Software Stack Editor

‘Sales pipeline’ is one of those sales terms that gets thrown around a lot. If you spend any time in sales circles, you’ll often hear about “getting prospects into the pipeline”, “increasing your pipeline” and “filling your pipeline with hot leads”.

It can be easy to forget that “pipeline” is more than just a buzzword. Instead, it’s an important sales tool for any sales management operation, and it can make a significant difference to your bottom line.

The stages of a sales pipeline can help you and your team better understand your sales process. This visual representation portrays where in the sales funnel your deals are located, where deals are stalling and which sales activities are contributing to reps closing deals and bringing in the most revenue.

If you aren’t using a sales pipeline, you may lack valuable insights about how effective your sales process is and where your deals are at any given time.

In this article, we’ll explain what sales pipelines are, break down the sales pipeline stages, explain how sales pipeline management can help you hit more of your sales targets and show you how to build your own.

What is a sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline is an organized, visual way of tracking potential buyers as they progress through different stages in the purchasing process and buyer’s journey.

Often, pipelines are visualized as a horizontal bar (sometimes as a funnel) divided into the various stages of a company’s sales process. Leads and prospects are moved from one stage to the next as they maneuver through the sales process (e.g. when reps receive a response to outreach like a cold email or when a potential customer is marked as a qualified or unqualified lead).

Sales pipeline stages add a layer of accountability and make sales goals easier to achieve by breaking the sales process down into small, trackable tasks.

With a pipeline, salespeople are able to see exactly where their money, deals and other sales efforts are at all times. This is vital, given that salespeople are often juggling many sales prospects and deals and can’t afford to let anything slip through the cracks.

It’s also a powerful tool for sales managers who want to collate and analyze data on how well their sales process is working, or not, so that they can optimize it accordingly. As a sales pipeline tracks a salesperson’s activities, it offers visibility into which sales activities are giving a company the greatest return.

“Companies don’t know what their possibilities are,” says Michelle Seger, a partner at Atlanta-based SalesGlobe. “If you can actually look at your activities, how long they’ve been there and what are your conversion rates, it tells you where you are and what’s not working.”

What you’ll need before you start building your own pipeline

Given that a sales pipeline is such an important sales tool, you should take care to build it properly. Make sure you have specific information about your company, sales team, existing customers, target audience, target market, product and pricing before you begin assembling one.

Here are some of the basic things you should have on hand before you start building each stage of the sales pipeline:

• A list of your prospective buyers

• Your team’s sales process

• Your revenue targets

• A meeting scheduled with colleagues

Let’s take a look at each:

A list of your prospects

The first thing you’ll need is a list of prospects that fit your target audience and ideal customer profile (ICP) that have a need (and budget) for the product or service you’re selling. This list should align with your buyer personas and be as detailed as possible.

This includes names, contact information, their company (including the industry and size of their business), their position at work, whether or not they’re a decision-maker, how you first made contact with them (or vice versa), their pain points and challenges, etc.

If they’re already talking to you, try to assign them a rough pipeline stage. Don’t worry about getting this part wrong as you can adjust these stages later.

Your sales process

A sales process is a clear, structured, step-by-step formula that tells your team exactly what sales activities they need to conduct to close a deal. A good sales process empowers your sales reps to repeatedly win deals simply by following the steps and activities in their workflows.

If your team already has a defined sales process, great news: you’ve more than likely got the steps of your pipeline outlined. If not, don’t worry. As you build each stage of the pipeline, which we will explore in the next section, you’ll be able to map out your sales process in tandem.

Your revenue targets

Your lead pipeline is a tool that will help you meet your revenue goals. Thus, in order to design a successful pipeline, you’ll need to have your goals on hand.

Those numbers will eventually help you answer an important question: How many deals do you need to add to your pipeline to reach your objectives? If you know how many of your qualified leads convert into new customers, for example, you can easily calculate the number of deals you need in each of the early pipeline stages.

Your colleagues

A sales pipeline helps to improve both individual and teamwide task management and tracking. Since everyone on your sales team will be using the same pipeline, you should include your team members in the decision-making process as you build it.

This way, everybody has a chance to offer their opinions and advice, which in turn will make your sales pipeline a more effective tool for collaboration, communication and project management.

What the stages of your sales pipeline should be

No two businesses are exactly the same and neither are all sales pipelines. Some organizations use a five-step pipeline, others incorporate as many as eight stages and some swear by seven stages.

The number and type of stages in your sales pipeline depend on several factors, including how you contact leads and the type of product or service you sell. For example:

• Salespeople that sell SaaS tools will often have a sales presentation stage where they demonstrate their product to prospects

• B2B sales professionals are known for implementing buyer personas before reaching out

• Car salespeople will have a test drive stage at some point in their pipeline

• A real estate agent’s pipeline will likely contain a house viewing

Below are some of the stages common to most sales lead pipelines, with an explanation of what each stage means.

Prospecting

Every organization prospects differently, depending on its clients, products and organizational structure. For instance, you may have a lead generation team devoted entirely to sourcing new leads, or you may primarily generate leads via marketing campaigns that leverage downloadable content, social media engagement and email marketing.

