Jim was frustrated. After two weeks of searching for a better way to manage his team's sales pipeline, he had found more questions than answers.

"Should I start with a full-blown CRM system like Salesforce?"

"How much should I budget for deploying such a solution?"

"Do the online e-mail marketing services enable me to solve part of this problem?"

"Should I focus on sales reporting while figuring out how to manage the opportunities and follow-up?"

"How much training time is required for my reps to get productive? All they know is Excel and e-mail."

As he started to ask the sixth question, I interrupted. "Jim, my advice is that you focus on the five fundamentals...then explore the 100 other things you could do. If you are GREAT at the five fundamentals you'll be a huge step closer to improving close rates and improving pipeline visibility.

The 5 Fundamentals of Effective Sales Pipeline Management

1. Profile Information - capture name, e-mail, phone number, and company name
2. Ownership - assign a rep to every opportunity
3. Deal Profile - track what is being sold and what it is worth
4. Stage - update the sales stage and probability, the next step, and the target close date
5. History - centrally store correspondence with the prospect - important e-mails, proposals, call notes

These may seem painfully obvious to you as you read them, but it's amazing how rarely sales teams have them covered.  The good news?  You don't have to spend a high monthly per user fee to implement effective sales pipeline management for your team. Smartsheet satisfies each of these 5 fundamentals using its core feature set. (see a brief video of a Smartsheet Sales Pipeline in action)

Given that the learning curve is almost non-existent, it's yet another reason your sales team with thank you for choosing Smartsheet.

-Mark

Additional Links

Get started with a Smartsheet Sales Pipeline Management template

Smartsheet Sales Pipeline for Google Apps

Recorded Webinar - Nail the 5 Fundamentals of Sales Pipeline Management with Smartsheet