Sales organizations need to periodically assess their sales process. Is your process effective?  Can you quickly react to market changes?  Does your sales team have the right tools to do their job efficiently?

Critical to managing the sales process is having a CRM (cutomer relationship management) system in place that is regularly used and updated. When you work so hard to bring in leads, you don't want them dropped in the hand-off between marketing and sales. CRM serves as a communication tool within the organization, and can also help you quickly and easily communicate with your client and prospect base.

At a bare minimum, your CRM system should be able to tell you at a glance:

- the type of contact - customer, prospect, or vendor

- the industry or product of interest

- whether the contact has opted to receive email communications

- how far the lead has progressed through the sales funnel

- the internal representative maintaining the relationship

- the origin of the lead

The benefit of managing your sales pipeline is that you'll be able to measure your marketing success, you'll be able to forecast revenue results (and prepare for the work accordingly), and you'll be able to build sophisticated IF/THEN communication scenarios for little cost.