How to use kanban for sales opportunity management

Great news: ChartMogul now lets you manage your sales opportunities with a kanban board!

Sales opportunities move through stages, just like projects. With multiple deals happening at once, it’s crucial to stay organized and know the current state of your sales pipeline. ChartMogul’s new kanban board view makes it simple to see the status of each sales opportunity, plan next steps and keep your team on track.

Using kanban in your sales team

As a sales leader, I like to start my day by reviewing the existing sales opportunities, in the negotiation stage, closest to becoming customers. I’ll read through the latest activity on each sales opportunity, and ask the sales rep “what is needed to get this deal across the line?”

I coach my team to ask themselves this question when managing their sales pipeline, starting from right to left. First, reviewing their opportunities in negotiation, then evaluation, then discovery; making sure they’re clear on what is needed to progress each opportunity to the next stage. This sets up their priorities for the week, and shows me where I can help. 

Managing sales opportunities at ChartMogul

Kanban is a visual project management tool which brings clarity, a motivating sense of progress and makes it easy to spot issues and crunch points. But to get the most from it, your sales pipeline stages need to be clearly defined and understood by the whole team. Knowing when an opportunity is qualified for the next stage of the sales pipeline is crucial, so here’s a rundown of how I do this for my team.

Our new business sales pipeline at ChartMogul is divided into four stages:

Note: it’s likely that your sales process is different for new business vs. renewals, and therefore have different stages. For example, at ChartMogul, our renewal pipeline is divided into: negotiation, verbal commit and closed won/lost. We also have different sales funnel for cross selling. Learn more about how to customize sales opportunity stages and design sales pipelines in ChartMogul CRM. 

Discovery: prescription without diagnosis is malpractice

The first stage of our sales pipeline is all about confirming that the company’s products product is the right fit for the sales prospect. We need clarity that we can help them achieve their goal(s) within a reasonable amount of time.

Discovery is the sales rep’s chance to ask questions, listen closely and really understand customer needs and what problems they’re trying to solve. It’s also the time to make sure everyone involved in the purchase is on the same page about how our product can help them.

Over time, sales and marketing teams across the industry have developed sales discovery frameworks that help to guide sales reps through structured conversations with the customer to decide whether they are a qualified prospect. Using one of these frameworks is an easy way to make sure you’re collecting all the critical information needed to decide whether the product is right for the potential customer.

Common sales team discovery frameworks:

• BANT: budget, authority, need, timeline
• MEDDIC: metrics, economic buyer, decision criteria, decision process, identify pain, champion
• SPIN: situation, problem, implication, pay-off
• CHAMP: challenges, authority, money, prioritization
• NTA-ab: need, timing, alternatives, authority, budget

At ChartMogul, we use NTA-ab with prospective customers, which is similar to BANT, turned on its head. I like this discovery framework because it prioritizes what the customer cares about: can our solution solve their problem in a reasonable time frame, better than alternative solutions?

During the discovery stage, my focus as sales lead is to ensure discovery is thorough, consistent across all sales reps and sets a strong foundation for the rest of the sales cycle. Sales opportunities in the discovery stage are in their infancy, so I only assign them a 10% win likelihood––we just don’t have enough information yet to assume higher. Opportunities at this stage are in the Pipeline forecast category.

In order to move the sales opportunity to the next stage, the sales rep must have NTA-ab established, proving this is a qualified prospect.

Evaluation: provide a compelling, actionable and easy-to-understand solution

The evaluation stage in SaaS sales is about demonstrating how the product or service fits the customer’s needs, meets their criteria, addresses their pain points and above all, solves their problem.

It’s the sales rep’s job to showcase the value of the solution, tailored to the prospective customer’s specific use cases, and estimate the effort needed to get it up and running. Typically this means personalized demos, answering detailed and often technical questions and making sure the customer’s decision-makers understand how the product will make their lives easier.

Do you offer potential customers free trials of your product or service?

