How to Maximize Pipelines and Opportunities in Your New CRM
A guide to leveraging pipelines and opportunities in the Better Story Marketing OS
As a business owner or entrepreneur, a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is essential to help you manage your sales and marketing efforts.
With the right CRM, like the Better Story Marketing OS, you can track every customer interaction, manage your team's progress, and build insights that inform your business strategy. Pipelines and opportunities are essential features as you embrace the new system.
In this guide, we’ll help you understand how to get the most out of pipelines and opportunities in your new CRM. Here’s what we’ll cover:
- Understand pipelines
- How to set up your sales pipeline in the Better Story Marketing OS
- How to use opportunities in a CRM
- How to automate your sales pipeline
Understand Pipelines
Pipelines refer to the stages your prospects go through in their buying journey. The Better Story Marketing OS uses these stages to organize the sales process and helps your team focus on the opportunities that matter.
The most common sales pipeline includes the following stages:
- Leads: The prospect has expressed an interest in your business, but you may need to qualify their interest further.
- Contacted: Your team has reached out to the prospect and established a connection.
- Meeting: The prospect has agreed to a meeting to discuss their needs.
- Proposal: Your team has prepared and presented the prospect with a proposal outlining your products and services.
- Negotiation: The prospect has expressed an interest in proceeding with the deal, but some negotiation back-and-forth may be required.
- Closed-Won: The prospect has agreed to your offer, closing the deal.
Understanding these stages will help you manage your sales process more efficiently. You can easily visualize the progress of every opportunity and make better-informed decisions.
How to set up your sales pipeline in the Better Story Marketing OS
Creating a pipeline in the Better Story Marketing OS is easy.
Here are the steps:
- Log into Better Story Marketing OS
- Select the Opportunities section on the left menu.
- Select Pipelines, and then select Create New Pipeline in the upper right corner.
- Name your pipeline based on the offering
- Create a stage for each step in the sales process.
Pro Tip: You can create multiple pipelines when your sales process is unique for different offerings. For example, at Better Story Marketing, I have a pipeline for the Marketing OS and a pipeline for Brand Intensives.
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How to use opportunities in a CRM
The "opportunities" feature refers to the specific deals or prospects that your team is working on. You can create and track new deals, assign ownership, set a value, and track progress by stage.
A contact represents a specific person, and an offering represents what service or product that contact might buy. Each offering is associated with a contact, but a contact can be connected to multiple offerings.
By leveraging opportunities, you can better understand your sales cycle, identify patterns, spot challenges and opportunities, and make data-backed decisions.
Track Progress and Analyze Data
You can build insightful reports by tracking your leads' progress through the pipeline stages and capturing data in the opportunities feature. In the reporting section of your Marketing OS, you can see data on deals won versus lost, percentage close rate, deal value, and much more.
By analyzing this data, you can detect patterns or bottlenecks in the sales process, identify areas for improvement, and make informed decisions.
Empower Your Sales Team
With a sound CRM system like the Better Story Marketing OS, you can empower your sales team by giving them valuable insights into their prospects and opportunities.
By tracking progress and using data analytics, your team will better prioritize their efforts, focus on the prospects most likely to turn into customers, and ultimately close more deals.
No more stringing together a hodgepodge of tools that only sort of get the job done. Instead, it's time you experience marketing that runs the way it should without you having to babysit it.
Identify key areas where marketing automation can help you reach the goals of your small business or nonprofit.
How to automate your sales pipeline
A well-designed sales pipeline allows you and your sales team to see at a glance where most of your leads are in the process. But a key challenge can be ensuring those leads are in the right stage and someone is taking the right action to help them continue their buyer’s journey.
Automation can make managing your sales pipeline easier. Here are some frequent automations we see helping entrepreneurs like you:
- Updating the stage an opportunity is in after a specific action is taken.
- Assigning a task within an opportunity when it moves to a new stage.
- Initiating a workflow when an opportunity moves to a new stage.
Related Guides
As a small business owner, leveraging pipelines and opportunities in your CRM tool can streamline your sales process and ultimately drive your business growth.
By understanding the different pipeline stages, tracking the progress of your opportunities, analyzing sales data, empowering your sales team, and investing in proper training, you'll be well on your way to optimizing your Marketing OS and driving better results.
Action Plan
Invest in CRM Training
Even the best CRM system will only go so far without proper training. If you’re a new Better Story Marketing OS user, be sure you sign up for your free onboarding call to get your questions answered and your Marketing OS up and running.
Frequently Asked Questions
Marketing Automation
What is marketing automation?
Marketing automation is the use of software to automate repetitive marketing tasks. This includes email marketing, social media posting, and ad campaigns, allowing businesses to nurture prospects wit
Why should a small business use marketing automation?
Marketing automation can save time and increase efficiency by automating repetitive tasks. It can also provide valuable data on customer behavior, helping to refine marketing strategies and improve c
Can marketing automation help with customer retention?
Yes, by providing personalized content and timely communication, marketing automation can help nurture customer relationships and increase customer loyalty.
Is marketing automation expensive?
The cost of marketing automation tools varies widely, and many offer scalable pricing based on the size of your business and specific needs. Some tools offer free versions with limited features.
Does marketing automation make marketing impersonal?
While it does automate certain processes, the goal of marketing automation is to enable more personalized and targeted communication by understanding customer behavior and preferences.
