The Sales Funnel is a visual representation of your sales process. This guide will help you understand the different stages of the funnel.
What is the Sales Funnel?
Designed uniquely for the art world, the Artlogic Sales Pipeline Sales Funnel makes sure you are always able to keep sales moving forward in an organised and clear way. The widest point of the funnel is at the top and this is where all sales begin. As sales progress, they filter down towards the end of the funnel until the sale is complete.
The Stages of the Sales Funnel
Each part of the sales funnel is called an 'Offer Stage' and these stages help you organise your sales into clear channels so you know which sales are progressing and what the next actions are:
Understanding each stage of the Sales Funnel
Open
These offers have been created and sent to a client. It could be a speculative or strong prospect. As long as the offer has not been rejected or accepted, the offer is 'Open'. When an offer is first created, it will be automatically set to 'Open'.
All your recorded offers, personalised offer emails and website enquiry forms are tracked and organised as 'Open'. The system will automatically flag which offers need following up.
Qualified
When the client shows interest in an artwork you have offered them, it’s time to mark the offer as qualified and continue negotiating, keeping a record of your conversations in the Pipeline. This will help you form a better understanding of those who have an active interest in the artwork.
Reserved
When the deal is almost closed, and the client wants to make sure they don't lose the artwork, you can mark it as temporarily reserved, making sure it isn't accidentally sold to another client. Marking an offer as 'Reserved' will automatically update the artwork record to this status and this will also mark this item as unavailable within all other offers.
When reserving artworks, you can also set a 'Reserved until expiry date'.
Accepted
Congratulations – you’ve made a sale!
Mark the work as Accepted, enter the invoicing and shipping details and click Save to automatically alert your finance team that the invoice can be created – or create the invoice yourself.
Selecting Accepted in the offer edit screen will mark the offered item as unavailable in all other offers, plus it will set the artwork status to Sold with Invoice pending.
Invoiced (awaiting payment, part paid and fully paid)
When an offer has been accepted, the Pipeline will note the offer as Accepted (pending invoice). Once the invoice has been created and generated for the Accepted offer, the Pipeline will be automatically updated to Invoiced (unpaid).
Finally, when the artwork/s have been paid for the Pipeline will then reflect whether the invoice has been part paid or fully paid.
Sold
Finally, when an item has been fully paid, the Pipeline will be updated to note the record's new Sold status. Once the money is in the bank, details of the sale are added to the insights section where you and your team can analyse sales results.