B2B Deal Desk: Best Practices for Streamlining Sales Processes

If you aren’t employing forecasting models to support your sales team, they are fighting an uphill battle. If your teams seem underprepared and repeatedly deliver inefficient marketing campaigns, you are probably losing valuable sales opportunities.

Adapting to the evolving sales processes requires the right tools, like a B2B deal desk. The virtual dashboard allows teams to connect and collaborate for a streamlined sales process, especially for complex deals that have several moving parts. It’s also ideal for leveraging sales forecasting models to drive more efficient pitches and timely follow-ups to close deals.

Forward’s Digital Sales Room offers the opportunity to mitigate troublesome inefficiencies to enhance the buyer journey. Sales, finance, legal, and every other necessary team can access the same information, including forecasting analytics, at any time to ensure everyone is on the same page for more relevant campaigns and a seamless experience.

Level-Up Your Deal Desk With Sales Pipeline Forecasting Models

Sales pipeline forecasting models represent the next step in effective B2B sales. The purpose of a sales pipeline is to give you a visual representation of your entire sales process, but it’s only half of the equation. 

Monitoring longitudinal data for each stage of the pipeline and incorporating it with real-time data provides a clearer, more accurate picture. Using forecasting allows you to time follow-ups and transactions, refine messaging, and ultimately, close more deals.

Did you know companies that excel at lead nurturing generate 50% more sales-ready leads at 33% lower cost? This not only showcases the power of strategic engagement and follow-up but also highlights the potential for increased profitability by efficiently allocating resources throughout the sales process.

Employing sales pipeline forecasting enhances your decision-making processes by providing the most accurate information on your past and current performance. It’s easier to identify patterns and problem areas, like determining the optimal time to follow up with a client or identifying the parts of your process where most prospects drop out.

Opportunity Stage Forecasting

Opportunity Stage Forecasting involves breaking the pipeline into stages and calculating the chances of conversion for each.

For example, you have eight stages of your sales process. Based on analytics, around 20% convert during the qualification stage, and 50% convert at the demo stage. Your sales team can then look at existing prospects and where they are in the process to estimate the likelihood of conversion. 

Forward enhances the likelihood of closing deals at each stage with tools to support your sales team’s efforts. Tools like personalised micro-sites and pre-defined templates streamline the sales process and enhance your buyer’s journey.

Length of Sales Cycle Forecasting

Another type of sales forecasting involves considering the average time it takes to close a deal. This approach focuses on deals that have been in the pipeline for longer than the average sales cycle and might have a different likelihood of closing than newer ones. 

For example, your data shows that your average sales cycle lasts three months. Further, your reps have a 50% chance of closing a deal if they have reached a certain stage by the two-month mark.

Finding opportunities to shorten the cycle can boost conversion rates and growth potential. Forward gives your team the tools they need to stay on top of deals, like automated follow-ups at the most opportune times to drive deals and close faster. 

Best Practices for Streamlining the Sales Process

Streamlining your sales process might require some changes to refine your system, remove inefficiencies, and reduce backups in the pipeline.

Create Engaging Outreach Campaigns

Prospects want to be wowed with unique campaigns that make them feel heard and understood. Even in the virtual world, it’s possible to make a statement that resonates.

Stand out from the pack by creating personalised outreach micro-sites to capture prospect interest, communicate your value propositions, and deliver relevant proposals.

Crafting a tailored experience doesn’t have to be complicated for your team if they have the proper tools. Forward makes it easy to build personalised micro-sites for every deal to show your prospects you understand them and their needs.

Establish Seamless Communication

Communication delays hinder the sales process and often cause prospects to give up on a product. Being able to communicate with your customers in real time means you can answer their questions immediately while providing the attention and focus they need. 

That timely, seamless correspondence conveys that they matter to your team and makes them feel like a priority. Mutual Action Plans (MAPs) and structured sales journeys support an interactive, engaging experience that eliminates delays in the process.

