How to start active sales in the company. We build a "sales funnel"

Companies are created and run for profit. Business tools are interesting when they bring profit in the short or medium term.

One of the more relevant business development tools in our time is the Active Sales methodology. And this is not fashion, but an adequate response to increased competition in all markets. There is no need to wait in line at the gates of your company, as it was before the crisis. We fight for every client. You need to find a client in the market, make a sale and keep it. Such an active search for customers in the market can be based on several strategies.

First, you can keep waiting for random incoming calls. Secondly, you can "pump" the client flow into the company by the forces and means of marketing (advertising, exhibitions, PR). This method is traditional, but not always effective due to the high cost of each contact with the client. In this case, special attention should be paid to marketing ROI. The third way is "active sales".

Let's figure out what "Active Sales" is and how to launch them step by step in a company and what tools will be required for this? This article is devoted to this topic.

Active sales win

"Active sales" is a full cycle of work on organizing a deal (sale), which includes the stages of finding a client, studying his needs, formulating an offer, negotiating with a client, dealing with objections from a client, selling and maintaining relations with a client until a future need. That is, we ourselves are looking for a client, we decide what he would be interested in from our goods and services, then we contact him and develop interest, launch a deal and bring it to the end.
Example : sellers of office furniture, computer equipment, cooler water or cartridge refilling services. It is very difficult to find a company that does not receive regular incoming phone calls with such offers.

What is Passive Selling? This is when a client comes to you with his own needs, and you satisfy them without offering anything extra. World statistics speaks of 4% of such transactions from the total number (Garthner, 2010).
Example: a sluggish grocery store clerk who forgets to say the "upsell magic phrase" - "Anything else?" every other time.

Which sales strategy to follow? Sit and wait for the customer's request or actively seek customers and offer them our products and services?

World statistics claims that if the "Passive sales" strategy is applied, your customers may be only 4% of the total number of buyers. The figure is reminiscent of the efficiency of a steam locomotive (4.5%)… Do you want your sales to work with the efficiency of a steam locomotive? If not, then it's time to think about how to launch Active Sales and achieve more! In today's world, most sales are made after repeated customer interactions. Regardless of the type of business, about 60% of transactions are made after the fifth attempt. And it takes an average of nine impressions of your company and proposed solution to move a potential customer from indifference to willingness to buy.

"Executives on "active sales":

• “Before the launch of active sales, our sales department was called quite correctly - Shipping Department!”

Mikhail Pyaskovsky, Director, InfoSoft, Novosibirsk

• “What you call sales, we call sales!”

Igor Vershinin, Head of ILANT Group, Volgograd

Is it possible to simply decide to launch "Active Sales" in the company and do it without the appropriate tool, what is called "manually"?! The answer is NO. It is almost impossible to apply the principles of "Active sales" without the support of the automation system. What to do?

"CRM as a tool to support active sales"

• "1С:CRM"- a tool for automating the active sales cycle, which allows you to:
  • create and manage the client base of the company;
  • manage the working time of employees (time management);
  • plan and control the execution of issued orders;
  • manage the sales cycle and marketing ROI of the company;
  • manage projects and business processes in the company;
  • receive a "sales funnel" and analytical reports on all processes;
  • automate the execution of routine operations;
  • quickly master all the functions of the program;
  • integrate "1C: CRM" and PBX, SMS and email;
  • exchange data with MS Outlook (contacts, email, calendar);
  • exchange clients, invoices and payments with "1C: Accounting";
  • protect information about the company's customers from loss;
  • get access to the solution via the Internet (web-interface).

A CRM system can become such a support tool for Active Sales.

1C:CRM will allow you to organize active work with clients at all stages of interaction. CRM will also allow you to build internal processes companies for successful customer service, such as order management, online sales monitoring and transaction stage management, and much more.

The transition to "Active Sales" requires a change in the efficiency of managing your company's sales structure. To understand the difference in "Passive \ Supervisory" sales management and "Active sales", let's look at examples of the main salesman management tools BEFORE and AFTER the implementation of "1C: CRM" in the company.

Company management "WITHOUT CRM" is based on two things:

• The financial result of sales received at the beginning of the next reporting period (obsolete past).
• Personal control and supervision by the head of the company/sales. Such management has significant drawbacks.