Regardless of how you go about it, the first stage in any pipeline is always the same: finding prospective buyers who need what you’re selling.

Qualifying

Qualifying (also called “research”) in lead pipelines is all about finding prospects who are the right fit for what you’re selling. Occasionally, lead qualification comes later in the process, after a rep has made contact with a potential new customer.

Lead qualification is an invaluable step, because you don’t want your sales professionals wasting their time on leads who can’t or won’t buy your product, or who might be the wrong fit and cause problems down the line. In this step, you’ll analyze fit via lead scoring and separate hot sales qualified leads from cold opportunities.

Qualifying leads is all about answering the following questions:

• Does your prospect have the budget for your product?

• Can the prospect actually make the decision to purchase, or do they need to convince someone else?

• Do they truly need your product?

• Do they seem ready to buy now?

If you get one or more negative responses, that lead might not be a good fit for your product or service. In other words, they’re probably cold.

There’s nothing wrong with cold leads, you just don’t want to keep them in your pipeline. Instead, save their contact information (or move them to another category if you’re using a CRM with multiple pipelines) and move on.

Approximately 20% of your leads are going to provide 80% of your revenue (according to the Pareto Principle). If you find a prospect who has been clogging your pipeline up for longer than your typical sales cycle, put the prospect in a different category, such as a future pipeline or a future callback list, and set a reminder to follow-up down the line to see if circumstances have changed.

You can also save some time by automating this process with a deal-rotting feature in a CRM.

Contacting

This step is pretty straightforward. In this stage, a salesperson makes first contact with a prospect. This might be done over the phone, via email, through social media, a text message or an in-person chat.

Make sure you’ve been thorough in the qualifying stage and done your due diligence before contacting prospects. Use the actionable information you’ve collected to focus your approach when targeting segments.

Try out our cold calling sales scripts to start engaging leads and developing connections.

Building relationships

It’s not enough to simply sell to the customer. You need to demonstrate that you’re mindful of your prospect’s needs from the initial contact onward.

Your reps should be nurturing potential buyers and building relationships with them at every single stage in the buyer’s journey.

Lead nurturing doesn’t mean your reps should annoy your clients by calling or emailing them constantly. It may simply be forwarding an article that applies to the prospect’s unique issues, or liking their posts on LinkedIn. It could be as simple as honestly listening to objections and responding. The goal is to build trust with your prospects so they’ll feel comfortable buying from you.

This part of the pipeline usually stretches across a number of stages, depending on how many touch points leads and prospects need to be converted into customers.

Closing

Once your reps have made contact, explained your product and built trust, it’s time to finalize the deal.

How do you ask for a sale? Well, that depends a lot on your reps, organization and customers. Sometimes the customer says ‘yes’ outright. In some cases, you might need to make concessions in order to make a sale, but you should always be okay with those specific concessions in advance.

If a customer disappears right before a deal, make a few attempts at contact, and then send a message explaining that you realize it may not be a good time and that they can reach out when they’re ready.

Then, mark that contact as a cold lead.

Following up with cold leads

Speaking of which, contacting cold leads should also be a stage in your pipeline. Just because they weren’t ready to buy when they were first contacted doesn’t mean they’re not ready to buy now.

Check in periodically to see how they are and what they’re up to (this is also part of the building relationships step). You never know; they may now have the budget, authority or need that they didn’t have before.

It’s also a good opportunity to review your approach throughout the previous stages. Many leads might still be cold simply because you haven’t properly communicated their problem and clearly explained your solution.

How to create a pipeline for your organization

Step 1: Take stock of your prospective buyers

In the beginning, before you even have a pipeline, all you’ll have is a list of the potential customers you think would like to buy your product. If there are a lot of them, you will need something to help you manage not only those contacts, but also your interactions with these potential new leads.

One way to track sales opportunities is to use a spreadsheet tool such as Google Sheets or Excel. Here is a free sales pipeline template to get you started. Alternatively, dedicated sales CRM software also works.

Using a spreadsheet template like this makes perfect sense if the number of deals you need to manage simultaneously is fewer than 10, or if you’re just starting out and want to organize your pipeline before finding a purpose-built tool to manage it.

A CRM, however, is a more efficient tool if you’ve got more than a few deals or more than a few salespeople. CRMs allow teams to manage deals collectively, easily move deals from one stage of a pipeline to another and effortlessly link to prospects’ contact information. Importantly, they also allow sales managers to keep an eye on an entire team’s progress toward revenue goals.

Need more reasons to look into a CRM? We’ll dig deeper into the benefits of CRMs shortly.

Step 2: Set up your sales pipeline stages

It’s easy for reps to get overwhelmed by their goals; sometimes a quarterly or annual number may seem too big to achieve. There’s a way to control this sort of overwhelm: Break down each deal into the daily activities a rep needs to do in order to close a sale.

That’s what your pipeline is measuring and managing: Activities. By managing and focusing on sales activities, your team is likely to be more successful at making their sales goals.

To set up the stages in your pipeline, think about your team’s common sales activities and the ones you think have the most impact on sales. You can use the list of sales pipeline stages above to guide you, or work out the steps in your own sales process and sales strategy.

If you need more ideas check out our guide to activity-based-selling.

