Pipelines: Keap vs ActiveCampaign

Pipelines: Keap vs ActiveCampaign

Opportunities, Small Business, Tools

A pipeline is a way to manage a process, generally a sales process. And different platforms will have pros and cons for how they store the information, trigger automation, and what reporting metrics they make available.

Whether or not your business needs a pipeline tool will depend on a variety of factors, here’s a resource to help you with that determination.

But if you do determine your business has the need for a pipeline, to manage deals in your sales funnel, or some other business process – then you’ll benefit from the way it can offer increased insight, reporting, and help add automation.

In this video Brett, from BlickDigital, will walk us through the core differences in how pipelines and deals are handled between ActiveCampaign and Keap.

If you’re thinking your business would benefit from this, but you’re not sure where to start – here’s a great resource for Keap users to help you get your head wrapped around the ins and outs of opportunities, deals, and pipelines.

Huge shout out to Brett Farr for walking us through the key differences in how ActiveCampaign and Keap handle this part of their software. If you’re interested in learning more about working with Brett and BlickDigital, check them out here.

And, if you’re still on the fence about which CRM is right for your business, or need help making the best choice, you can book a call with the Otium Team to help find the system that fits your needs.

Automatic Stage Moves inside Keap

Automatic Stage Moves inside Keap

Keap, Opportunities

The pipeline inside Keap is a powerful tool for tracking any process. The most common use case for Keap’s pipeline is for tracking deals or opportunities in your sales process.

Generally speaking, you’d create an opportunity once a lead has expressed interest, and then you or your sales team would advance that opportunity through a set of stages as those prospects turn into customers. Here’s an overview of the pipeline for anyone who wants a refresher.

And most of the time we want this process to be manual – because we want to move the deal once we’ve interacted with them, and are ready to begin the next part of the process.

But not always.

Can I move stages automatically?

There are times where you might want to automatically advance an opportunity between stages, and yes, you can do it automatically.

So, if a prospects signs some paperwork you might move them out of the ‘signing’ stage and into the ‘closing’ stage.

Or, if they pay a quote you sent them, you might want to automatically move them from ‘quoting’ to ‘won’.

And inside Keap Ultimate (formerly called Max Classic, and before that Infusionsoft), you can move a opportunity automatically as a step inside your sequences in the campaign builder.

move a deal automatically gif

So, if you’re a Keap Ultimate user, then you’re all set. This will give you what you need.

But what about Keap Pro and Max?

In Pro and Max things work a little differently right now.

For starters, Opportunities are called “Deals” – the concept is the same, but the terminology is a little different.

And at this point there isn’t a step in Advanced Automations to automatically move a deal between stages, but it is still possible.

Here’s the workaround:

Okay, so – let’s summarize.

Ultimate (previously Max Classic) lets you move opportunities automatically as a step in the campaign builder.

Pro and Max will let you move Deals as a step in the Easy Automations builder.

So, regardless of which version of Keap you have, you should have a solution that works for you.

If you’d like to learn more about using Keap’s pipeline features check out these free courses in the Keap Academy platform.

How to actually use the CRM Sales Reports in Infusionsoft

How to actually use the CRM Sales Reports in Infusionsoft

Guest Posts, Keap, Opportunities

Hello there fellow MonkeyPodders!

If you didn’t know, I’ve been using Infusionsoft  (now Keap) since 2008. This means I have watched the software grow up and evolve.

Kind of like when you watch a dog or cat (or kid) grow up; you understand them better, and why certain things are the way they are.

Since I also worked at Keap (formerly Infusionsoft), I’ve got a unique view into how the system operates under the hood.

You are about to gain access into, arguably, one of the most nuanced parts of the software: the Keap CRM Sales reports.

The Keap CRM Sales Reports

For those unfamiliar, these are the reports you can use with the Opportunities function, the sales pipeline. Since that function itself is challenging for some users, it makes sense that the reporting is also a bit misunderstood.

Greg, being a former success coach like me, was super aware of this knowledge gap for most users.

And recently he reminded me of an old resource we once used as coaches, a cheat-sheet of sorts that has held true since 2013. A thorough breakdown and explanation of every CRM Sales report.

Sales Report GIF

Back in 2013, I was asked to speak at the annual user conference about this Opportunity function. (Have you heard IKON is coming back?)

