#28: Defining The Different Sales Stages Of Your Sales Process

Read time: 3 min

Today I’m going to discuss how to think about and define the different stages of your sales process.

There’s a lot of confusion on how to define sales stages and what criteria is needed to move a prospect through a funnel. Your pipeline will evolve over time as you build out your product, identify your ICP and flesh out the right messaging, but early on you need to keep track of all this.

Most early founders are not using a CRM. They use something simple like Google sheets or Airtable to keep track of their activity. This will work for a small period of time, but eventually you will need to move over to a legit CRM. Especially once you start pumping out big volume in outbound activity (email & LI messaging).

“It is a capital mistake to theorize before one has data.”

~Sherlock Holmes

Before we jump into your funnel, let’s define what a Lead and an Opportunity is.

A Lead is defined as a person or entity that possesses characteristics and attributes that are relevant to the value that your product provides.

An Opportunity is a lead that has been qualified, via BANT that is now an opportunity at revenue.

Both of these funnels should be worked separately. You should never had one funnel with everything bunched in together. This is a recipe for disaster. Before leads become opportunities they have to be qualified. You set up your CRM with 2 seperate funnels. Leads and Opportunities.

The stages can be arbitrary, but some deviation of what I’m about to share should work for 95% of companies.

Here’s are the different stages and how we define each.

Lead Stages 

1. Open = new lead

2. Inbound = (referred, intro, website , content, etc…)

3. Reached out = sent out some form of communication (email, call, LI)

4. Connected = spoken to, or are in communication with the DM

5. Discovery booked = discovery scheduled

6. Unqualified 

   Unqualified reason

   • Not interested

   • Timing

   • DSV (didn't see value)

   • Need (no need for it)

   • Ghosted

Opportunity Stages

1. Demo booked = Demo scheduled

2. Scoping call booked = Scoping call

3. POC event = Pilot is live

4. POC recap = Reviewing the objectives

5. Pricing call booked = Proposal and pricing scheduled

6. Closed Won = Closed the deal

7. Closed Lost = Lost the deal

   Reason Lost

   • DSV (didn't see value)

   • Budget

   • Timing

   • Product didn’t deliver
     

Key Takeaways

• Leads and opportunities are separate pipelines

• Clearly define each stage of the process

• Clean your pipeline every month

That’s it for today folks.

See you all next week!

Darren

P.S. If you’re ready to level up you can book a call with me here.