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so you have to understand how your specific segment of customers makes our decision and make sure you hear your funnel and the steps in your funnel to those activities what is fun mean for person in sales it means predictable revenue faster closes and creating a platform for future success so everybody what do you put fun and their funnel and sales isn't just a sales person talking you know that's a perception a lot of people have fast-talking sales person there's a lot of science that goes with sales and if you do the right things enough times to the right people you're going to be successful and so that's part of what we're going to talk about today we're going to talk about understanding the buying process leaving me for you we start talking but the funnel talk about that talk about a CRM how many people here have a CRM for their business so not a lot of hands so you getyou we're gonna you guys are going to have a ton of fun then because we're going to talk a little bit about CRM talking about how to use CRM how to be held accountable by your funnel and some things on growing your sales team the first piece in understanding and creating and being successful with your funnel is understanding the buying process of your customers and you know that means understanding how decisions get made you know what how they interact with information as part of that journey how you can integrate those steps into your funnel into your process and also understanding how long it takes to make decisions so you may say well I hate rfps I'm not going to do our PS if customers like us are going to buy our stuff well there's a segment of customers out there that use RFPs as part of the selection process so you have to understand how your specific segment of customers makes our decision and make sure you gear your funnel and the steps on your funnel to those activities so first step set you know set up the you know steps in the customers buying process second step get a CRM I know CRM has maybe a bad connotation to those that have been involved in sales over the years but a serum is really essential for you to be successful and just a show of hands how many people here are a solopreneur so they're just starting out their business or have an idea a few how many people are maybe the sales leader at their organization a few how many people manage a sales team at their organization just a few as well okay so great a wide a wide crowd and it made me think oh I'll see around I'm just by myself you know it's not going to to make a big deal of difference it can make a huge difference and especially as you start to grow your business you know if you don't measure if you're not measuring it's really hard to eat your plan right you're hit your numbers having a CRM also protects your data especially if you have a sales team right if you have a sales person that's on the phone or talking to a customer and they leave your organization potentially that knowledge goes with them right so serum is a great way to keep that information and you know part of being in sales is hearing know or not right now a lot right and to be awesome being a sales you know the second best thing you can hear is no the best thing is yes the worst thing is maybe because then you have to go figure out are they just stringing me along you know what's going on with this opportunity if yes is the best know a second best but maybe it's no not right now so I've already had this conversation with a with a contact I understand a bunch about their business they said they're under contract for three more years or you know they're not going to have budget for two years I can record this with my CRM and save my information for the future and that way that effort that you've put out isn't wasted and you can leverage that effort down the road and you know that having a funnel and using a CRM is going to make it much easier to do forecasting and to do reviews both you know for yourself maybe for your other co-founders maybe with your sales team and the great thing about CRMs is there are CRMs for all different price points you know there's Salesforce is my favorite especially if you a large growing team but I tell you right now if you're just starting out and maybe you're using your whiteboard Excel and gmail that a good first step maybe to like HubSpot their sales CRM is free and so the great thing is you can have multiple users reporting is ok you know but it's it's you know not as great at Salesforce but it's a really great and intuitive tool you know other tools that are free like in slightly Zoho CRM is free up to three users other tools like nimble our other tools and maybe use more social media enabled and then there's you know Microsoft Dynamics what you get as a paid-for system and maybe if you have a Microsoft stack your building everything else on and maybe that's part of your solution you want to build off dynamics but if you're just starting out check out hubspot and check out probably zoho crm best ones and they usually make it really easy for you to export that data so if you want to do something down the road that's not a problem so I wanted to think about something you do every day so brushing your teeth that's definitely something you do every day hopefully a couple times a day and the same thing with your CRM you should be using your CRM every day when you're you know in the process of starting your day you know get it open then you know it should be you know you have your leads a good flow into it you could have your accounts your contacts you know the it's it's not just great for completed tasks but it's a great way to keep everything in an orderly manner maybe you have notes from different people at the same organization maybe someone leaves as someone new comes so you've got all that historical data but one of the most powerful things that people don't you know take advantage of as much or think about is future activities like we talked about earlier somebody says maybe no not right now you know call me in two years or message me in two years you know you can set up you