Step 3: Refine your stages as you go along

Once you’ve implemented your sales pipeline, you may see that certain types of conversations between reps and prospects happen consistently. For example, if you are a real estate agent, you may want to add a “reassure buyer” column if you face a lot of nervous buyers. You need to decide whether these regular occurrences lend themselves to being sales stages in your pipeline.

When clearly defined and planned, sales stages constitute your pipeline’s fundamental building blocks and set you on your way to predicting your sales revenue with decent accuracy.

Both your marketing team and sales leaders at your company should collect relevant sales metrics (and refer back to them) as you continue to refine your pipeline stages.

It may take numerous attempts to figure out what works best for your business. You’ll find that some stages end up being unnecessary and discover others that you actually need.

Step 4: Keep your pipeline up to date

You’ve built a pipeline and you’ve put your existing contacts and deals into it. Now, how can you make sure it stays updated?

This part can be tricky. Often, when a team hasn’t worked with a pipeline, they may have a hard time adjusting to the habit of entering contacts and deals into the pipeline and moving them through the stages. The key here is to develop a habit of moving deals through the pipeline.

The easiest way to do that is by thinking of the stages of your pipeline like a to-do list. Each stage correlates to an activity your team must complete. Once an activity is completed, your team will move a deal to the next stage. It may take a while for your team to get the hang of it, but after a while, the pipeline will be an invaluable tool for them because it shows them what they’ve done, what they need to do and where in the pipeline each deal is.

Bonus tip: When to move a deal from one stage to another

Some stages are like a checklist: If you’ve made contact, or set a meeting, that activity is done and it’s time to move them to the next stage.

For others, like lead qualification, the rules about moving a deal aren’t as clear cut. There are a couple of things you can do to avoid confusion about which stage a deal should be in.

• First, be very specific about potentially vague stages. Make sure you know which conditions must be satisfied for a lead to be qualified.

• Second, consider breaking some of the broader stages into smaller, easy to tick off stages. This might mean that “Making Contact” is sorted into three stages: “First Contact”, “Set Meeting” and “Presentation”, for example.

• Third, if you have too many stages, and moving deals from one to the other is becoming cumbersome, you may want to do the opposite and consolidate. Your pipeline is an important tool, but reps shouldn’t spend all their time managing it.

What tools you’ll need to build and maintain a pipeline

You can build and manage your pipeline with just about any tools that come to hand, from sticky notes to an Excel spreadsheet.

However, if you have a complex or long sales cycle or you’re managing more than 10 contacts, a spreadsheet is likely to get out of hand pretty quickly. You’re probably better off using a CRM for efficiency. A good CRM allows you to link contacts to deals, integrate email correspondence, see your team’s sales data in real time, automate tasks that will keep you on top of your game, and more.

Pipedrive, for example, enables you to customize your pipelines so that they map to your sales process. If you manage more than one team and the sales processes are different for each, no problem. You can even add pipelines for each of your sales projects.

Pipedrive’s intuitive interface makes it easy for salespeople to log their activities. They log in and work on the platform every day, completing activities, checking them off as done and sending emails right from Pipedrive. Using integrations like those found on the Pipedrive Marketplace, or the call tracking feature, your team can also make phone calls from the platform.

Final thoughts

Implemented, managed and updated properly, your sales pipeline stages will help you and your sales team seamlessly track deals and activities.

Remember to set up your lead pipeline stages based on the activities your sales team does to bring in revenue. Don’t be afraid to revise if it seems like your pipeline needs more or fewer stages. Honing your pipeline will make it more accurate, which will help you meet your numbers.

With a clear, functioning pipeline, you’ll be able to work out what brings in revenue and start making more of it.

A good sales presentation is more than a simple pitch, a demo or a list of facts and figures. Done well, at the right time in your sales process, it’s a tool for getting your prospects’ attention, drumming up excitement and moving prospects toward a buying decision.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to use the power of storytelling to drive decision-making and close more deals. We’ll also cover the fundamental elements of an effective sales presentation strategy, what to include in your sales decks and practical ideas on how to deliver them.

What is a sales presentation?

A sales presentation is a live meeting where your team showcases your product or service and why it’s the best option for your prospect.

Although the terminology differs from company to company, a sales presentation is not always the same as a sales pitch.

A sales pitch is what your sales professionals do all day long, on the phone, over Zoom or in person with clients.

A sales presentation (although it’s still a sales pitch) is a point-in-time event that usually happens when your sales team is trying to close a more lucrative deal. It’s not a simple phone call, as it often involves a meeting and a demo.

Because you’re likely presenting to a group of senior decision-makers and executives, sales presentations require ample prep time and coordination across multiple team members.

How (and why) to use storytelling in your sales presentation

Use stories in your presentations to help people remember and relate to your brand.

Statistics, facts and figures can help when you’re trying to persuade a prospect to become a customer, but they’re more impactful if you can frame them with a memorable story.

For example, tell a story about a customer who faced the same challenges as your prospect and supplement it with powerful data, they are more likely to listen and want to know more.

Human beings have a deep relationship with storytelling. Stories move, teach and, in a sales context, persuade audiences.