To show the shortcomings of financial management, answer the simple question: “What date of the next month do you get financial results sales? This is outdated data. And it's good if the result matches your expectations (sales plan for the period). It is worse when you are left with nothing and nothing can be done.

Excessive personal control on the part of the leader eats work time the seller and the manager himself - both do not work, which means there are no sales. Written sales reports for a period are generally referred to as the "How I sold last week" essay. A salesperson writing a sales report cannot physically remember Friday night all the details of his work on Monday. So he takes last week's report, "refreshes" it, and sends it to the manager. Not only is a lot of time wasted on such written reports, but managers are also based in making decisions on deliberately incomplete information.

Management "In CRM" is based on complete information about the actions of sellers and the result of sales in the CRM system. Sales data and analysis available online! It is not required to constantly distract sellers from work with questions and written reports - the whole situation is currently clear to the head of CRM.

The difference in the process of controlling sellers before and after the implementation of the CRM system

Without CRM:

• According to the result for the period:
  • Volume of sales.
  • Number of transactions.
  • Marginal profit.
• Tools for studying the work of a manager:
  • Supervision.
  • Survey.
  • Written reports.

• In real time:
  • Analysis of the history of work with clients in CRM.
  • Monitoring compliance with standards for contacts and interests.
  • Sales funnel - online sales forecast.
  • Comparison of the performance of managers (rating).

"Leaders about" CRM ":

• “Thanks to the implementation of the CRM system, we finally found out who our customers are!”

Sergey Bobrov, Development Director, LWCOM, St. Petersburg

• “All customers are now in sight, and I can track in CRM and evaluate the work of managers for each of them”

Svetlana Altunbaeva, Executive Director, "Ozon-Souvenir", Tver

• “Now in 1C:CRM I can understand in 5 minutes what is happening with sales in the company”

Alexander Smirennikov, CEO, "PELI", Moscow

How to launch "Active sales" in the company?! To do this, you need to go through five basic steps:

• filling the CRM client base with potential clients;
• development of sales techniques on a small group of customers (segment);
• results control;
• launch of the best methods of active sales;
• constant analysis and adjustment of work.

STEP 1: Collect customer data in CRM

First, you need to collect information about potential customers - those who may be interested in your products and services. There are many sources for obtaining such information. It is desirable that customer information be in in electronic format, for example in MS Excel tables.

Sources of information about potential customers:

• Internet.
• Exhibition guides and catalogues.
• Existing clients.
• Business associations and associations.
• Database providers.
• Professional, branch directories.
• State bodies registration, certification, statistics, etc.

You can also use the lists of clients already working with you if you have a new / additional offer for them. The data of current clients can be uploaded to the CRM system from 1C: Accounting or a mail program.

Having prepared an Excel file with customer data, we can “one-click” upload them to the CRM system for further work. When uploading, you just need to specify from which Excel file we are loading clients and match the columns of the Excel table with the lines of the client card in the CRM system. The download will take place within a minute. The list of clients is ready, you can start active sales!

STEP 2: Proposal to the client

The next step is to develop an offer to the client. There are many articles and books on sales that describe the process of creating an effective commercial proposal for a client.

As soon as we have formed such an offer, it must be delivered to the client.

STEP 3: Communication with clients

"1C:CRM" allows you to personally convey information to each of the clients of the group, taking into account his wishes and interests, using the most convenient way for the client to communicate: e-mail, sms or telemarketing.

Ways to contact clients:

• Email distribution.
• SMS distribution.
• Meeting.

For example, for contacts with retail customers (B2C), the speed of information delivery is usually important. The built-in ability to send SMS messages will help here. To communicate with corporate clients(B2B) E-mail distribution is better. Moreover, the distribution of E-mail and SMS can be personal, i.e. each addressee will receive a personalized letter or SMS.

Rice. 2. "E-mail and SMS mailing from" 1C: CRM "

In the CRM system, telemarketing is automated, or, more simply, “calling” customers. It is possible to record meetings with clients. automated workplace seller \ telemarketer allows you to minimize routine operations when "calling" customers. The task for "calling" a group of customers is prepared by the manager or the seller himself for a period (day, week). You can see the progress of the work. If the client wants to learn more about the products or services of your company, this interest is recorded and the sale begins.

