If you own a business, then chances are that you have heard the term “sales pipeline” being used before. The truth is that it’s not enough — understanding the sales pipeline is absolutely crucial to the process of trying to generate more leads.

In simple terms, the sales pipeline entails the many steps that you need to take in order to sell your product. From the initial contact with a prospective lead to the actual proposal, the sales pipeline is a complex process that relies heavily on market research and timely contact.

Each sales step is very important for the grand scheme of theme. Generally speaking, there are 7 steps to the sale process:

1. Prospecting
2. Approach
3. Needs identification
4. Presentation
5. Objection handling
6. Closure
7. Follow-up

While the steps can differ slightly, the goal remains the same: lead conversion. As you probably already know, each sales step represents an action that must be performed properly in order to move on to the next stage.

Sales pipeline have to be treated with care. Fortunately, there exist several software that aim at making the process simpler for small businesses.

Customer relationship management (also known as CRM) goes hand in hand with sales pipelines. The former aims at making a business’ relationships with its current and prospective customers more efficient. In other words, it guides businesses through various processes associated with customers — sales pipelines included.

ClickHook (http://clickhook.io) is a good example of a CRM that is both affordable and powerful at the same time. The latter allows its users to create custom sales-flows (pipelines) and to add various actions within those stages. Further to that, it even lets them automate the processes — a tool that is becoming increasingly popular in the business world.

As a business person, your CRM has the potential to become your most useful tool. Combining it to get the most out of your sales pipelines can well prove to be a life changing decision for you and for your company.