Must Watch: An Overview of Ivorey™ Pipelines
Pipelines in Ivorey are visual boards that help you track, visualise and manage your customer journey. Imagine a Kanban board where leads or clients move through stages until they reach a defined goal - such as completing a sale, or being successfully onboarded. The goal is to move each opportunity (e.g. client or contract) through to the other end to achieve the goal. Common pipeline use cases are sales pipelines, onboarding pipelines and offboarding pipelines - though you can use them for any journey related to your contacts.
We strongly suggest starting with manual pipelines, and only adding automation once you've perfected your process. If you don't start with it manually and validate the process, there's a good chance you'll waste time creating automations that you end up having to change. So it's best to perfect your process, and then automate it.
Click here for a written breakdown of the training
Click here for a written breakdown of the training
Start With Your Entire Customer Journey In Mind: Take some time to holistically consider your entire business and all of its processes. When you're ready to build your first pipeline, consider how many you truly need. You can create separate pipelines for different parts of the customer journey (e.g., a sales pipeline, an onboarding pipeline, an offboarding pipeline etc) OR combine them into one longer pipeline. We typically recommend breaking them up so each pipeline has one very specific goal (e.g. close the sale, onboard the client, offboard the client)
Start with Qualified Leads: Avoid overwhelming your sales pipeline by adding every potential lead. Instead, add people who show genuine interest (e.g., submitted an application form, booked a call, or reached out with intent).
Define Clear Stages: Each stage represents a step in the journey. You can choose any stages that you like, according to your unique business processes. Map out the journey you want leads or clients to follow. Be specific and logical about each step. It's best to speak in past tense and only move people to the stage when they've actually completed it.
For a sales pipeline, stages might include:Interested in Services
Cancelled Sales Call
Booked Sales Call
Attended Sales Call
Requested Proposal
Proposal Sent
Invoice Sent
Invoice Paid (Won)
Track Actions and Notes: Use the opportunity cards inside your pipeline to keep all information in one place. Add notes, schedule follow-ups, and track conversations to stay organized. Set aside dedicated time each day or week to tend to your pipeline, and move opportunities along towards the goal.
Differentiate Lost vs. Abandoned Leads: There are 4 different statuses for every opportunity, that you can change inside the dropdown of each opportunity or by dragging the opportunity card towards the bottom of the screen and placing it into the correct status. It's up to you and your unique needs as to how you want to define each status, but here's our personal recommendation:
Won: They achieved the end-goal of your pipeline e.g. if you win a sale in a sales pipeline, you would mark it as "Won".
Note: By default, opportunities look like they "disappear" from your pipeline board when marked as won, but they haven't. Simply adjust the filter on your pipeline to show all opportunities, because by default it only shows whats in the 'Open' status.
Lost: Leads that made it to key stages (e.g. received a proposal in your sales pipeline) but rejected it and did not convert. This could be considered "Lost" as you did genuinely lose the sale.
Abandoned: Leads that dropped off early (e.g. no response after initial contact, or didn't even make it to the proposal stage), or leads that you want to disqualify because they are not a good fit. In this case, we suggest marking them as "Abandoned" as opposed to "Lost" so you can get more accurate reporting.
You Can Use Pipelines Manually, or Automate Them: You can manually move opportunities through the stages OR you can set up workflows to automate the process. We strongly suggest starting with manual pipelines, and only adding automation once you've perfected your process.
How To Build A Pipeline In Ivorey™
Navigate to Pipelines in your Ivorey™ dashboard.
Click Create New Pipeline and define your stages.
Add opportunities to your pipelines manually, by going to the Opportunities tab and selecting Create New Opportunity.
Use the pipeline daily to follow up, move opportunities through stages, and track progress.
Bonus Gift: We've Built a Sales Pipeline For You 🎉
Click here to access our pre-built sales pipeline, and learn how to customise then install it into your business.