The Sales Funnel

There is a balance that exists between introducing new Opportunities and closing existing ones. This balance is known as a Sales Funnel, and it is a necessary component to long term sales forecasting.

The trick, so to speak, is to keep the sales funnel stocked with Opportunities that are progressing through their respective Pipeline Stages. You need to have a constant stream of potential Opportunities coming into your sales funnel, so that you always have new business to be won.

TThe diagram below shows a typical sales funnel with the different phases from client awareness to winning the business.

A healthy sales funnel it is one of the best ways of maintaining a consistent flow of revenue.

Let's say you are closing Opportunities in your sales funnel at a faster rate than you are adding new ones. There will come a point when you will run out of Opportunities to close, thus producing a hole in your sales revenue. It will be necessary to wait until new Opportunities have reached the Stage where they can be closed. The rate which this might happen will depend on your typical sales cycle. If you have a sales cycle of one to two months, this might be the amount of time you would need to wait until new Opportunities are ready to close again.

In the opposite case, you may find that you are introducing more Opportunities than you can handle with your given resources. This could mean you risk losing sales, because you are unable to devote enough time to managing them in a proper fashion.

You can avoid both of this situations by ensuring there are always enough new Opportunities being added to the sales funnel at any one time, without stretching you or your team's resources.

Applying Filters To Your Sales Funnel

Every sales funnel needs a minimum of four things:

• Opportunity Name

• Probability of a successful outcome

• Forecasted Close Date

• Revenue value

In the example below, the Open Opportunities are being displayed in Multi-Column View. You can adjust the layout in the following ways:

• Select the columns to display from a drop down list.

• Drag and drop the order of the columns.

• Click on the header of each column to set the sort order.

Pro Tip:

The filters you apply in Multi-Column View are preserved, and applied the next time you view this list again.

When properly managed, your sales funnel provides valuable insight on each of your open Opportunities.

Daylite allows you to apply multiple filters, to help you really focus on where each of your Opportunities are in their respective Stages. You can then decide which Opportunity needs to be worked on to move it towards a successful close.

An Opportunity with a high Value, a high Probability and a forecast close date within the next week or so will need to be focused on, as it will probably be one that is ready to close, and the decision maker should be contacted. However an Opportunity with a lower Probability and a more distant forecast close date may need some more work to confirm the velue proposition to the client.

We have added some additional columns in the screenshot below, to help show you what is possible. Remember that each of the columns can be sorted by clicking the header.

It is also possible to display this same data in a different ways when using the Opportunity Boards. This is really just a matter of personal preference.