Implementing a Sales Process in Salesforce

I’m regularly asked about implementing a sales process in Salesforce so I’ll add my notes and a fairly standard sales process in Salesforce below. First – Leads or Contactcs? In my opinion, it doesn’t really matter. You can map Leads to Accounts (using Email Domain/Domain) so both Leads and Contacts are always linked to Accounts. Just call them ‘People’. I’ve worked in orgs that ‘don’t use Leads’ (only Contacts) and that causes confusion in itself as people regularly find themselves looking at Leads, or looking for Contacts that are Leads that never converted. Link Leads to Accounts and use them both as ‘People’. Next – when to create an Opportunity? Create an Opportunity when a demo is set – this way Opportunities track your demos. If you’re creating an Opportunity and the person you’re demoing with is a Lead – you’ll need to convert the Lead and add as an Opportunity Contact Role on the Opportunity. Opportunities should require Opportunity Contact Roles. An Opportunity created when a Demo is Set is ‘pre-pipeline’ – outside of demo tracking numbers no reason to include demos set in your pipeline forecasting. If the person doesn’t show up for the demo or the demo is a bad fit, the Opportunity is closed/lost (with reason ‘no show’ or ‘bad fit’). If the demo shows some promise then the Opportunity is advanced and goes in to pipeline.

Sales reps are assigned Accounts. They should be logging activity against those Accounts regularly. If reps own Accounts but aren’t logging activity they should lose those Accounts. Reps shouldn’t be assigned more than 100-200 Accounts at any time and they should be logging activity. When an Opportunity is created on an Account, it’s even more important to track Activity on that Account – there should be more Activity or if no Activity over a certain period of time the Opportunity should be Closed/Lost. All people should have a Status – starting with ‘Open Not Contacted’ and moving up to ‘Converted’ (if a demo is scheduled) or ‘Unqualified’ if they’re purely a bad fit. As Opportunities advance through Stages, new fields can be required – fields like ‘Next Steps’ and ‘Success Criteria’ so the case to purchase is clearly made as the Opportunity advances.

This entire process easily translates to Salesforce by agreeing on People Statuses, Opportunity Stages and the gates by which People and Opportunities can advance. Here are high-level Stages and Statuses that I’ve used:

Opportunity Stages:

  • Demo Set (pre-pipeline, first stage) – Opp created when Demo Set
  • Sales Qualified Opportunity (pipeline – 10%) – demo was successful, there are next steps, sales sees potential here.
  • Evaluation / Validation (30%) – Company has a defined need for this solution and is evaluating this and similar solutions
  • Reviewing Proposals (50%) – company has confirmed budget for the solution.
  • Verbal Approval / Vendor of Choice (80%) – we have verbal notice that we’re the selected company at the pricing discussed.
  • Closed Won – require notes for CS for hand-off
  • Closed Lost – require Closed/Lost reason (i.e. ‘Budget’, ‘Competitor’)

People Statuses:

  • Open – Not Contacted – The default stage for any newly added, or untouched person.  This can change to the next stage automatically when an Activity is logged.  Expectation is if a rep has 20 Accounts and 100 People they have almost 0 people in ‘Open – Not Contacted’.  If people come in through form fills they should be in ‘Open – Not Contacted’ for as little time as possible.
  • Working – Contacted – The status a person moves to when it has Activity logged against it.  Reps should only contact people at Accounts they own or are assigned to avoid overlapping work.  The majority of people assigned to reps should be in this status.  We can add automation to lower the status on a person if no Activity is logged to the record in 30 days.
  • Nurture – person is not being actively worked by a rep but rep reviewed and there’s potential.  These records should go to marketing campaigns (monthly newsletters).  This status is for people who have shown some interest but are not likely to buy in the next 6-12 months.
  • Unqualified / End of Cadence – people that were in ‘Working’ but never responded after 30 days move to this status.  These records showed no response to any outreach or were unqualified by the rep.  We can require ‘Unqualified Reason’ for records moving to this status.
  • Opt Out – people that responded to an email to specifically opt out.
  • Qualified / Converted – status for the record when a demo is set and Opportunity is created.

So the basic sales process looks like this:

  • Reps are assigned Accounts to work.  AE type reps are assigned few, larger Accounts; SDR type reps are assigned more, smaller Accounts.  We can mark these different Account types on the record in Salesforce.
  • AEs and SDRs can ‘DQ’ an Account to indicate it’s not a good fit – they’re required to add a ‘DQ Reason’ to explain why it’s not a good fit.
  • AEs should have 50-100 Accounts at any one time; SDRs 100-200 Accounts at any one time.
  • Activities are logged against the Accounts.  AEs can keep Accounts for longer than SDRs.  If no Activity is logged to an Account for 30-60 days the rep loses the Account so another rep can work it.
  • Reps have their assigned Accounts and a pool of Accounts (assigned to the Admin) that they can pull from.  Reps should never have more than 200 Accounts at any one time and should continuously be logging activity to their Accounts.
  • An Opportunity is created when a demo is set.  If the Opportunity is created by an SDR, they transfer the Opportunity to their AE.  The AE conducts the demo and either advances or closes the Opp.  The AE provides feedback to the SDR on the Opportunity so the SDR knows how the demo went.
  • If there are form fills there’s either a rep dedicated to inbound, or an alert goes to all SDRs when a form fill comes in.  The new person is either ‘first come first serve’ (the first rep to own it keeps it) or if the person is related to an assigned Account that rep gets the person.  This new person should go to ‘Working’ status as soon as possible.
  • Advanced Opportunities (in to pipeline) are what SDRs strive for.  AEs manage their pipeline and commit to the revenue at higher stages in the pipeline.