can dive deep into granular analytics that focus on one element of your pipeline. You can use the information it provides to forecast sales projections, figure out which sales people are performing most efficiently, and to focus on the deals with the best chance of closing.

The best pipeline CRM software on the market can offer up both predictive and prescriptive analytics that will help your team close more deals, make spotting areas where your pipeline isn’t working efficiently easier, and suggest what content and to use to help move customers forward when they’re stuck.

A good pipeline CRM can keep you on top of your sales process – helping you to close more deals, do it more efficiently, and spot kinks before they occur.

It’s an invaluable tool for any sales team looking to move the needle.

How Does Pipeline CRM Work?

Now that we’ve talked about what a pipeline CRM is, and how it can help improve your business, let’s talk about how it works.

There are essentially two main objectives for any good pipeline CRM set-up. 

• Track Leads
• Foster Better Relationships with Potential Customers

The first thing a sales pipeline CRM focuses on is helping you keep track of all your leads.

If you have a busy sales team, then you may be dealing with hundreds (or thousands…) of potential customers at once. That’s a lot to keep track of.

Managing that becomes even more difficult when you consider that not all of those customers are at the same stage of the buyer’s journey. Some are just entering your pipeline, some are at various stages in the middle of the funnel, and others are nearing the completion of a sale.

Pipeline CRM software helps you manage this by tracking every lead you’re currently working with, showing where they are in the buyer’s journey, and in some cases offering up insights about how to best move them to the next stage.

Pipeline CRM software can keep track of the interactions your sales team has with a potential customer. Some versions feature AI technology that can transcribe phone calls, meeting notes, and emails right into the system, so your sales team member doesn’t have to do these things.

With a detailed breakdown of all communications between client and sales, it’s easier than ever to pick up after a lull in communication, to figure out what might be holding back a sale, determine when to reach out to a customer again, and to predict ways to increase the likelihood of closing the deal.

All of this can be used to help foster better relationships with your clients and customers.

Knowing when to reach out, when to suggest a piece of content that helps alleviate a potential pain point, and how to best reach your customers helps your sales team be more effective.

Building the Sales CRM Pipeline for Tomorrow

There’s a tendency to think of your pipeline CRM as a constant snapshot of your present reality. After all, it’s got all of your current in process sales centrally located for easy examination.

However, your pipeline can also be a key to your future as well.

Generating new leads costs significantly more money, time, and manpower than simply getting your previous customers to purchase again. As such, one way to use your pipeline to help you not only today, but tomorrow as well, is to use it as a tool to bring previous customers back into your pipeline.

Keeping previous customers in your pipeline CRM – and reaching out to them after the sale – is an easy way to keep them thinking of you for their needs.

The outreach doesn’t have to be a sales pitch, either. Instead, consider simply reaching out after the sale to see if they’re happy with the purchase. Are there things they have questions about? Have they discovered a pain point you can help solve? The options are endless.

This helps you stay top of mind with your customer, and shows them that you actually want to foster a relationship and don’t simply view them as a transaction.

Keeping your previous customers in your pipeline CRM can help you consistently generate sales without spending every waking moment trying to generate new leads. This is good for your team – and your bottom line.

Final Thoughts

If you are part of a sales team that generates even a modest volume of leads on any given day, sales pipeline CRM can help make your life easier while also helping you close more deals and generate more revenue.

Choosing the right CRM can be a challenge given that there are so many on the market now. As a general rule of thumb, consider one that not only meets your current needs, but will be future-proof as well. As predictive and prescriptive analytics become more prevalent, finding a pipeline CRM that can not only manage your deals, but offer insight into how to increase your odds of closing can be a game changer.

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Accent Technologies is the first and only SaaS company to bring together Sales AI and Content Management in a true Revenue Enablement Platform. We provide both sales and marketing with better visibility into the performance of their teams. This drives revenue through intelligent recommendations for complex sales scenarios and provides the data for rich analytics that power better coaching, forecasting, and long-term customer support. Learn more about our solutions or request a live demo  to see it in action.