At ChartMogul, opportunities at the evaluation stage will almost always have a trial account as they explore and get to know the product. Trials should have specific criteria for success. You want your sales reps to work with the customer to guide them through how they’ll use the product and what they need to see. Always set a deadline for a trial so you can drive urgency and get feedback about whether the customer is going to move forward or not. The goal is to build confidence with the potential customer and make it clear that out of all the alternatives, your product or service is the right choice.

For sales managers, make sure your reps are staying on top of their opportunities at the evaluation stage and addressing the customer’s key concerns. You can track activity via tasks, read through email communication, watch demo recordings and check the latest notes in your own CRM software.

At the evaluation stage, you have a lot more information about the opportunity. We assign them a 50% win likelihood, and opportunities at this stage are in the Best Case forecast category.

To move the sales opportunity to the next stage, the prospective customer must confirm they’re ready to figure out the contract and billing, and the sales rep needs to know what the remaining steps are to close the deal.

Negotiation: “We’re not here to sell. We’re here to negotiate.” 

The negotiation stage is when pricing and billing terms are finalized, with the focus on getting a final purchase decision and converting them into paying customers, and happy customers.

The sales rep’s goal is to reach an agreement that feels win-win: fair to the customer and aligned with the business. Their focus should be on handling last-minute objections, making sure contracts are understood, and most importantly, that the customer feels confident about signing.

It’s also a good time to start getting ready to move the customer into the onboarding process once the deal is closed. Knowing who will be involved in implementation, booking times for end user training and agreeing on an onboarding timeline will help the customer have confidence and set expectations with your customer success team.

For sales managers, the negotiation stage is about making sure the deal aligns with company goals and doesn’t get stuck. Watch for how much time opportunities spend in negotiation; it’s a sticky stage and while the deal is almost across the line, it’s not won yet. You also want to keep an eye on how closely your sales team follows discounting policies and maintain your target average deal size. With a big team, a deal desk is a great solution to help reps get advice on how best to structure the terms of the opportunity, and provides convenient oversight.

Understanding sales opportunity forecast categories

In ChartMogul you configure how many stages you have in your sales pipeline, the win likelihood of each stage from 0% – 100%, and the forecast category for each stage.

Opportunities in the negotiation stage are backed by a verbal commitment by the potential customer that they will be signing once the final details are agreed to. This means that you can have a lot more confidence that these sales opportunities will close and therefore, we assign them with an 80% win likelihood. These opportunities land in the Committed forecast category, expected to close on time.

ChartMogul offers three main forecast categories for sales opportunities:

• Pipeline: early stage sals opportunities with a low likelihood of closing within the current forecast period.
• Best Case: sales opportunities with a demonstrated need for your product or service that have a good chance of closing by their close date.
• Committed: highly qualified sales opportunities with a high chance of closing by their close date.

Learn more about opportunity forecast categories and how to use the Forecast Category Report.

To move to sales opportunity to the next stage, the potential customer must sign the contract and/or follow the billing link to kick off their subscription.

Closed won 🎉 …and lost 😔

In the closed stages, the deal is done! 

If it’s closed won, we have executed all necessary documents in order to bill the customer and have what’s required to execute a successful implementation. The sales rep makes sure all paperwork is signed, billing is set up, and everything needed for a smooth handoff to the onboarding and customer relationship management team is in place.

If it’s closed lost, the deal didn’t go through. It’s important that the rep records why it was lost, to the best of their knowledge. At ChartMogul we use standard closed lost reasons, supplemented by notes from the rep to help us analyze trends and improve for the future. 

Example sales opportunity closed lost reasons: 

• Competition: went with a competitor 
• Went dark: disappeared from conversation 
• Timing: not making a decision in the next 4 months
• Budget
• Missing a key feature
• Implementation: perceived to be (or actually) too difficult

Keep the team in the loop on sales performance by sharing an automatic weekly sales recap to your team’s Slack channel so they can celebrate alongside you, and help motivate your sales team to create more deals.

Effective sales opportunity management helps sales teams convert every qualified lead into a paying customer. Running a good process makes it easy for your sales reps to identify sales opportunities and drive business growth. If you’d like to chat about sales opportunity management or learn more about ChartMogul CRM, reach out to us.