Are You Talking About the Same Sales Stages We’re Talking About?

When you research information about sales stages, you find a lot of articles with titles like, “The 7 Key Stages of Your Sales Pipeline.” If you go beyond the first page of search results, you may even find, “The 8 Key Stages of Your Sales Pipeline.” Most of them outline each stage in a paragraph or two. A few of them mention common challenges in specific stages or metrics to track.

I kept tweaking my search terms, but continued finding more of the same kinds of articles. I couldn’t help but think that the people writing these articles and I weren’t talking about the same thing. I was reminded of The Princess Bride. “You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.”

I decided to sit down with Maestro’s Chief Client Officer, Mike Valade, to discuss what organizations get wrong when developing sales stages. Because you keep using that word, but I do not think it means what you think it means.

IT CAN’T JUST BE DOING ONE THING

What do organizations get wrong? “They don’t clearly define every single aspect of the stage,” Mike tells me. “So, then what happens is, people look at the different stages and they mean different things to them. Or, they link a sales stage to a single action that happened, like a demo, right? Great! A demo is awesome! But did you demo to the person who’s the decision-maker and involved in the process, or just to someone you know or a champion who can’t really get the deal across the line? Just because you’ve completed a demo doesn’t mean you’re in the exact same spot. Your second stage can be ‘demonstrate,’ but you need to provide more information about exactly who you’re demoing to and what information you need to collect during that demo.”

There may be seven or eight stages that are common to most sales funnels, but it’s how you delineate each of those stages that matters. When we create sales stages at Maestro, every single one contains these components:

• Definition
  What are you actually accomplishing in this stage? The “propose” stage may be for sending the proposal, but what is the point? The goal isn’t to send a proposal—it’s to confirm the business need with all of your prospect’s stakeholders.
• Objectives
  These objectives need to be specific. “Gather information about your prospect’s problem” is not an objective. Which specific parts of your information-gathering framework need to be completed? Who on your team needs to be introduced to which specific roles on the prospect’s team?
• Entrance criteria
  This one is easy only because the entrance criteria of a stage is always the exit criteria from the previous stage.
• Exit criteria
  Again, these need to be specific. A proposal was sent. A demo was given to all decision-makers. A client has been provided with a closing schedule. There are usually two or three definitive actions that need to be completed as part of the exit criteria.
• Time in stage
  What is the maximum amount of time a prospect should remain in this stage?
• Frequency of touch
  When a prospect has reached this stage, what is the maximum amount of time that should elapse between interactions?

Those are what we consider the minimum number of components, but there are others you may choose to add. Who is involved from both teams? What exact fields do you need to enter or update within your CRM? What sales collateral do you need? What workflows and automations will you set up? See? Just because you completed a demo does not mean you’re on to the next sales stage. An entire stage cannot be based on a singular action.

BUT MY TEAM WON’T USE THESE

You’re right. Your team won’t adopt your beautifully defined sales stages and update the CRM based on these new stages on their own. “First, you have to teach them,” Mike tells me. “Give them the definitions, walk them through it. Educate them. Get their buy-in, right? That’s step one.”

Step two depends on whether you have a new sales team just starting with a CRM or an existing team that’s been using a CRM for some time. “If it’s a new team or they haven’t had a CRM, then I go right into all of the required fields. They don’t know any different, so I might as well just turn all of it on,” says Mike. “But if it’s an existing team, I’ll focus on one part. I’ll say, ‘Let’s get every single opportunity to have this next field filled out.’ I don’t ever want them to have to fill out 30 things to close a deal that’s already at the bottom of the funnel.”

“You have to talk about it over and over and over,” Mike continues. “People just aren’t naturally going to say, ‘Hey, let me go fill out more information in the CRM!’”

Another big way to motivate your team to start updating the CRM with required fields? Asking about the information in your pipeline meetings. “You don’t have to necessarily call people out in front of the group, but they feel it. If it takes 30 seconds to go through someone’s deal, and I’m asking things like, ‘What are the next steps? How can we help?’ And then I get to you and I’m asking basic questions like, ‘Where are we with this? Why do they want to do it?’ and you can’t answer, you’re going to start filling in the CRM before pipeline meetings.”

NOT JUST FOR FORECASTING

Mike explains that most people set up their CRM for sales forecasting and that’s all. When you use well-defined sales stages in your CRM, it can do more than forecast. It can actually help move your deal forward. If, for example, you’ve defined a stage as having no more than 48 hours between touches and you’ve set up automations in your CRM, it’s going to encourage deal progression. “It’s like we’re alerting ourselves,” says Mike. “It will tell me if I should pay attention to something—if something may have slipped my mind.”

According to Mike, you should view your sales stages as a science experiment. “You should be saying, ‘Here’s what we believe. Here’s our hypothesis. Based upon past experiences, based on what we know about the ICP, the personas, the motion, the type of product we’re selling, based on past experiences, here’s what we believe it will be.’ And then you should always be tweaking. At all times be looking at where things get stuck and where things go well.”

If you’re defining your sales stages and mapping them to your CRM, you should be getting a tool that can do a lot more than simply forecast your pipeline. When defined well, sales stages can help you ensure you’ve uncovered all necessary information and revealed hidden objections. Stages should be prompting you to take your next action and alert you when an action is missed. Stages should help you identify where deals get stuck and why. Stages—we’re going to keep using this word, because we do think it should mean what we think it means. Anything else would be inconceivable.

Do you need help defining your sales stages and operationalizing them in your CRM? Reach us at mastery@maestrogroup.co. We can help!