Rice. 3. "Telemarketing from" 1C: CRM "

"1C: CRM" allows you to remove the routine in the work of the seller and the manager, effectively work with groups of similar clients as one "virtual client", for example, send all clients of the group an e-mail or SMS mailing of the same type of commercial offer, tailored to the needs groups. However, in this case, the CP is prepared one for the entire group of clients. This greatly improves productivity and allows a single sales person to keep over 300 customers warm.

STEP 4: Launching the "Sale" business process

A business process is a sequence of work (tasks) aimed at achieving a certain result. With the help of business process technology, it is possible to describe and automate the main stages of the sales process. Business process management (BPM) technology can significantly increase labor productivity in a company by: controlling each stage of a transaction in time, assigning responsibility for each stage of a transaction to a certain employee, controlling the percentage of conversion (transition) of clients from one stage to the next.

Based on the "Sale" business process in "1C: CRM", a "Sales Funnel" is built - a graphical representation of the current (on-line) sales situation in the company.

Stages of a typical business process "sale":

• Client rating.
• Preparing for the meeting.
• Presentation (meeting).
• Commercial offer.
• Waiting for a decision.
• Agreement.
• Payment.
• Shipment \ Provision of services.
• Completion of the deal.

The "Sale" and "Sales Funnel" business processes allow you to work with a client from the moment an interest is identified to the completion of the transaction. The 1C:CRM program "leads" the client (and employee) through all the necessary stages of the transaction. This allows you to regulate the work and complete it on time in accordance with the agreements with the client, take prompt measures not only after the client loses / refuses the transaction at a certain stage, but also when the prerequisites for the latter arise.

STEP 5: Control the funnel and sales performance

Managing the stages of a transaction with customers using the calendar and "sales funnel" in "1C: CRM" allows you to:

Fig.4. “Analysis of the Sales Funnel in 1C: CRM”

The “sales funnel” will show the manager at what stage of transactions in the company customers are “hanging”. The manager will be able to prevent the occurrence of problems IN ADVANCE.
You can see the number of leads, meetings, commercial offers and shipments. All data is available online. At any given time, it is clear what the company can expect in the future.

For example, in the right funnel, you can see that at the moment there are very few customer interests, and at the stages “Waiting for payment” and “Completion of the transaction / Registration”, customers “hung”. It is necessary to take measures to actively search for new customers and “squeeze” payments. Deal with closing deals. Otherwise, the company will experience financial problems in the near future.

This is active sales management.

Optional: Accounts receivable control

We track and deal with accounts receivable of clients, informing them about it directly from 1C: CRM.

"1C: CRM" allows the company to control and promptly manage the receivables of customers. It is easy for the seller to track debtors with a certain level of delay in payment by their customers. The manager has operational data on accounts receivable throughout the company.

Fig.5. "Control of receivables in" 1C: CRM "

Conclusion

"Active sales" is a tool effective sales and effective market competition. Passive position in the market when we wait for the buyer to find us and want to buy already in the past! Many executives have already launched "Active sales" in their company and felt a positive effect on the business: an increase in company sales from 15 to 30%, expansion of the client base and upselling to "old customers". The choice is yours.

Alexey Kudinov, Director for CRM solutions at 1C-Rarus.

If the company has a CRM system, you do not have to guess for a long time which report is most often used by the director and heads of sales departments. "Sales funnel" is a universal analytical tool. The main advantage of the report is the speed and simplicity with which you can control the current sales of the company and the work of managers, forecast revenue and much more.

We build a "sales funnel"

Like any other report, the “sales funnel” is built based on certain data, namely customer data, events and sales business processes, accepted by the company. The construction itself occurs automatically, but the data must be prepared in advance. If you have an existing CRM system, then this will not be difficult, because managers enter all the necessary data into it every day, filling in information on customers, contacts with them, following the business processes adopted by the company. All this is an integral part of working with CRM, so that the “sales funnel” is built on the basis of the available information, and it is not required to specifically enter additional information for it.

