Multiple Sales Pipeline for Software Industry

Objective: Improve conversion and manage sales process in B2B and B2C business with the help of multiple pipelines.

Scenario: An animation and design company offers graphic design and art conceptualization services to different brands. They have a very diverse clientele ranging from wealth mangers to hospitals to musicians to home-based business. Their process is simple 4-step approach:

• Research
• Planning
• Designing
• Production

Research starts with brainstorming to get a clear idea of what the client wants. Based on which, the designers create a blueprint and some rough sketches to add visual interest. This gives the client an idea of the brand conceptualization. Once the concept is finalized, a design is prepared that eventually goes into production after client's approval.

Problem?

The process is simple with a clear set of activities that the developers and designers need to perform at every stage of the project. The challenge is to:

• Keep track of the process when the clients from different business types such as start-ups, mid-level enterprise or enterprise-level approach them..
• The company has a standard number of design iterations that they offer without any additional cost, however changes beyond that count are charged at 0.5% of the total project cost for each iteration.
• The process is longer for enterprise-level customers due to multiple design iterations, price negotiations, and the involvement of stakeholders. Therefore the decision-making process takes longer compared to a start-up or mid-level business.
• In B2C businesses, the clients are allowed to make payments in two instalments so they require tracking and updation of payments and invoice.

The stages involved in the B2B and B2C business models are:

They want to improve the overall management of their sales process, payment tracking, and customer satisfaction.

Let's see how creating different pipelines for each business model can help mitigate the problem.

Solution

Since their sales cycle depends on the type of business the client is, using multiple pipelines based on business type will:

• Give clear visualization of the different sales stages in a business type
• Improve forecast estimations
• Automate sales activities at every stage to speed up the process
• Set workflows to send automatic notifications to customers and internal teams as each stage progresses.
• Monitor sales velocity by determining the average time taken to close a project
• Set up follow-up activities to increase the sales velocity

Now that you understand the benefits of multiple pipelines, let us proceed with creation of multiple pipelines. Below are the pre-requisites to setup the CRM account.