Sales and Marketing Support in CRM
Pipeline and forecasting
Stages: lead → qualified → opportunity → proposal/negotiation → closed won or lost. Weighted pipeline value = deal value × probability of closing. Sum the weighted values, not the raw values, to build a forecast. A quota is the target assigned to a rep; pipeline coverage (pipeline ÷ quota) commonly needs to be around three times the quota to be healthy.
Lead management and scoring
Marketing qualified lead (MQL) versus sales qualified lead (SQL). Lead scoring combines fit (industry, size, budget) with behaviour (demo request, pricing-page visits, email clicks). Route high scores to sales quickly; nurture the rest.
Marketing support and campaigns
Campaign planning: objective, target list, offer, channel, budget, schedule, measurement. Response rate = responses ÷ contacts reached. Campaign ROI = (revenue − cost) ÷ cost × 100. Up-sell means a bigger or higher-value version; cross-sell means a related product.
Worked example
Pipeline: ₹5,00,000 at 20% = ₹1,00,000; ₹2,00,000 at 50% = ₹1,00,000; ₹1,00,000 at 80% = ₹80,000. Weighted forecast = ₹2,80,000, not ₹8,00,000. A campaign costing ₹40,000 that produces ₹1,20,000 in revenue gives ROI = (1,20,000 − 40,000) ÷ 40,000 × 100 = 200%.
Traps
- Reporting unweighted pipeline as the forecast.
- Swapping up-sell and cross-sell.
- Counting email opens as conversions.
- Ignoring lead response time, which strongly affects conversion.