Customer data- this is the basis of the CRM system, which in fact is the source of all information about the client (contact details, invoices, contracts, etc.). All this data is necessary for managers to work and communicate with the consumer. And the CRM system allows you to assign certain properties and categories to each client. For example, in the properties you can specify the regional "affiliation" or the size of the client's enterprise, and in the category - consent or refusal to receive mailings, etc. This allows you to sort the customer base by a variety of parameters, which is extremely convenient not only for sending out commercial offers, but also for analysis, including within the framework of the "sales funnel". When building a report, you can select the region of interest or the scale of enterprises.

Developments- this is any contact of the manager with the client (letter, call, meeting, mailing). Events not only allow the manager not to forget about existing agreements, but also provide ground for a detailed analysis of the work of each manager. How many calls does he need to get to the quotation stage? Has it been sent? Has the meeting been held? All this information can be analyzed thanks to events.

Business processes- These are regulated sales stages that are recorded in the CRM system. Business processes are a kind step-by-step instruction for the manager, which he is obliged to fulfill.

Due to the strict setting of stages, the influence of the human factor on sales is reduced, the process becomes more “transparent” and manageable. Information base she tells the employee what to do (call, send details) using automatically generated events - the seller will not forget anything, each stage of the transaction will be recorded and described.

And finally, to form a "sales funnel", select the "Reports" tab, required indicator, category, and customer properties. With a couple of mouse clicks, we get a visual graph, which is called the “sales funnel”.

Are we doing well?

The successful completion of a sale is often hampered by the individual steps or business processes through which the manager guides each customer. This may be the wrong pricing policy of the “seller” company, an incorrect proposal template, problems with drafting a contract, ineffective advertising, etc. All these errors can be easily detected using a “sales funnel” built on completed processes. Such a selection will help to obtain statistics on the number and income of all sales business processes for the selected period.

Such a “sales funnel” can be compared with reports for previous periods in order to track the dynamics of the work of departments. Also, the analysis helps to identify weaknesses in the work of the entire company by breaking down all sales and non-sales into stages.

The "sales funnel" displays the number of customers who have gone through these business processes. And the manager can track the bottlenecks - the stages at which too many buyers are weeded out. If this offer, needs to be reviewed pricing policy. If the presentation of a product or service by managers - it is required to conduct additional training for employees. If clients are “lost” at the stage of drawing up a contract, the lack of efficiency and coordination in the work of the sales department, accounting department and legal department is most likely to blame.

Having on hand a visual and detailed information about the movement of customers through the stages of sales, you will know exactly where the “failures” occurred, you will be able to monitor the activities of all departments and correct them in time.

We measure the effectiveness of managers

A competent head of the sales department should always be aware of what managers are doing, who has what indicators, what problems. First of all, this is necessary for an even distribution of work among employees, as well as for the possibility of timely adjustment of the actions of a subordinate. The fundamental difference between the CRM system and other programs created for sales management is the ability to analyze information not only after the end of the current period, but throughout the entire sales process, which makes it possible to quickly intervene in the manager’s work if he does something wrong .

"Sales funnel" allows you to compare the work of managers for a certain period according to business processes. Set up the report: set the required analysis period, group rows by business process stages, and columns by managers. As indicators, they usually put the number of clients at one stage or another, the expected income and the probability of successfully passing the stage according to the template (it is embedded in the program itself) or according to the sales statistics of your organization.

Thanks to the resulting “sales funnel”, you can quickly evaluate the work of managers. Suppose you see this picture: one manager does few events per month, but his revenue is large, the other communicates with a large number of customers, but sales remain low. Two conclusions can be drawn from this situation.

First, a more successful manager needs to increase the number of contacts with clients. After all, he has free time, he knows how to communicate, which means he can earn more. You can also analyze the properties of the clients of this manager: are they permanent, how large, is it possible to transfer some of them to another manager to evenly load each?

Secondly, the work of the manager, which brings less money, needs to be analyzed from a business process point of view: at which stage, when compared to the company's overall sales statistics, are too many customers weeded out? Based on this, it is possible to conduct additional training for an employee, entrust him with other areas of work, etc.

The "sales funnel" will give a lot of food for thought to the head of the department due to its versatility. The values ​​of the columns can be chosen at your own discretion, paying attention primarily to those indicators that are important in the operation of your business.