Companies with strong omnichannel customer engagement strategies retain an average of 89% of their customers, compared to 33% for companies with weak omnichannel strategies. This highlights the importance of seamless communication and the advantages of an omnichannel approach in retaining customers and ensuring a smooth sales process.

Forward gives your team the tools they need to deliver that seamless experience. From personalised, dedicated deal rooms and built-in chat features to organised files and easy file uploads, your sales team can deliver what your client needs when they need it to complete deals faster and more efficiently.

Incorporate Collaborative Sales Efforts

Collaboration is key to sales success in this virtual world, and that requires coordinated follow-ups with seamless lead transitions. Providing your entire team access to all relevant data for a deal is crucial for ensuring a smooth closing.

Forward features all the tools your team needs to collaborate at each stage of the sales pipeline. Aside from a centralised sales hub for all of your deal content, your team can leverage Mutual Action Plans (MAPs) to ensure alignment and a commitment to shared goals. It’s the best option for setting realistic deadlines and expectations for your team and buyer while ensuring complete transparency.

Boost Conversion Rates With Better Pipeline Visibility and Control

You don’t have to be a massive corporation to take advantage of better pipeline visibility and forecasting. Small business sales forecasting is key to standing out from your competition and delivering more relevant messaging to your prospects. 

It’s probably more important for a small business to make the most of its resources and reduce wasted time and money. Leveraging real-time data and analytics to shift towards data-driven prospecting allows for better decision-making at every level.

Sales teams can leverage advanced analytics with Forward, meaning more targeted, effective outreach and timely interactions with prospects. Monitor the Engagement Analytics dashboard for real-time tracking of prospect interactions, review relevant data to prioritise top prospects, and determine the best times to follow up.

Improved Deal Desk Management for the Digital Age

A deal desk is the best option for centralising sales processes, documents, and interactions. It’s only as effective as its configuration and users, meaning teams need to take time to build out a functional hub.

Forward offers the essential tools for efficient deal management under a user-friendly umbrella. The Digital Sales Room leverages deal desk best practices and cutting-edge tools to empower your team and impress your prospects.

Utilising Templates for Efficiency in Sales Processes

Personalisation is critical in today’s virtual sales world, but that doesn’t mean you have to recreate the wheel for every deal. Using customisable templates ensures you have all of the necessary information while providing room to personalise each deal.

Forward features a library of predefined templates that will save your team time and effort. Simply choose the best template for your situation and fill in the specifics to match your deal and prospect.

Optimising Sales With Popular Tool Integrations

Wouldn’t it be wonderful if you could access all of your tools from one dashboard? It would be so much easier for your team if they didn’t all have to access four or five different tools to get the job done, right? 

It’s possible with Forward. You can easily sync data from popular CRM systems and sales tools without missing a beat or getting bogged down by manual entries.

For example, your team already uses HubSpot, and you love it, but you need more power and would love to integrate with other platforms. Forward integrates seamlessly with your favourite tools and platforms, including HubSpot, to make life easier for your team.

Boost Your Revenue With Forward

Sales pipeline forecasting is a powerful approach when you have the proper tools to collect and analyse relevant data. Armed with longitudinal and real-time data, your sales team can make better decisions about everything from follow-ups to campaign messaging.

Further, establishing open lines of communication between teams and with your prospects encourages seamless, timely correspondence. Having a dashboard that allows all teams to access relevant information, including deal documents, ensures you don’t miss anything critical or make costly errors. 

Forward offers the necessary tools for a successful, efficient deal desk that empowers your sales team. From tracking prospects in the sales pipeline to keeping all relevant documents in one place for each deal, you get the power to streamline each phase of your sales process.

Plus, the Digital Sales Room easily integrates with the tools you already use, and your team can access a library of customisable templates to improve efficiency. It’s easier than ever to create a personalised, seamless customer journey that closes deals faster.