Chip Heath, a Stanford professor and the co-author of Made to Stick, demonstrates the importance of storytelling by doing an exercise with his students. He divides them into groups and asks them to deliver a one-minute persuasive pitch based on data he’s just shown them.

After the pitches are delivered, he asks the class to jot down everything they remember about them. Although most students use stats rather than stories, 63% remember the stories, while only 5% remember an individual data point.

The stickiness of stories makes them a useful tool for developing a sales presentation outline. They help prospects understand and remember the key points of the presentation and your product.

Start with a problem (and a deadline)

Your presentation is about the solution you’re offering your prospects, but it shouldn’t start with that solution.

Instead, lead with the problem your solution was designed to solve.

“Value selling is key,” says Bradley Davies, business development at Cognism. “It is important to understand your buyer and tailor their journey to what you can do for them.

“First, you need to understand what is motivating them to have a discussion, which allows you to identify their pains and present how your offering solves their pains. Everything presented to a prospect should be based on the value for them specifically.”

You might choose to tell a story that positions your product as the hero, helping the customer vanquish a villain: their pain point.

Your story should be tailored to the pain points of the prospects in the room. For example, a change to their business, industry or the technology they use.

“If an element of your offering is not relevant, then don’t distract them from the important features. It will keep them engaged and help to build their user story,” adds Bradley.

Create a sense of urgency around your product: It’s a solution to their problem, but if they don’t act now, they could miss an opportunity. Tell a story about what might happen if your prospect doesn’t change, framing the consequences of inaction.

Focus on outcomes

You’ve outlined the problem and, if you’re doing your job, your audience is nodding along. Now it’s time to start talking about the solution.

However, that doesn’t mean you should launch into the features and benefits of your product just yet.

Rather than presenting your product, a good sales presentation draws a picture of what life could look like for a customer once they start doing things differently. How will their workload or productivity improve? What will they be able to do with additional time and resources? How will they reduce spending and increase revenue?

From there, introduce your solution and the features that can make this brave new world possible. Do this in a few ways:

1. Position your features against the old way of doing things

2. Present those features as “superpowers” that will solve your prospect’s problems

3. Compare those features to competitors’ features

4. Quantify the value your features bring vs. the cost of doing nothing

5. Use a combination of some or all of the above

Creating a winning sales presentation slide deck

Most sales presentations include a slide deck to deliver facts, case studies and statistics that convey the value of your solution.

Create your sales pitch deck in an application like PowerPoint or Google slides to ensure your presentation is visible to everyone in the room (or in a virtual setting).

The best sales decks have a few key elements:

• A great cover image or opening slide. Like the story you open your presentation with, your cover slide should grab your audience’s attention.

• Data and key points. Charts, graphs, infographics, quotes and other information back up your presentation. Your slides should support your presentation by visualizing data, not repeating what you’re saying. You can get metrics from third-party sources or (if appropriate) from your own sales dashboard.

• Testimonials and case studies from other customers. Quotes and success stories from or information about other customers, preferably in the same industry as your prospects, will act as social proof and go a long way to backing up your claims.

• Competitive context. In all likelihood, your product isn’t the only one a potential customer is evaluating. Savvy sales professionals take the opportunity to proactively communicate how their product stacks up to their competitors’ and anticipate objections.

• Customized content. While it might seem tempting to use the same content for every presentation, you should personalize your presentation for each meeting. You might want to use your prospect’s brand colors, find data specific to their market or industry, or reference an earlier exchange. You can find ready-to-use customizable sales decks through a graphic design app, such as Canva.

• A glimpse into next steps. Give your prospects an understanding of what new customer onboarding looks like with a slide that includes a direct call to action offering next steps. For some companies, the training and customer support experience can be a value proposition in and of itself.

• A note about text in your sales deck: Keep the slides simple and light on text. Your prospects don’t want to look at a wall of words to read. According to data from Venngage, 84% of presenters use visual data in their presentations – and for good reason: You don’t want to overwhelm your audience with text as they listen to you, look at your sales deck and watch the demo.

When you do include text, ensure you use a font (and font size) that can be easily read by everyone sitting in on your presentation.

What else to bring to your sales presentation

Now that we’ve discussed the story elements of a sales presentation and your slide deck, what else should you bring to the meeting?

Most sales presentations are in-person affairs and include visual elements like a sales deck, handouts or even an in-person demonstration of the physical product. Here are a few things to think about including in your pitch.

The product

Nothing sells a product like seeing it in action.

Take Scrub Daddy, a sponge that changes shape depending on the heat of the water. When Aaron Krause, Scrub Daddy’s founder and inventor, presented the product on Shark Tank in 2012, he demonstrated the sponge cleaning dirty kitchenware and greasy countertops. He also used bowls of water and two 10-pound weights to show the sponge’s amazing morphic abilities.

The tactic paid off: Scrub Daddy partnered with Lori Greiner for $200,000, in return for 20% equity in the business and is now considered one of Shark Tank’s most successful products.

Not all products are easy to demo, so you may have to improvise.

• With a physical product, think of the perfect environment for a demo. What would show the product at its best?

• With a digital product, make sure you have the technology on hand to show what your product can do (and check beforehand that the tech works). If it’s a mobile app, have your prospects download it. If it’s a platform, consider producing recorded or interactive product demos that can be embedded in your sales presentation.

