To Start as a Pipelinerpreneur, Work Out What You Want to Achieve

As we’ve been covering in this series on Pipelinerpreneurs, a Pipelinerpreneur is an entrepreneur who has decided to make a business selling and delivering Pipeliner CRM. It is a business at which you could greatly succeed, and Pipeliner Sales offers you a great deal of assistance in building it.

Where do you begin as a Pipelinerpreneur?

There are, of course, some “pre-steps’ ‘ to the beginning, and they can be found in my book The Salespreneur: Introducing the New Era Salesperson. This book is a vital part of your training, and you’ll need to understand the concepts in it as we move forward.

With that book under your belt (or studying it as you go), the very first step to being a Pipelinerpreneur is to ask yourself this question: “What do I want to achieve?” This is not a question I can answer for you—you must answer it for yourself. Maybe you want to work part-time for a couple of hours a day, as many do with Uber. Or maybe you want to build a real business, a real franchise, as many do with McDonald’s. It’s up to you!

You must begin by establishing how much income you want to achieve. Do you want $1,000 per month? $10,000? $50,000?

Once you have that figure in mind, you must take a practical approach in estimating what it will take to get there. Pipeliner provides you 50 percent of the profits from your sales of Pipeliner CRM in the first year that a customer is a customer, and 30 percent of license renewals thereafter. Over and above that, you’ll have to figure out what it will cost you to operate and to obtain leads.

The first thing you have to understand is that there is a correlation between leads and opportunities. A lead isn’t much more than a business card, a contact that you have. You can—and should—contact many people, but not every contact (lead) will become an opportunity. The question then becomes, how many leads does it take to create one opportunity? That is what is known as your lead conversion rate.

The more realistic you are about it, the better. The lead-to-opportunity conversion rate is normally a few percent. In other words, out of the hundred people you have contacted through LinkedIn, other databases, or through other sources, perhaps 10 of them are interested, demonstrated through some kind of indication such as saying, “Yes! I really need a CRM!” They have become opportunities. That means that 10 percent of your contacts have shown interest. Out of 10 contacts, 1 will become an opportunity.

Now we need to look at the conversion rate from someone showing interest, to a closed sale. This is known in sales as the closing rate. The general closing rate for Pipeliner is 20 percent, which would mean that out of every 5 very interested people, you’re going to close 1 (note that as you become more skilled you’ll have a higher closing rate).

Let’s say that you’re looking to make $5,000 per month. That means you’d need one $10,000 deal per month because we let you keep 50 percent of what you sell. $10,000 is, let’s say, 10 licenses, so you need to find companies with 8 – 9 salespeople and 1 – 2 other administrators.

Working our way backward, if you’re after a $10,000 deal, you need 5 companies with 10 or more salespeople who have shown a real interest in a sales CRM. You’d then make your monthly quota of $5,000. To obtain your 5 interested people, you’d need to have 50 leads.

Thinking your way through this is your first business concept. Start with how much money you want to earn, and work your way backward. Then, we will help you take the steps to get there.