The right opportunity stages can make or break your ability to forecast, coach reps, and drive adoption/accuracy of the CRM.
How often do you look at your funnel in Salesforce and question the quality, forecast, and health of an opportunity?
common traits
common problems
general approaches
The companies we evaluated are primarily mid-market in size (20-100 reps), B2B SaaS, and all have an SDR team.
We analyzed trends in conversion rates, stage usage/stage skipping, pipeline stagnation, and loss rates by stage using FunnelCake.
The results were interesting:
Using FunnelCake we looked at trends across Salesforce opportunity stages with high conversion rates, high stage usage, high velocity, and high win rates.
This is a mid-market sized organization with a sales-assisted transaction and a sales cycle < 30 days.
Opportunity Owner
SDR
SDR
SDR > AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
Salesforce Stage Type
Assigned
Working
Handoff
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Won
Salesforce Stage Name
Discovery Scheduled
Discovery Completed
Demo Scheduled
Demo Completed
Proposal Creation
Proposal Submitted
Verbal
Contract Sent
Won
This is effective for organizations with a straightforward qualification process, single buyer deal, and a fast sales cycle length. For more complex sales, there is not enough granularity between demo, proposal, and verbal where buying teams need to be rallied.
This organization sells into mid-market accounts with a sales cycle ~30-90 days long.
Opportunity Owner
SDR
SDR
SDR > AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
Salesforce Stage Type
Working
Handoff
Handoff
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Won
Salesforce Stage Name
Qualification
Discovery Completed
Demo Completed
Value Confirmed
Negotiation
Contract Requested
Awaiting Signature
Won
This is a larger organization that sells across multiple buyers in the organization at an enterprise price point, with a sales cycle length >120 days.
Opportunity Owner
SDR
SDR
SDR > AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
AE
Salesforce Stage Type
Assigned/Working
Working
Handoff
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Pipeline
Won
Salesforce Stage Name
MQL
Active
Set Goal
POC Planning
Team Meetings
POC Execution
Negotiation
Sumbit to Close
Won
Getting the right Salesforce opportunity stages starts with understanding how sales reps are using your stages today:
Changing your stages can be done quickly with the right change management. With a system like FunnelCake, you can group your historical stages to the new equivalent, making it easy to compare how your new model is performing from a unified set of metrics.