A sales process is all about finding the right customers, selling products and services, and retaining them. Generally, a sales process consists of the following stages:

1. Lead generation
2. Lead qualification
3. Deal management 

Let us look at Vtiger CRM’s features that can help you manage your sales effortlessly in each stage above.

Lead Generation

Generating leads is the first step in the sales process. With Vtiger CRM, you can generate leads through webforms, emails, and phone calls.

• Webforms: Most companies use webforms to capture their website visitors’ details, which they use to convert visitors into customers. When a visitor submits a webform, Vtiger CRM automatically captures their details into a lead record. 

• Emails and Phone Calls: Sending emails is another way of prospecting. With Vtiger CRM, you can create reusable email templates and capture your leads’ attention by personalizing the emails you send them. You can also trigger automated responses with autoresponder email campaigns based on the actions that your leads take on your emails. 

Vtiger CRM also integrates with several telephony services such as Twilio, Plivo, ViciDial, etc., so you can make calls from the CRM. This feature frees you from the burden of maintaining mobile or landline phone sets to speak to your leads.

• Social Media: Automate lead capturing from your Facebook and LinkedIn accounts and automatically store lead data on the CRM. All you need to do is sync your Facebook Business Account with Vtiger CRM and get lead information via Facebook Lead Forms. Also, you can use Vtiger Enrich to capture information about leads, such as their name, organization name, title, education, skills, etc., and store it in a CRM record.

All the leads that you generate at this stage are Marketing Qualified Leads (MQL) - the leads that your marketing team considers likely to convert.  After you generate leads, you must qualify them for sales. 

Lead Qualification 

A lead is a potential customer. Lead qualification is the process of evaluating a lead’s willingness to buy, and qualified leads move further along the sales process. Vtiger CRM offers the Lead Score and Engagement Score features to help you identify the right leads so that you chase the ones that are more likely to convert.

• Lead Scoring: When you create a lead or a contact in Vtiger CRM, a profile score is defined for them. The score is based on criteria such as contact title, lead source, etc., which are fields in the Leads/Contacts module. Vtiger CRM sets up the criteria by default but you can always customize them to your needs.

When you set up the criteria, Vtiger CRM automatically calculates and generates the profile score in the form of a star rating. The maximum rating is 5-stars. Leads with the highest rating are considered more likely to buy from you. You must focus more on such leads because chances are they will convert faster than the others.

• Engagement Scoring: Another way of scoring leads in Vtiger CRM is based on their interactions with you (sales team). Every time a lead engages with you, their engagement score is incremented by one. 

Deal Management

In the process of converting leads into paying customers, you create deals. A deal is an opportunity to sell. It goes through a series of sales stages before a sale is made.

• Sales Pipelines: Vtiger CRM provides you with a default pipeline called the Standard pipeline.

  By default, your lead can be in one of the following stages:

• New
• Qualifying
• Requirements Gathering
• Value Proposition
• Negotiation
• Ready to Close
• Closed Won
• Closed Lost
• Dormant

• Forecast and quotas: The Forecast and Quota feature is where you can set sales goals for your sales team. As a sales manager, you can specify a quota for yourself, your team, and individual team members. Moreover, you have options to set quotas on a monthly and quarterly basis.

• Deals: Create a deal when you sales-qualify a lead. A deal’s related contacts, organization, quotes, and other information are available under One View. Furthermore, every sales stage of a deal is associated with a set of journey tasks. The deal will progress to the next stage only when sales reps perform all the tasks in the current stage.

Also, to keep in touch with your customers after closing a deal, you can use appointment pages, phone calls, and other follow-up tools. 

• Contact Roles: While pursuing a deal, you may have to talk to multiple stakeholders. Each stakeholder is a deal’s contact and may influence the deal in different ways. When you assign contact roles to a deal’s contacts, you will know how they are related to the deal. Also, you can identify the contact that can help you close the deal faster. 

• Journey Templates: A journey template gives the sequence of tasks a sales representative must perform to close a deal. Journey templates are automatically generated when you create sales pipelines. All you must do is add journey tasks based on your sales process. Journey tasks are shown on a deal record along with a progress bar. 

• Quotes: You create a quote when a deal is being negotiated. 

• Quote Approvals: Say a contact asked for a 25% discount on your product, but you are only allowed to provide a maximum of 20% off. You can set up an approval process where the quote is sent for your manager’s approval in such situations. Depending on whether the manager approves or rejects the quote, you can provide the discount.
• Taxes: You can also configure customized taxes to apply on quotes and other documents.