• For items that are too big to be brought in or which are location-specific, you may have to rely on a video as part of the presentation.

Leave behinds

Depending on the nature of your solution, you may want to have materials you can leave with the prospects in the room.

This can be as simple as contact information or sales literature you pass out at the end of the presentation. It can also be something that’s part of the presentation, like a QR code that allows them to download the demo on their phones. Whatever format you choose, make sure the material is concise and to the point.

Tailoring your sales presentation to speak to your audience

Once you develop a strong sales deck template, it’s tempting to use it over and over with your target audience. Remember, personalization is essential in sales.

During lead generation, prospecting and sales calls, you know that prospects are more interested in buying if your pitches are tailored to them. It’s the same with your sales presentations, especially if you have an unusual prospect.

Let’s say your product is a CRM that’s normally used by sales organizations, but a human resources department is interested in using it to create a recruiting pipeline.

You wouldn’t use a sales deck with sales-related examples to sell it during the presentation.

Instead, you’d research talent acquisition challenges, ask your product department to create a template or a demo aimed at recruiting and build your sales deck accordingly.

Different industries have unique challenges and opportunities. It’s your responsibility to tailor your value proposition and key bullet points accordingly.

“To craft the perfect sales presentation pitch,” advises Danny Hayward, Sales Manager at Unruly, “ensure you take care of these three things:

1. Ask the right questions beforehand to understand the needs of the client, especially their flaws

2. Learn your product inside and out

3. Rehearse, rehearse and rehearse again

How to nail your sales presentation delivery

Here are a few tried and true sales presentation techniques to make sure you close the deal.

Plan ahead

Whether you’re presenting solo or as part of a team, it’s important to plan in advance. Follow these sales presentation tips for preparation.

• Practice, practice, practice. You’ll need to get the timing right, especially if your presentation has a lot of moving parts. Go through it to make sure your timing works, so that you can nail the meeting itself.

• Make sure everything works. You don’t want to go into a meeting with a faulty PowerPoint presentation or a broken sample – or find out there is no whiteboard when one is integral to your demonstration. Do your best to make sure everything goes to plan.

• Decide on everyone’s roles. This one is just for those presenting as a team. Will different sales reps speak through each section? Will one rep talk while the others handle the sales deck and demo? Decide who will do and say what ahead of time.

• Know your attendees. Make sure you know who from the prospect company will be in the meeting, their titles and the roles they each play in the buying process. Conducting light social media research can also clue you into attendees’ past experiences or alma maters (information that can fuel pre-presentation small talk and forge closer connections with your audience).

Practice confident body language

Presentations usually happen in person, which is why you need to practice strong body language. You want to look relaxed and confident (even if you’re shaking in your shoes).

Here are some ways you can improve your body language:

1. Eye contact. Make and maintain eye contact, even in virtual meetings. This shows people you’re interested in them and invested in what they have to say.

2. Stand up straight. Pull your shoulders back and straighten your spine; fixing your posture is an easy way to convey confidence. You’ll also feel better if you’re not hunched over.

3. Chin up. It’s hard when you’re in front of people, but don’t look at the floor or your shoes. Face straight ahead and make eye contact (or look at the back wall rather than the floor.)

4. Have a firm handshake. Some people judge others by their handshakes. Offer a firm handshake to make a good first impression.

Engage your audience

Presentations can span 30 to 60 minutes or more, so you need to be able to hold your prospects’ attention. There are a number of ways to keep everyone interested:

1. Understand your audience’s attention span

The beginning and the end of your presentation are the most memorable, so that’s where you want to use your strongest material.

Rather than leading with your product’s features, use the first few minutes of a presentation to briefly introduce yourself, and share the compelling story we mentioned earlier. If your demo itself is compelling, lead with that.

Then talk about product features and pricing. Your prospects might have already researched it or can look it up afterward, so it’s fine that it’s occupying real estate in the middle of the presentation.

Lastly, finish strong. Return to your story, sharing how your product solved an important problem. Close with confidence, and open the floor for questions.

2. Be funny

Humor can be tricky, so if you’re not comfortable making jokes, don’t force it. If, however, humor is part of your brand voice and you think it will be well-received by your audience, go for it. Humor can be a good way to connect with prospects, make your presentation memorable and relax everyone in the room.

3. Use a little showmanship

The best thing about a sales presentation is that it lets you show off your product. Unlike a pitch, a presentation lets you pull out the stops, make a splash and showcase your solution.

Use this to your advantage and be as memorable as you possibly can.

What to do after the sales presentation to close the deal

The sales cycle isn’t over when the sales presentation ends. Here are some tips on how to wrap up loose ends and close the deal.

Take questions

Encourage questions to show prospects you care about their experience.

Sometimes prospects may want a question answered right in the middle of a presentation. Interactivity is a great sign of engagement. If that happens, stop the presentation and take their questions head-on to show you’re listening and validate their thoughts.

Other times they may sit silently waiting for you to give them all the information they need.

In either case, proactively ask for questions once you’ve ended your presentation. Encourage them to share their concerns. This is a consultative selling approach that works to build a relationship with your prospects.

