When you're looking at your sales performance, it is easy to get distracted by day-to-day activity. A new lead comes in, someone expresses interest, a sale is made and each of those moments feels like progress. But those individual events don't necessarily tell you how well your overall sales process is working or where prospects might be getting lost along the way.
In this video, I look at how to build a repeatable sales and follow-up process using your CRM or tracking tool. The aim isn't simply to collect data. It's to understand how prospects move through your sales process, how long each stage takes, where follow-up needs to happen and what the results can tell you about improving both sales performance and the customer experience.
We’ll cover:
- What you should be monitoring throughout your sales process.
- How to identify and track each stage from lead to prospect to customer.
- Why the time between sales stages matters.
- How scheduled follow-up prevents prospects from being forgotten.
- Where unnecessary steps may be slowing down your sales process.
- How your CRM can help you identify opportunities for improvement.
- Why evaluation is just as important as collecting the data.
- How a well-managed pipeline can help you predict future sales and revenue.
Know What You're Trying to Monitor
Before choosing what to track, you need to understand what you're trying to learn. Are you measuring the performance of the salesperson, the progress of prospects through the sales process, or both? The answer will depend on your business, your industry and how your customers typically make purchasing decisions.
Some businesses have a very short sales cycle, while others may work with a prospect for weeks or months before a decision is made. Your tracking needs to reflect how your business actually operates rather than simply copying a sales pipeline someone else uses.
The monitoring itself can be relatively simple. The real value comes from interpreting what the information tells you. But if you're monitoring the wrong things in the first place, you can spend plenty of time interpreting the data and still reach the wrong conclusion.
Map the Journey From Lead to Customer
When somebody first enters your sales process, you might identify them as a lead. After a conversation, you establish that they're genuinely interested in what you offer and they become a prospect. From there, you need to understand exactly what happens before that prospect becomes a customer.
Map each stage and put it into your tracking system. It doesn't matter whether your process has three stages or 30. What matters is that each stage can be clearly identified and that you understand why it exists.
Once you've mapped the process, you can start looking at:
- How long it takes for a lead to become a genuine prospect.
- How long prospects spend at each stage.
- Where people tend to slow down or stop progressing.
- When the next conversation or follow-up should happen.
- Which stages are helping the prospect move forward and which may be unnecessary.
This gives you something far more useful than a list of contacts. You begin to see how your sales process actually works.
Build Follow-Up Into the Process
A prospect has already given you a reason to follow up. At some point, they told you they were interested in what you do or what you have to sell. The problem is that if follow-up depends on somebody remembering to make contact, prospects can easily become lost along the way.
Your CRM or sales tool should help schedule that follow-up and tell you when it is time to have the next conversation. This creates a repeatable process rather than relying on memory or waiting until somebody happens to look through an old list of leads.
A structured follow-up process also allows you to review whether your timing makes sense. If you normally wait a week between two stages but your results show that prospects are regularly ready to move forward after two or three days, there is a useful question to ask: why are you waiting a week?
The goal isn't to rush people into making a decision. It is to remove unnecessary delays and make the process as effective as it can be.
Look for Steps That Don't Need to Be There
Tracking the process can also reveal stages that have been added over time but aren't actually helping the prospect. Sometimes salespeople add extra steps because those steps make them feel safer, rather than because they make the buying process better.
Look at what happens at each point and consider whether it gives the prospect greater confidence and helps them make the next decision. Your prospect has come to you looking for something. If they believe they've found the right solution, the sales process should give them a clear path forward rather than placing unnecessary obstacles in their way.
If you're examining your sales process and trying to identify where prospects may be dropping away, I explore this further in Determining the Weak Link in Your Sales Chain.
Give Prospects a Process They Can Understand
Prospects don't need unnecessary surprises. Neither do clients. When people understand what happens next, they can move through the process with greater confidence.
Explain the process and make each stage clear. When the journey is well designed, prospects should be able to move through it naturally, while your tracking system shows you where they are, what needs to happen next and whether something requires your attention.
A useful CRM should help you:
- See where each prospect is in the sales process.
- Know when the next conversation should happen.
- Identify where prospects are getting stuck.
- Measure how long different stages are taking.
- Review where the process could be improved.
- Build a clearer picture of likely future sales.
That is where the tool starts becoming useful to the business rather than simply being somewhere to store names and contact details.
Use the Information to Improve
One of the traps with CRM systems is spending time setting them up and then ignoring what they're telling you. Putting the tool in place is only the beginning. You need to enter the information consistently, monitor what happens and then evaluate the results.
Look at what is working, where the process could improve and what you could change to make the experience better for the customer. Then make the change and continue monitoring what happens.
This is where your sales data becomes useful. You aren't measuring for the sake of producing another report. You're measuring so you can make better decisions about what happens next.
Build a More Predictable Sales Pipeline
When you understand how long your sales process normally takes and how prospects tend to progress through it, you can begin to make more informed predictions about future sales.
If you know how many prospects are currently in your pipeline, where they are in the process and how long deals typically take to complete, you have a much better basis for estimating the likelihood of future revenue. Instead of arriving on Monday wondering what sales might happen by Friday, you have information that helps you understand what is likely to happen and when.
That thinking doesn't need to stop once the first sale is made. In Measuring Client Lifetime Value, I look at why understanding the value of the ongoing client relationship can give you an even clearer picture of your sales and revenue.
Reflection
A CRM isn't valuable simply because you have one. Its value comes from knowing what you want to monitor, consistently tracking what happens, and then using that information to improve your sales process.
Take a look at your current pipeline and consider whether you can clearly see how a person moves from being a new lead to becoming a customer. Look at how long each stage takes, whether follow-up is happening when it should and where prospects tend to slow down or disappear.
Then use what the results tell you. Improve the process, monitor what happens and evaluate it again. A repeatable sales process gives your prospects a clearer experience while giving you better information to make decisions about the future of your business.
Resources
Want to take a closer look at what your sales process and results are telling you? Book a Strategic Wisdom Advisory session with me, and we can work through what needs attention and what happens next.
Measuring Client Lifetime Value
Look beyond the initial transaction and consider what an ongoing client relationship means for your sales, revenue and future planning.
Highlights
- 00:00 Monitoring Sales Performance
- 00:45 Looking Beyond Day-to-Day Sales Activity
- 01:17 What Should You Track?
- 02:20 What Will the Monitoring Tell You?
- 02:45 Mapping Lead to Prospect to Customer
- 03:25 Tracking Each Stage of the Sales Process
- 04:02 Scheduling Follow-Up
- 04:42 Improving the Time It Takes to Make a Sale
- 05:15 Removing Unnecessary Sales Steps
- 06:02 Using Your CRM to Improve
- 06:32 Creating a Clear Process for Prospects
- 07:08 Evaluating What the Data Tells You
- 07:37 Predicting Future Sales and Revenue
- 08:18 Building a More Predictable Business
