Why Sales Pipelines Are Important

By: Kat Webster Tuesday June 12, 2018 comments

If you own a business, chances are your sales pipeline plays a vital role in your day-to-day routine. Used by everyone from sales managers to staff, a pipeline is an optimal way to keep track of sales throughout their entire lifecycle – from initial contact with a prospect or customer to the final sale.

Why are sales pipelines important? Well, we’d all love to speak to a prospect and immediately make a sale – but that rarely happens. If you’re lucky enough to have several prospects at the same time, having a system to keep track of them is essential.

At AllProWebTools, we want to make viewing and managing your sales pipeline as simple as possible. With all of your individual sales opportunities and each of the steps neatly arranged alongside each other, keeping track of sales as they progress through the pipeline is easy.

What to Expect

When logged into your account, you can view your sales pipeline by clicking your name at the top of the screen and then scrolling down to "sales pipeline." Likewise, you can click on any employee's name to view their pipeline.

Once you open your sales pipeline, you will see all your current prospects listed neatly on the screen.

To sort, you can click on any of the title headings (lead, company, last contacted, created, etc.) at the top of the page; this will allow you, for example, to sort prospects so you can view which were created most recently, or how long ago they were contacted.

Remember: if the categories aren’t filled out appropriately, you won’t be able to search and sort them. You need to make sure either you or your employees are filling in the appropriate data at first contact so you can accurately track your customers.

If you'd like additional information on any of the individual companies you see listed on your screen, you can click on their name and go to a detail screen where you'll see details such as next call date, last contacted, and close date (when you anticipate you'll close the deal).

By clicking on the green box that says "account insight," you can also view who created the account, the activation status, and the account manager, among other things. Here, you can make various changes, such as reassigning the account to a new manager, adjusting the close date, or modifying how much you expect to close the deal for.

Also, under “settings/users,” you can set your commission rate for an estimate of what you’ll make in the end.

That, of course, is just a brief overview of what you can do in your sales pipeline - but it’s fair to say that if you’re a sales organization, you need to be using this handy tool.

Not only does a pipeline allow you to track each stage of a sale, but it also helps you understand how long a sale typically takes. Further, it will enable you to be proactive and address potential issues before they become problems and to better manage your business. Lastly, and most importantly, this sales pipeline tool helps you optimize profits.

This video explains how a sales pipeline can help your sales team:

You can see the pipeline in action in this video:

About the Author: Kat Webster

My name is Kathlein, but you can call me Kat! I am the Client Communications Coordinator here at AllProWebTools. I moved to Florida from small town Oklahoma. So when I'm not helping small business owners conquer daily challenges, I enjoy spending my free time lounging on Florida's Beautiful beaches with my family.