Follow up

By the end of your sales pitch, your prospect should be ready to come along with you and start your business relationship.

Outline the next steps of the process. The first could be offering a trial of your product, scheduling a follow-up meeting or sending over a proposal.

Whatever the steps, make sure they’re clearly defined. If you don’t hear from the prospect soon after the proposal, check back in with a follow-up email or call.

Great sales presentation examples (and why they worked)

Here are some sales pitch examples you can use to inform your next sales presentation; these examples range from great sales decks to presentations and we’ll explain why they worked so well.

The successful demo

Stephen Conway of vegan chocolate brand Pure Heavenly opened his elevator pitch on the UK’s Dragons’ Den in 2019 by handing out samples of his chocolate. The product, paired with Stephen’s story about wanting to create an allergen-free treat that his young daughters could enjoy, led to three offers.

Why it worked: Conway knew the strength of his product and packaged it in a personal story, betting (correctly) that it would sell itself.

The data-driven presentation

Lunchbox is a restaurant technology company that specializes in online ordering, customer loyalty and guest engagement software. The sales deck the company used to raise its $50 million Series B in 2022 relied on bold visuals and graphs to illustrate its market opportunity, ARR history and competitive differentiators.

Why it worked: The deck tells two stories, one about the company itself and another about the way consumer dining habits have changed in the wake of COVID-19. Lunchbox used data to show how it met the industry’s new pain points for both itself and other companies.

The presenters with overwhelming confidence

When Brian and Michael Speciale went on Shark Tank in 2017 to pitch their product, The Original Comfy, they had very little – no numbers or inventory, just a prototype of a big fleece blanket/hoodie and video of that hoodie being worn everywhere from the couch to the beach. What they did have was a good product and confidence in that product. Their presentation earned them an offer of $50,000 for 30% from Barbara Corcoran.

Why it worked: Corcoran says she bought in because the Speciale brothers had a good idea, the guts to present it and knew they had to strike while the iron was hot. While you probably should be more prepared for your own sales presentation, the Original Comfy story shows just how important confidence is in a sales presentation.

Final thoughts

It can be tempting to play it safe with a sales presentation by keeping it to a sales deck and a speech – but a sales presentation should be a show-stopper.

The best sales presentation tells your customer’s story, validates with data, offers a demo and more. It’s a major undertaking that shows the strength of your product. Done well, it keeps your prospects engaged and will make them want to do business with you.

Show customers how your product can push their business forward (or better yet, how your product can make them the superhero) and you’ll have a winning sales presentation that sparks your customer’s interest and drives revenue.

An effective sales management process ensures every aspect of your company’s collective sales effort works efficiently.

To succeed in any industry, it’s important to have a great sales manager who helps their team satisfy buyers and maximize profits.

In this article, we look at what sales management is, the role of a good sales manager in building and managing sales teams and how to report on the sales process.

We’ll also touch on sales management tools and explain how to empower your team’s professional development.

What is sales management?

Sales management is the process of developing a sales force, organizing sales efforts and implementing sales techniques that allow a business to hit its sales goals.

The secret to boosting sales in any industry is always precise sales management processes. This starts with a great sales manager who can inspire and lead a sales department.

Besides helping your company reach its sales objectives, a sales management system allows you to stay in tune with your industry. It can be the difference between surviving and flourishing in a competitive marketplace.

Whether you’re an experienced or new sales manager, the following guide to sales management will help you evaluate and gain visibility into your current sales force.

Once you have a clear picture of what processes to monitor and how to keep track, you’ll be ready to pinpoint issues early on, coach people before it’s too late and have a better overview of which tasks the team should focus on to increase sales.

Sales reps who stumble across this guide can also benefit.It will help you understand how your company manages its sales process, allowing you to become more in sync with your team, create a better relationship with your manager and achieve better individual sales results.

The three key aspects of sales management

There are three umbrellas to manage within the sales process:

The process will vary from business to business but operations, strategy and analysis are the three key starting points.

What is a sales manager and what does a sales manager do?

The first step in answering the question “What is sales management?” is understanding the role of a sales manager.

A great sales manager is the person who guides your salespeople and is responsible for:

These are just some of the responsibilities in a sales manager’s job description. Let’s focus on three of the most important tasks a good sales manager excels at: building the team, defining the sales process and reporting.

Sales operations: Building the team

After you’ve acquired a great sales manager, it’s time to expand the team.

The sales team is the backbone of any company: a direct connection between product and customer.

Sales team members should feel like they are valued parts of the company and have the resources to progress, instead of being viewed as money-making machines.

When selecting and onboarding new talent, thoroughly train them and develop their skills regardless of their sales experience and sales certifications.

This is because it’s not enough for salespeople to be great sellers – they must also be great at dealing with your product and representing your organization, so that customers want to engage with it.

The sales team you manage should be closely aligned, working as individuals within a collaborative unit. A joined-up approach will result in fewer errors and greater achievements for the sales force and wider company.

Set your team up for success by giving them ambitious yet realistic targets, which you can track to measure future success (learn more about this in the “Reporting” section below).

To do this:

• Set sales and development targets

• Assign territories for team members to manage

• Establish goals and sales quotas

The sales manager must also counsel the team throughout the process, ensure they are still on track and motivate them when needed.

