To get the right outcomes (i.e., sales) you need the right input. The account timeline gives you a 360° view of every conversation that has happened between a customer and your team. View them all on a single timeline that maps to changes in your CRM, such as opportunity stage changes, amount increases, etc. Incorporate the timeline into your sales process to keep you and your team on the same page about what’s happening on every deal.
Here’s how you do that:
- Use the timeline in one-on-one meetings to review deals, coach reps on closing strategies, and keeping deals moving forward.
- Use the timeline in your pipeline review meetings to assess the health of deals in your pipeline. This visibility lets you provide guidance, coaching, and assistance to advance deals. It will also increase your forecast accuracy.
- Use the timeline in team meetings to share what you’ve learned with the entire team. Then you can talk about best practices and strategies for managing challenges successfully.
Here are a few tips for reviewing deals using the timeline:
- Pay attention to your reps’ level of engagement. Are they actively and positively engaging with customers? Are the customers responsive? Look at indicators such as talk time ratios, discussing next steps, etc.
- Are your reps involving the right people at each stage of their deal? For example, is a decision maker involved in the discovery call? Are the appropriate people from finance, legal, and procurement involved during negotiations?
- Is there a defined next step? Is there a meeting scheduled with the right stakeholders?
- Look at keywords, names, or other relevant Trackers across your reps’ conversations. That will give you all sorts of insights. It will tell you, for example, whether you’re looking at a competitive deal. If the competition comes up too frequently, you can dig deeper to see whether your team positioned the product’s value correctly, or whether the buyer raised any legal or commercial objections.