Setting up Pipeline Management in Salesforce

In Salesforce, pipeline management is split into two parts: the first part is Lead management and the second part is Opportunity management.

Lead Management is part of the Marketing process where we transform a Suspect (someone who could benefit from your service or product) into a Prospect or Lead ( someone who has expressed an interest in your product or service)

Think of a Lead as an enquiry about your product or company or you could think of it as a business card that someone gave to you as a result of casual conversation.

An Opportunity, on the other hand, represents a realistic chance of generating revenue.

So having obtained a Lead we need to do some initial qualification and if the lead gets a thumbs up it can be converted into an Opportunity which is the true starting point of the selling process. If it gets the thumbs down then it doesn't get converted. But let’s look at the lead management process first.

In Salesforce the steps in the lead management process are recorded in the Lead status field.

Qualified means that the Lead has met the qualification criteria. In my case, because I am trying to sell Salesforce services it means that the person or company that is the subject of the Lead is a Salesforce user and Disqualified means that they will never be a Salesforce user.

I have added an extra option called Future for Leads that cannot be Qualified-In right now but may be in the future. For example, a Salesforce trainee or student might in the future go on to be a Salesforce user and so I want to continue to communicate with them during my marketing/nurturing process. Those that are Disqualified will be deleted from the system.

The leads that go on to be converted not only become Opportunities but become 3 new linked records.

To understand this let’s go back to the idea of a lead being a business card. On the front of the card you would have some information about an individual: e.g. their name, phone number, etc and there would also be some information about their company or organisation. On the back of the card there may be some scribbled information about the product or service that they are interested in.

On conversion, the company information goes into the Account record the information about them as an individual goes on to the Contact record and the information about the products or services goes on to the Opportunity record and it is the Opportunity record that we use for managing the sales process.The reason we have 3 separate types of records is that If we identify further Opportunities or Individuals, we want to be able to link those records to the existing Account record.

The steps for the Opportunity management process are recorded using the Opportunity Stage field.

For my sales process, I have defined four sales stages and then Opportunity is either Closed Won or Closed Lost, Those stages are Qualify, Discover, Evaluate, and Negotiate.

Starting at the Qualify stage I need to establish first of all that they have a need for our services, In other words, that they have a problem that they want to solve and that they are willing to pay for a solution. To indicate that the criteria are met I have chosen to use checkboxes so that when I am acting in the role of Sales Manager and I am looking at Opportunities if the Need and Budget boxes are ticked it means that I have a high level of confidence that the criteria have been met.

So having met the Qualify criteria I move onto the Discovery stage.

In the Discovery stage we have four criteria that must be satisfied before we can move on to the next stage: First of all, we need to understand the scope of the project in sufficient detail that both we and the prospect agree that it is a good fit for us. For example that the piece of work is the right size and a good match for our capability. We can then tick the Fit checkbox

The second criteria is the timescale, by this, I mean we are confident that the close date for the Opportunity is correct. Quite often I see that people put close dates on Opportunities that are continually moved out and which is a good indicator that they were never solid Opportunities in the first placel. By ticking that box I am indicating that by the close date a decision will be made one way or another. If the date keeps changing and that box is ticked I would want to know why.

The third criteria is decision which means that we understand the decision process: Who is involved in it, what are the factors that will be considered, and ideally that we have actually spoken to the key Decision Maker although for some smaller projects we may have to rely on the gatekeeper (such as a System Administrator) to obtain the decision.

There is a fourth criteria which is that a proposal must have been issued. I don't have a tick box for this because it should be attached as a file to the Opportunity.

Next, we move onto the Evaluate stage: The outcome of this stage is that we need to be the preferred supplier and to achieve that we are going to be communicating the value of our proposal through meetings presentations, maybe even some requotes, phone calls, and emails, so whilst the Opportunity is at this stage I would expect to see evidence of this kind of activity.

Next is the Negotiate stage and during this stage, we are going to finalise the scope, issue an SoW (Statement of Work) with detailed pricing and agree the start date and the terms and conditions, and OBTAIN THE ORDER.

From there we move to Closed Won and we can now schedule the project kick-off meeting.

Or we lose the deal and we move to Closed Lost in which case we log the reasons why we lost the deal.

I have defined five reasons why we might have lost the deal so that I can do later analysis. If something emerges which is not covered by those five reasons the field can be left blank and the new reason entered into the comments field. I can then decide whether to create a new value and where it should have been addressed in the sales process or whether it is one of my predefined reasons in disguise.

So let's have a look at them

Competitor I would expect that to happen at the Evaluate stage although it could happen earlier, We should try to obtain feedback from the prospect of why the competitor was preferred and enter this in the Opportunity comments field so that we can determine if we should have qualified out with Poor Fit at the Discovery stage.

Postponed This could happen at any time. It could even happen in the Negotiate stage although I would really expect by the time we got there we should have a fairly strong commitment on behalf of the prospect to go ahead and I would seriously question why the timescale checkbox had been ticked. If the postponement means the Opportunity has moved outside our normal sales cycle but it could close in our financial year then the close date can be changed and the timescale checkbox unticked otherwise the Opportunity should be Closed Lost and a task created for recontact in the next financial year.

No need They don’t have a problem that is causing sufficient pain to make an investment. Ideally, this should be identified in the Qualify stage but no later than Discover

No budget Allied to No need. Generally, if a problem is causing enough pain a prospect will find the money for a solution but sometimes a company financial squeeze can kill a budget.

Poor fit Either we or the prospect feels that we are not the right company to solve the problem. This should not be a reason if we get to the Evaluate stage we should have established this at the Discover stage.

So that's it that's my sales pipeline process and I would encourage you to think about your sales process in similar terms.