sales pipeline

(noun)

A visualization of the sales process of a company.

Related Terms

Examples of sales pipeline in the following topics:

  • Identifying Prospects

    • Customer sales are the lifeblood of a business, contributing directly to the company's bottom line.
    • Identifying these prospects or potential customers early in the sales process is key to keeping a company's sales pipeline full.
    • Generating a steady flow of prospective customers into this sales pipeline builds consistent revenue streams, ensuring longevity for the organization.
    • For sales prospecting to be an effective component of integrated marketing communications, organizations implement sales methodologies to qualify and track the conversion rate of sales leads.
    • It can also shorten time to sale.

  • Commercialization

    • In this stage, the product is launched, advertisements and promotional activity begins and increases heavily, and the distribution pipeline is filled with the product.
    • The actual launch of a new product is the final stage of new product development, and the one where the most money will have to be spent for advertising, sales promotion, and other marketing efforts.
    • Timing of launch: When facing the danger of cannibalizing the sales of the company's other products, if the product can be improved further, or if the economy is down, the launch should be delayed.

  • Competitive Priorities in Marketing Channels

    • Sales remains the most popular way to measure performance.
    • It is a path or pipeline through which goods and services flow in one direction (from vendor to the consumer), and the payments generated by them flow in the opposite direction (from consumer to the vendor).

  • Recording Sales

    • Net sales are gross sales minus sales returns, sales allowances, and sales discounts.
    • In financial ratios that use income statement sales values, "sales" refers to net sales, not gross sales.
    • Sales - Sales Return & Allowances - Sales Discount = Net sales
    • Gross sales are the sum of all sales during a time period.
    • Net sales are gross sales minus sales returns, sales allowances, and sales discounts.

  • Productivity Gains from Hardware

    • In 1973, IBM introduced point of sale (POS) terminals in which electronic cash registers were networked to the store's mainframe computer.

  • Creating Sales Force Structure, Territories, and Goals

    • Sales operations may also be referred to as sales operations, sales support, or business operations.
    • Sales territories are the customer groups or geographic districts for which individual sales people or sales teams hold responsibility.
    • The purpose of a sales force coverage (or sales territory) metric is to create balanced sales territories.
    • A sales quota is the minimum sales goal for a set time span.
    • Sales quotas may also be for sales activity, such as number of calls per day.

  • Sales Forecast Input

    • Also referred to as revenue, they are reported directly on the income statement as Sales or Net sales.
    • For financial ratios that use income statement sales values, "sales" refers to net sales, not gross sales.
    • Gross sales are the sum of all sales during a time period.
    • Net sales are gross sales minus sales returns, sales allowances, and sales discounts.
    • The sales figures reported on an income statement are net sales.

  • Annotating Genomes

    • Ideally, these approaches co-exist and complement each other in the same annotation pipeline (process).
    • Other databases rely on both curated data sources as well as a range of different software tools in their automated genome annotation pipeline.

  • Defining Personal Selling

    • Finally, the salesperson must remember to follow up after the sale is made.
    • The sales department would aim to improve the interaction between the customer and the sales facility or mechanism and or salesperson.
    • Marketing and sales differ greatly, but have the same goal.
    • Achieving this goal may involve the sales team using promotional techniques such as advertising, sales promotion, publicity, creating new sales channels, or creating new products.
    • The relatively new field of sales process engineering views "sales" as the output of a larger system, not just as the output of one department.

  • Days Sales Outstanding

    • The days sales outstanding figure is an index of the relationship between outstanding receivables and credit account sales achieved over a given period.
    • Typically, days sales outstanding is calculated monthly.
    • DSO ratio = accounts receivable / average sales per day, or
    • DSO ratio = accounts receivable / (annual sales / 365 days)
    • Changes in sales volume influence the outcome of the days sales outstanding calculation.