Deal Setup
The "Deal setup" card on the "Settings" tab of the "Sales coach" page (admins only) determines how and when deals are automatically created. Click its pencil to change it.
Typically, a deal is opened as soon as a prospect has been categorised: answering A, B or C on a decision moves a prospect with the status "None" to "New", and with "Automatically create deal at status" set to New this triggers the automatic deal. The automatic deal uses the default pipeline and name, has the value 0, is marked as the primary deal and gets the prospect's working contacts. It is made once per prospect, never when the prospect already has a deal, and it waits until the prospect has at least one contact.
The deal will then either progress through each stage to completion, or it will be closed out or switched to a different pipeline (for example the “Drip Marketing” pipeline. As each deal stage is completed the deal type progresses from "Prospect" to "Opportunity" to "Deal". A new deal starts at the first stage whose type fits the prospect's status (for example an opportunity stage for a prospect already "In Progress"), so steps already done are not repeated.
When "Deal display first" is selected, if a deal exists then the deal tab in Prospect View is opened automatically and Sales Coach is displayed instead of the prospect website. If not selected, then the user must click on the deal tab in order to display Sales Coach.
In "Automatically create deal at status", select the prospect status at which a deal is automatically opened (a prospect that goes past it gets one too). If the first stage of the Pipeline is set as “Prospect” (this is the preferred approach used by all of the system default pipelines) then we recommend a deal is opened at status New. If however you define a pipeline that starts only once the prospect has been qualified and progressed beyond the “Prospect” and “Opportunity” stages, then you might choose “Deal Open” as the trigger status.
If deal auto-create is turned off (select "Turn Off" in the status drop-down) then deals are not auto-created. Instead deals are added manually with the + on the "Deals" tab in the prospect view.
"Default deal pipeline" and "Default deal name" are used by automatic deals and as the starting values when you add a deal by hand.
"Filter includes only timeline activity with a deal": when on, an open deal's timeline shows only that deal's activities; when off, it also shows activities without a deal.
Pipelines
A Pipeline is defined for each separate sales process.
If you follow a significantly different sales process depending on product category, target segment or prospect type/readiness then you should create a different pipeline for each. Most businesses will have only 2 or 3 sales processes. A typical example might be: product sale, consultancy sale, nurture (drip-marketing) campaign.
The pipeline defines all the stages, the weighting of each stage to calculate deal progress, the intelligent checklist and sales enablement resources to use at each stage, and the set of qualification questions for the salesperson to use.
You should define each of these items first, so that they are then available to be selected for inclusion in the pipeline when you are ready to build it. These items (resource documents, checklists, qualification questions (quiz)) can be subsequently modified: deals that use them are updated in the background. They are made on the "Documents", "Checklists" and "Quizzes" tabs of the Sales coach page, and each tab can hold folders.
We recommend you sketch out the sales process first – ideally as a result of a team discussion.
You are looking to define best practice; the process to be followed for each and every relevant prospect;
- How many stages are there?
- Give a name to each stage and categorise it from Prospect to Opportunity to Deal.
- What is the goal of each stage? What is the benefit to the customer?
- What is the complete list of steps to be taken (checklist) for each stage?
Include conditional steps (if (condition) then this step).
Include (optional) auto-complete condition (if (condition) then mark step as complete).
Include checks and warnings (if (condition) then “Warning: xxx”). - Do you want a task to be created when specific step is active? Which task queue should they be added to?
The step types are "Phone call", "Cold call task", "Send message", "Send email", "Data entry & research", "Step without a task" and "Warning: alert". For a task, you set the due date (in days), the priority, the queue and the task owner.
When a step is completed, the next step is active. If this step includes a task, then the task is created and added to the designated queue.
Example:
Step 4; Add first name and phone number (autocomplete if these exist)
Step 5; First call (add call task to call queue)
In this example, a call task is added to the queue as soon as a contact has both a first name and a valid phone number. - What documents / videos would be useful and relevant for each stage and each specific step?
- Throughout the entire process, what is the set of qualification questions to be used?
You may realize you need to define some custom deal fields (see below). Competition and Product are examples: you can define a drop-down list of your products or product groups or your competitors so that you select which of these are relevant to an specific deal.
Add your custom resource documents and review the standard sales enablement resources to decide which to use at any single step and which are relevant for an entire stage. You can also add documents relating to specific competitors or to specific products which will be made available if the relevant competitor or product deal field is selected.
Next, create your qualification question set (“quiz”). This is of fundamental importance and is the tool used to calculate the deal win probability. A pipeline has one quiz, used at every stage.
Next, create your checklists, one for each stage of each pipeline (you can reuse the same checklist across different pipleines if required) and select the appropriate resource documents for each step in each checklist.
Finally, create the pipeline(s).
The description should help users understand when they should or shouldn’t use this pipeline.
When creating a deal, the deal setup's "Default deal pipeline" is proposed, with a drop-down selector of all active pipelines. Keep "Active pipeline" ticked for pipelines your team should use (the "Default pipeline" box does not choose the pipeline new deals start on). An inactive or deleted pipeline no longer appears for new deals; deals already on it keep it, and "Show inactive" on the "Deal Pipelines" card lists it again.
Click "New" on the "Deal Pipelines" card to create a pipeline, give it a "Name", "Description" and "Quiz", then click + under "Deal stages" to add each stage.
Stages should progress from Prospect to Opportunity to Deal (so a 4 stage pipeline might have stage 1 Prospect, stages 2-3 Opportunity, stage 4 Deal).
Select the checklist to use for each stage.
Select any resource documents that are relevant for the entire stage (as opposed to a specific step within the checklist).
Identify the goal and exit criteria for the stage, and the value that the prospect can expect. As a result of the activities and actions in this stage of the sales process, what will be the benefit to the Prospect? How is this a positive experience?
Each stage can be given a "Weighting". ProspectSafari expresses this as a percentage of the total.
The weighting of each stage is used in measuring progress (deal completion): the stages behind the deal, plus the current stage in proportion to how far its checklist is ticked.
Custom Contact Fields
ProspectSafari has standard contact fields including name, email, phone numbers, contact urls (eg personal linkedin profile), job title, buying role.
On the "Custom contact fields" card you can add additional custom fields you wish to use for every contact in your workspace. The same card is also in the main "Settings" page. To learn more about custom field data types see Custom Fields.
Custom Deal Fields
In addition to the standard deal fields, you can add custom deal fields on the "Custom deal fields" card (up to 10; also in the main "Settings" page).
A good example might be a Competition field. You could predefine a limited number of principal competitors your business often faces. For each option you can link a "Document" outlining the key points of comparison and "how we beat XYZ", for example. Now when you add or update a deal for a particular prospect you can select from the drop-down list of competitors. The relevant comparison documents will then automatically appear in the "Resources" tab each time you open this deal.
More information about custom field data types can be found in the Custom Fields article.
With projects
Only once a workspace has a second project: the Settings tab gets a project bar. Each project has its own "Automatically create deal at status", "Default deal pipeline" and "Default deal name"; "Deal display first" and the timeline filter are the same in every project. Pipelines, checklists, quizzes and documents are shared by every project.