Think about what experiences have driven you throughout your career, and use them to inspire and motivate your sales team. On the flip side, don’t forget to share your disappointments and failures, how you overcame those challenges and offer support during difficult periods.

Sales strategy: Defining the sales process

Once you have a sales team and know your targets, you might wonder: how do you carry out the sales?

Sales has many definitions but it essentially means facilitating a transaction between your company and its customers, moving them through a process that leads to an exchange.

Every business has a sales cycle. This is a series of tasks that helps a company’s product reach its users. A sales pipeline, or sales funnel, makes it easier to organize these tasks and maneuver deals to completion.

What is a sales pipeline?

A sales pipeline is a visual way of tracking prospects and leads as they move through various stages of the buying journey.

A visual pipeline helps salespeople organize their work.

However, even with a clearly mapped pipeline, there are some things you have little or no control over, such as your results.

That’s where managing activities comes into play. Seeing the sales process broken down into stages motivates salespeople to work harder on controllable activities, stay focused and conquer more challenges.

Sales activities that are within a salesperson’s control include:

• Lead generation, scoring and qualification

• The number of sales calls, follow-up emails, social media messages (e.g., LinkedIn) and other outreach activities they undertake

• Market research on new products, new segments and other relevant information

• Product knowledge

Keeping salespeople accountable for performance is also an important aspect of the sales manager’s job – that’s where reporting comes in.

Sales analysis: Reporting

Reporting helps you understand how your current strategy affects your company’s success and gives you insight into what you can do to improve your efforts, whether it’s hiring more salespeople or redistributing tasks.

Successful reporting involves using sales metrics or quantifiable indicators that tell you how each aspect of your sales operations performs and whether you are achieving your targets.

With the standard sales funnel, you should be able to measure the following four metrics:

1. Number of deals

2. Average deal size in your funnel

3. Close ratio, or average percentage of deals won

4. Sales velocity, or average deal lifetime before closing

Collecting this sales data will help you find your ideal customers quicker. This is because you’ll see which types of customers move through the process in the shortest time and who spends the most.

A CRM sales management tool will help you gather this information in reports and dashboards to streamline your sales management process.

Who benefits from sales management?

Effective sales management positively affects everyone involved in the sales cycle.

The more mature your sales process is and the more the sales manager adapts and improves it, the more likely your team will achieve top performance.

Three key stakeholders are involved with the sales management process: the sales manager, the salesperson and the customer.

Sales managers

A sales manager directs an organization’s sales team, oversees its processes and is typically in charge of talent development and leadership.

Clarity and scope are essential to sales managers, who typically oversee the planning and execution of company-wide targets.

Having an effective management process allows them to drive the company forward. They’ll have a clearer vision of where they stand amongst their competition and know how to stay ahead.

Salespeople

A salesperson represents their company and directly contacts potential customers whether face-to-face, via phone or solely online. Salespeople typically report to and work closely with their sales managers on performance goals.

Sales is tough. To succeed, you need to be able to engage your current customer base while also expanding your reach.

As with the sales manager, the scope and clarity that come from effective sales management boost confidence and give salespeople better visibility of their work. If you’re a business owner, consider investing in sales training for every team member – it’ll pay off in the long run.

Customers

The customer will inevitably have a better experience and be more inclined to purchase your product or services with an effective sales management process.

They may even share their experiences online, providing social proof to help other prospects convert.

With all these parts working well together, a great sales company can set itself up for success.

Use technology to manage customer relationships

You need an organized sales funnel to get a clear view of your sales management process.

A sales funnel provides a clear view of the opportunities available to a sales team while forecasting revenue for the months ahead.

While some initially opt for Excel spreadsheets and sticky notes, a CRM tool will give you a clearer overview of your current assets and pinpoint key factors in your company’s future success.

Incorporating technology in your sales strategy will help to ensure no deals fall through the cracks so you can maximize profits.

Cloud-based CRMs are great for helping your team improve collaboration, as they typically offer flexible pricing and easy access via the internet. There are tons of popular CRMs out there, but choosing the right one can be challenging.

Before purchasing any CRM tool, answer the following questions to ensure you make the most suitable choice for your team:

• Is it easy to learn and use?

• How can I customize it to fit my needs?

• Are there cross-platform integrations?

• Will it notify me when I need to take action, and will those notifications come in real time or intervals?

• Does it offer accurate sales forecasting and reporting?

• Is it mobile-friendly? Can I access it from anywhere?

Sales management tips and tricks

Your sales process should be simple and save you time, not drain it.

The more time you put in, the more you should get out. For example, if you put time into building a CRM that aligns with your processes, needs and goals – and employ integrations and automation to help you save time – you’ll be able to push more deals through the pipeline and pull in more revenue.

For busy sales leaders and salespeople, there are plenty of productivity tools to help ease the process of managing and closing deals. They include apps like Evernote, Any.do, Audible, Downcast and Pocket. Scanner Pro, Calendars 5 and Waze are also useful.

Also, sales managers can work with content teams to develop content marketing materials that build value around their products or services, making it easier for salespeople to sell.

