4 Powerful Ways to Supercharge Your B2B CRM Deal Stages

Below are 4 factors to help you determine how many deal stages you should have in your B2B CRM.

Table of Contents

1. Deal Length

Longer sales cycles often involve more steps and interactions with prospects. If you have too few deal stages, you may miss important details or milestones within the sales process. Each deal stage should represent a major milestone or phase in your prospect’s buying journey. Thus, the number of deal stages you need to adequately track progress should be more if your deals tend to be lengthy and fewer if your deals close quickly. As a quick rule of thumb, a long deal for B2B sales could be 3 months to a year or more while a short deal length could be a few weeks.

2. Deal Complexity

Complex deals often involve multiple decision-makers, stakeholders, and intricate sales processes. To effectively manage such deals, you may need more deal stages to break down the process into manageable components. Each stage can represent a specific phase in the complexity, which allows you track and monitor progress.

3. Major and Minor Milestones

Deal stages are the major milestones that are needed to close a deal. These signify key actions that need to be taken in order to close a deal.

Steps are the minor milestones within a stage that need to be completed in order for the deal stage to be completed. Let’s take a look at some examples of major and minor milestones (i.e. Stages and Steps).

Our example below has 6 deal stages for a moderately complex and lengthy sales cycle with numerous steps within each stage:

Stage 1 – Opportunity Qualification

Stage:

This is the initial stage in the sales process where the sales team evaluates and qualifies a potential opportunity. At this point, you must determine whether a lead or prospect is a good fit for your product or service and has a genuine interest to make a purchase.

Steps:

During this stage, salespeople gather information about the prospect’s needs, budget, decision-making authority, and timeline. Sales must assess whether the opportunity aligns with the company’s target customer profile.

Stage 2 – Solution Development

Stage:

In this stage, sales works on the development of a tailored solution or proposal that addresses the prospect’s specific needs and challenges. Here, the team must put together an offer that compels and aligns with the prospect’s requirements.

Steps:

Salespeople collaborate with internal teams, such as product development or services to design a solution. Sales reps also collaborate with the buyer’s team. In these meetings, decision makers and influencers need to attend so timelines, scope, and the dedication of resources can be agreed upon. Furthermore, sales and prospects should also conduct in-depth discussions to fine-tune the proposal and ensure it meets expectations.

Stage 3 – Proposal

Stage:

The Proposal stage is where sales presents the solution or proposal to the prospect. It’s the formal communication of how your product or service addresses their needs and provides value.

Steps:

Sales representatives create a detailed proposal document or presentation that outlines the solution, price, terms, and any other relevant information. Sales presents the proposal and addresses questions and concerns from the prospect.

Stage 4 – Commitment

Stage:

The Commitment stage represents the point at which the prospect expresses a clear intention to move forward with the purchase. It signifies a significant level of commitment from the prospect’s side.

Steps:

During this stage, salespeople work with the prospect to finalize any remaining details, negotiate terms, secure their commitment to the deal, discuss implementation and onboarding plans.

Stage 5 – Contract

Stage:

This is when a contract is created and sent to the prospect.

Steps:

Sales representatives work with legal teams or contract departments to draft and review the contract terms. After the contract is delivered, the buyer may have redlines (i.e. elements of the contract that need additional negotiation). The two parties work together to ensure that both are satisfied with the contract.

Stage 6 – Won

Stage:

The Won stage is the final stage of the sales process and signifies a successfully closed deal (i.e. signed contract). It reflects that the prospect has become a customer.

Steps:

This step signifies the initiation of any necessary post-sales activities, such as onboarding, product delivery, and the transition from sales to account management.

Lost vs. Qualified Out

In a previous article, 15 Essential Deal Fields You Need in a B2B CRM, we discussed how important it is to track Lost vs. Qualified Out deals. I highly recommend that you view the post for a full explanation as to why these values are extremely important to track and how to do so properly.

Milestones Recap

Consider the major and minor milestones that your deals must go through in order to be won. These will help you to figure out how many deal stages you need.

4. Ability to Test and Iterate

Every business is unique, and your sales process may have specific nuances that can’t be perfectly predicted at the outset. When you test different configurations of deal stages, you can tailor your CRM to align with your business’s specific needs and processes. Furthermore, when you test and iterate, it enables you to identify bottlenecks or inefficiencies in your sales process. When you track how deals progress through different stages, you can pinpoint where delays occur or where deals tend to get stuck. This insight can help you to make targeted improvements to enhance sales efficiency.

Wrap Up

The deal stages you have today don’t have to be permanent; you can always make adjustments later. Focus on how long deals take to close, the complexity of the selling and buying processes, and consider the major and minor milestones that are needed to close deals.

When you regularly review your deal stages, it ensures that your CRM remains a valuable tool for sales performance and deal management.

While I can’t tell you the exact number of deal stages every B2B company should have, a good rule of thumb is that if you have a long and complex sales cycle, you should have no fewer than 3 stages nor should you have more than 10. Three is too few to properly capture major milestones and more than 10 is too many whereby your Sales team won’t want to make such frequent updates.