Forecasting profit

Forecasting profit without using special software tools looks like a guess. FROM CRM system and the “sales funnel” report, everything becomes simple and accurate.

If you want to know how much money you can earn at the end of the current month, you just need to select the desired period and build a “sales funnel” for unfinished processes indicating the amounts of expected transactions. The graph will show open business processes on the this moment, the number of clients "in work". Using the accumulated statistics on the success of passing each stage in your company, the system will tell you how many customers will be able to reach the final stage of the transaction, and calculate the expected profit.

A similar “sales funnel” can be built on more long term based on statistics successful sales in different seasons.

Moreover, the "sales funnel" helps to plan future revenue by calculating the statistics of the successful completion of business processes. So, knowing that there are 2 successful transactions per 10 customers, we can assume that 50 interested consumers are needed to conclude 10 contracts with customers. Attracting customers is already a marketing area of ​​responsibility, which means that you can plan the work of other departments of the company associated with the sales department.

In conclusion, I would only like to remind you that the “sales funnel” is still not a panacea for all company ills, but only a tool that will help a skilled manager make the right managerial decisions. Do you want to increase sales efficiency and profits? IT holding "1st Business Architect" will provide you with the most modern and fastest technologies to solve this difficult, but such an interesting and promising task.

The CRM and Marketing subsystem implements the functionality of building a sales funnel. If there is a need to fix the primary demand, then in the settings "NSI and administration" / "CRM and marketing" / "CRM settings" the checkbox "Fix primary demand" should be checked.

Types of transactions

In "CRM and Marketing" / "Settings and References" there is a reference "Stages of Sales Processes" filled with predefined elements, which can be extended by the user if necessary.

The sale can be performed both with automatic transition through stages, and with manual transition through stages (if there is a need to skip stages).

Transactions with automatic transition by stages

Let's create a deal with the "Typical sale" type. For this type of transactions, the transition through the stages will occur automatically. On the “Process steps” tab, all steps will be filled in, the list of which cannot be edited. If the “Fix primary demand” checkbox is checked in the transaction type settings, then registration of the primary demand will be mandatory. In order to be able to work with this type of transaction, the “Use is allowed” checkbox must be checked.

Deal type with automatic transition by stages

Stages of Sales Processes

It is recommended that you register a transaction with customers based on an interaction, otherwise you will have to register interactions later. To create an interaction (meeting, phone call or an email) you should go to "Main" / "Mail, tasks" / "Interactions" and click the "Create" button to select the type of interaction. Based on the created interaction, it will be possible to create a deal with the client.

If at the initial stage there was no interaction, then the registration of the transaction is carried out in "CRM and Marketing" / "CRM" / "Deals with clients". If the “Fix Primary Demand” checkbox is selected in the transaction type, then you need to fill in the data on the “Primary Demand” tab.

To find out what the status of the work on the trace is at the moment, go to the business process route map and click on the corresponding hyperlink.

Business Process Route Map

At each stage of the business process, a task is generated for the user specified in the route map. To see it, you need to go to "My Tasks". When completing each step, you must fill out a system requirement. For example, when performing the customer classification step, you would specify the customer and the agreement via the corresponding hyperlink. When performing the following steps, information is entered using a similar hyperlink.

Filling in the result of a business process step

If at one of the stages it is necessary to fix the loss of the transaction, then you should click on the button with the corresponding icon, as shown in one of the figures above. After fixing the loss, a task will be created for the user.

If you need to create a deal with a manual transition by stages, then when creating a deal, you must specify the type of deal with the type "Deals with a manual transition by stages". Unlike transactions with the "Model Sale" type, the process steps are manually defined by the user, as shown in the figure.

Transaction type with manual transition by stages

In transactions with a manual transition by stages, tasks are not created automatically, but based on a transaction with a client, as shown in the figure below.

Creating a task in deals with manual transition by stages

In case of losing the transaction, you must select the appropriate status manually.

Deal Loss Reflection

Reports on transactions with clients

A block of reports on transactions has been developed, with the help of which you can analyze the effectiveness of each stage of sales, the reasons for the loss of transactions, their effectiveness, and much more.