know 18 months in your calendar to follow up with them you know if remember when you set it its associated with the with the account with the contact and you can you can go from there and again it's where your opportunities are which are you know is the lifeblood to your organization whether that's your early opportunities we are learning a lot of information or that's later when you're closing hundreds and thousands of customers and again it's a great way so you know when you're a new entrepreneur you're out talking to prospects it's a great way to capture that information so you can save it and look look back on it or use it to help develop your product or figure out what's working or figure the right vertical for your organization and so you know so then it's a okay so now we're going to start to get we talked about CRM pretty exciting everyone's pretty excited people are getting you know thinking about the fun now we're talking about those look at lose the funnel on the screen more fun but you know really your funnel is a great way to keep yourself and your sales team or your other co-founders accountable on the revenue side on the opportunity side if you have all your opportunities in the funnel one of the one of the tips I suggest and typically the tools are set up this way is to don't base your funnel absolutely say well how does this opportunity feel wow it feels like eighty percent to me Wow somebody's eighty percent is somebody else's 10 / end so base your funnel on different steps are activities that match your customers buying process so usually how it starts out is maybe you're somebody you know C is a great blog that you wrote and it's an invalid you want to talk so that becomes a lead right or maybe it's an account you've decided to target and so again that's a that's in that prospecting area of the funnel then the next piece is qualifying and release if that's an opportunity for you to talk to a prospect and see if what you're selling is going to be beneficial to them and the relationship with them is going to be beneficial to you so it's really trying to understand where that is understanding also how they make decisions all those sort of things understand who else is responsible I work with a lot of really great tech firms and a lot of times they come back and they say we had an awesome dello they loved it and I'm so excited and I said we'll kill what's what's next I guess they'll call us I don't know like maybe they'll call us okay well how do they make decisions on the purchasing like who else is involved do they have budget you know kind of time frames oh I'm not sure so you know understanding the steps that are necessary for a customer to make a decision matches the questions and the information you need to collect as part of the process you know we talked about who's responsible when does it close you know who's involved you know what are the time frames you know maybe they maybe they have maybe your solution helps them save money so they can pay for it out of the savings may be your solution competes with something else or using so they have to have new budget for that so it's good to understand those things you know some from qualifying we go to proposing so that's really where you've got you know you're either I've done a demo or I've done a proposal or I've answered an RFP and from then we go to closing which is where it really where and there's lots of steps in between of course but those are the big the big hurdles we go to closing where the customer stated a preference for your solution but it's not really closed yet until I they start to pay you or you you know you've got it installed those sort of things right so that's really the part we call roll out and then there's the stage you know that no one likes to mention it's kind of like in harry potter right like Baltimore like not supposed to say his name so it's closed lost and so you know having a funnel and when your opportunities gives you the ability to understand you often find out more from your losses and your wins and often people will tell you why you you know somebody else might instead of your instead of your solution or your your product you know so you know you need to get these things you need get these process things sorted out before you start to grow the team because you need this process to make sure everybody's on on doing the right thing moving in the right direction and you know CRM and the funnel are central tools for this it's for you and your business but it's also a funnel is a funnel review with a sales person is an excellent way to understand the capabilities of that sales person and where they may be need help right maybe they're really great in meeting so they have like they have good success moving from qualification of proposing but maybe they're not doing some outbound effort enough to drive prospects at the top of the funnel you can ascertain that by what their funnel looks like and how the opportunities are moving through it and the other tip I would tell you if you have salespeople and you're a leader at the organization even if you're not a sales leader which I think if you're a founder you should be a Sales Leader always be you know you know ABC always be closing as Baldwin said and glengarry glen ross you know think about what you know if you're going to be sales leader Yee's use a crm so and and the reps are going to use it as well and they see that that's part of the leadership and in those those funnel reviews are reviewing with your reps some of the great questions that you can ask you know what did they commit to you for your last review what did they say they were going to get done hold them accountable what did you say you were going to do to help them what has changed from the last time we reviewed the funnel what do we need to do to move opportunities through the funnel and which opportunity closes next those are all great examples at the rich and I have a picture of the mighty ducks is you know that was a ragtag team they had good leadership which help them be successful with the tools they had much like you as you grow your sales teams you