After all, selling is an ongoing process as most people don’t buy immediately. They need convincing and reassuring.

In the same way trials or testers are used to make products more attainable, content can help customers become familiar with your services, especially if it solves a highly specific and relevant problem.

Having a content team working within the company ensures creators can get to know the product and better understand the value it provides to customers. However, you can also outsource content creation to a freelancer or agency if you’re not ready to hire full time.

Great content is more likely to move consumers along the sales cycle than a salesperson alone. In fact, informative content often introduces products and services to potential buyers – especially when it appears high in search engine results pages, where many buyers start their journeys.

Sales manager resources: How to start managing a sales team

If you’re interested in becoming a sales manager or improving in the sales manager role, you must understand the importance of the sales management process. This includes the planning and goal-setting tasks that come with it.

Planning is a vital part of achieving results. There are endless resources that will help you get started as you build your team and grow your company.

Let’s look at two of the key aspects most sales professionals consider first when moving into management: career types and compensation.

Sales leadership careers

There are many kinds of sales management jobs but they all share the same core responsibility: refining the sales process to make sure the company improves its bottom line.

The people who oversee sales organizations and manage sales teams typically have one of the following roles:

• Director of sales

• District sales manager

• General manager

• Chief revenue officer

• Sales and account manager

• Business development manager

• Regional sales manager

• Sales and marketing manager

• Sales and marketing vice president

• Sales supervisor

• Vice-president of sales

Some of these titles may even be interchangeable depending on the size and structure of your company.

Sales managers can also come from a variety of backgrounds. Some start off as sales representatives and work their way up and others come from unrelated fields without years of experience.

Either way, anyone applying for a sales manager role must have strong communication skills, leadership skills and problem-solving abilities in their sales manager cover letter and resume.

Sales leadership salaries

A sales manager’s salary will vary depending on the type of business and the geographical location.

According to the latest US Bureau of Labor Statistics data (May 2022), sales managers earned a median salary of $130,600.

Glassdoor, which measures salaries based on user submissions, lists the average sales manager salary in the US at around $120,000, as of 2024.

Final thoughts

Ready to find out more about achieving success in the sales manager position? There’s plenty to learn and work on.

Once you decide to build or improve your sales management process, you can start by:

• Reading account management books, sales books or blogs

• Making a Google alert for key terms such as “sales management” to stay up-to-date with the latest news in your industry

• Experimenting with sales management software that will help you gain visibility into and stay on top of your management process

• Reading the sales glossary below to brush up on your sales vocabulary

Also, check out our Global Sales Performance Review for a global insight into how others sell.

Key terms for your sales glossary

Here’s a selection of key lingo, but for a more comprehensive guide visit our full glossary of sales terms.

Activity-based selling: The theory that you can close more deals by focusing on the activities you can control, such as the number of calls or appointments made, rather than focusing on sales results or sales volume, or making a certain amount of money in sales.

Close/closing: Bringing a prospect to a final buying decision.

Close ratio: Number of deals you close compared to the number of deals you have presented.

Cold calling: Getting in contact with a potential customer with no prior contact or relationship in hopes of setting up an appointment or informing them about your product or service.

Conversion: The act of turning a prospect into a customer.

Conversion rate: The percentage of prospects turned into new customers

Customer relationship management (CRM): A tool or piece of sales management software to manage your customer relationships and sales pipeline. Often also used as process management software.

Deal: An agreement to meet or take action with a prospect.

Demo: A sales presentation of your product or service.

Lead: Anyone who could potentially be a customer.

Marketing: The act of promoting your product or service.

Metrics: A collection of individual and organizational performance indicators and ratios calculated from collected data that describe a company’s historical and ongoing sales processes.

Product: Something made to be sold to a consumer.

Prospect: A potential customer or person who may be interested in a company’s product or service.

Sales quota: A fixed share of something that a person or group is expected to achieve or contribute to.

Retention rate: The percentage of customers who stay with a business.

Revenue: A company’s income or earnings.

Sales cycle: The series of predictable phases required to sell a product or a service. Sales cycles can vary greatly among organizations, products and services, and no two sales will be exactly the same.

Sales dashboard: A method of measuring sales performance from a birds-eye view. A sales dashboard helps measure key metrics, individual team members and sales activities.

Sales force: Division of a business responsible for selling products or services.

Sales funnel (or pipeline): A systematic and visual approach to selling a product or service. The sales pipeline is helpful in showing you exactly where the money is in your sales process.

Sales management: Process of developing and coordinating a sales team.

Sales management planning: Process of thinking and organizing activities to achieve a desired goal.

Sales management process: Steps taken to attain a company’s performance objectives.

Sales management strategy: A method to bring about a desired outcome.

Sales manager: Someone who’s responsible for managing sales professionals and overseeing a company’s sales process.

Sales meeting: A meeting with the sales team, often to discuss processes, products and services, as well as the potential benefits for the buyer.

Salesperson: Someone who typically works directly with customers to inform them and sell a product while providing customer service.

Sales reporting: The documentation of a company’s activities.

Sales targets: Objectives or goals for a salesperson or company.

Sales velocity: Time it takes for a new deal to close, from the initial contact.

Service: An action performed to satisfy a customer’s need or problem.