The sales funnel is one of the main reports with which you can understand which of the stages of the sale is the least effective and under what circumstances managers make the most mistakes. The report presents information in tabular and graphical form. The report is located in "CRM and Marketing" / "CRM and Marketing Reports" / "Conducting Deals" / "Sales Funnel".

Assistance in setting up and finalizing CRM

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IN commercial activities It is customary to call a sales funnel the principle of distributing potential customers / buyers according to the stages of the process - from the initial contact to the concluded transaction.

The graphic representation of this algorithm is an inverted cone, in the widest part of which the so-called cold contacts are reflected: the number of people who came to the site, answered calls, etc. The number of executed contracts is fixed in the lower part.

Between the initial and final stages of the sales funnel - the stages at which managers must interest and convince customers of the need to purchase.

This chart allows you to:

• analyze the activities of the company's specialists;
• determine which employee's methods give the best results;
• understand what percentage of customers are weeded out at intermediate stages of interaction;
• predict the optimal number of orders;
• develop business strategy and tactics.

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Sales funnel in CRM

Careful and correct manual scheduling takes a lot of time, requires exceptional scrupulousness and analytical skills. The optimization of this procedure is facilitated by electronic technology building sales funnels in CRM - programs that track statistics of interaction with target audience. In this case, the schedule acquires the status of a universal toolkit for planning and adjusting business processes. Depending on the scale of commercial activity in the company for a certain period, a single sales funnel in CRM or several graphs can be built.

Sales funnel implementation in 1C CRM

The implementation of the sales funnel in 1C CRM provides the visual reporting necessary for acceptance management decisions operational and strategic formats. This software builds two graphs:

1. 1C CRM sales funnel for active transactions, with its help you can find out the potential result of future sales;
2. a sales funnel for broken and completed deals, reflecting the conversion of stages.

We are ready to help you choose the best edition for your business. software product, setting up and adapting software to the needs of the company, staff training.

The so-called "sales funnel" is a marketing model that illustrates the movement of customers through the stages of the sales process, from initial contact to successful completion of the transaction.

In "1C: Trade Management 8" (rev. 11), the sales funnel is implemented as a report. It displays information about won and lost transactions for a given period, with details on the stages of transactions. The report is generated based on the information available in the program.

The "Sales Funnel" report allows you to track at what stages of transactions potential customers were eliminated, and, therefore, evaluate the effectiveness of the work of sales specialists at each stage.

The report is available on the CRM and Marketing Reports page. Let's open it.

CRM & Marketing / CRM & Marketing Reports / Deal Execution / Sales Funnel

For clarity, it is more convenient to form a “Sales Funnel” separately for each type of transaction, since in different types transactions can be different stages.

The types of transactions used in "1C: Trade Management 8" are discussed in our articles:,. Stages are not registered in non-process transactions.

Set up the "Sales Funnel" report so that it is generated for deals with the "Typical sale" type. First, let's set the selection by deal type.

• Click the "Settings" button to open the settings form;
• Choose the view - extended;
• On the "Selections" tab, click "Add a selection";
• In the window for selecting the report field in the “tree”, expand “Deal”, then “Deal type”; Double-click to select "Deal Type".

After the selection has appeared in the settings form, you must specify the value by which the data will be selected. In the "Value" column, select the type of transaction we need. In this example, it is "Typical sale". The selection condition ("Equal to") is set by default. Thus, selection by typical sales is set: “Deal type – Equal to – Typical sale”.

Now click on the "Close and Form" button in the settings form. The report "Sales funnel" was generated, with selection by the type of deal "Typical sale".

The report consists of a table and two charts. The table displays information about the stages of transactions, indicates the number of stages won and lost, as well as the potential won and lost.

Deal potential is the potential sale amount in management accounting currency.

Under the table there is a diagram "Number of transactions". Deal stages are displayed vertically (sequentially, from top to bottom), horizontally – the number of deals. Won stages are marked in red, lost stages are marked in yellow. If there are losses, the chart narrows down, forming a "funnel".

Another chart illustrates the potential sale amounts by won and lost deal stages.

To generate the Sales Funnel report for another deal type, open the report settings again and in the selection line by deal type, specify the required type in the Value field.

Report settings in "1C: Trade Management 8" can be saved. To do this, use the button "Report Variants - Save Report Variant".