So, it made sense to have the report explanations available as part of the presentation bonuses.

Now, for you and all the world to benefit, we wanted to unpack that juicy detailed artifact. I give you, the Sales Report Overview…

Using Sales Reports to Answer Questions

When it comes to running a business, asking the right questions is important. These sales reports are answering some specific questions that might not be apparent to the average user. Plus, these questions are being informed by sales management experience. So if you’ve never been a sales manager, you don’t even know this is a question (yet).

Below are the 12 sales reports, the main question they answer, and how you might use this to manage your sales team. Feel free to read through them, or jump to the reports you’re most interested in:

Sales Rep Conversion Percentages:
“What is the conversion rate from one sales stage to another?”

Having a solid close rate means more predictable sales. However, looking at the rates of movement from one state to the next gives insight into the efficiency of the sales process itself.

With this report, you can choose stages in your sales pipeline and can see the percentage of movement.

For example:

Sales Rep Conversion Percentages

I have had 19 opportunities that made it to the Qualified stage, and 6 of those moved to Assessment Scheduled. A 32% conversion from qualified to scheduled.

This does NOT mean there are 13 lost sales though.

Look at the movement from Qualified to Assessment Complete:

Sales Rep Conversion Percentages

10 people moved directly from Qualified to Assessment completed.

This report is good for looking at global pipeline velocity among all sales reps, or for digging into a specific rep’s performance.

Be careful comparing more than two sales stages though! Deciphering the data with multiple stages selected can be a pain. The report basically compares all possible stage move combinations, which is a daunting data set. You’ll see an example of this complexity in the next report. Dive into at your own risk!

Conversion Percentages (Created By):
“What is the conversion rate from one sales stage to another BASED ON who created the Opportunity originally?”

This report is a modified version of the previous one. You can see a stage-to-stage conversion report, broken down by users.

You’ll be able to see if automated leads (from a campaign) convert better than manual leads entered by each sales rep.

For example, my conversion rates are not much different from automated leads compared to the ones I enter by hand:

This report is a modified version of the previous one. You can see a stage-to-stage conversion report, broken down by users.

You’ll be able to see if automated leads (from a campaign) convert better than manual leads entered by each sales rep.

For example, my conversion rates are not much different from automated leads compared to the ones I enter by hand:

Conversion Percentages Created By

This also demonstrates the previous warning about comparing multiple stages. The data can be confusing. For example, how can you complete 141% of all assessments scheduled?

Well, there are technically 24 completed and only 17 scheduled. What this report doesn’t factor in is when people skip stages. For example if someone goes from Qualified right to Appointment Complete.

In any case, this can help you establish conversion baselines between your automated and human efforts.

Stage to Stage:
“What is the average number of days it takes someone to move from one stage to another?”

This report is short and sweet. Put in two stages and a date range. The report will calculate how long it takes, on average, to move from one stage to the next.

For example, for 2020 so far, there have been 9 leads that went from Qualified immediately to Assessment Complete:

Stage to Stage Report

In an average of 9 days.

However, if you look at people who went from Qualified to Proposal Sent, which only happened once, you’ll see it was a fast journey for that one lead.

Stage to Stage 2

If there were multiple sales reps in this application, each one would have a row in the report. This means the report is also great for establishing team baselines.

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Opportunity Created Detail:
“Who is creating opportunities and/or who are they being assigned to?”

This report is a bit of a wild one. It deals only with opportunities created by a User, not automatically.

For every User-created Opportunity, who has been assigned to it?

As a one-man sales team (for now), this report tells me that I’ve manually assigned myself over 200 leads:

Opportunity Created Detail

That’s pretty wild. From a real-world standpoint, there might be some use cases for looking at who is creating and assigning. For larger sales teams, this could be super handy to track multiple managers and their teams. Especially if the managers are creating the leads for their team members.

Call History Summary:
“How many notes are my sales reps leaving?”

This report is great for managing a team.

When “properly working” an Opportunity, this report will show sales reps activity. We consider working an Opportunity with the following button “proper”:

Call History Summary

This is for 2 reasons:

  1. This function will leave a digital papertrail Note on the contact record. You’ll be able to see what was supposed to happen, and then what actually happened.
  2. This function will update the User’s calendar for easier pipeline management.

Please note that working an Opportunity from My Day view will also behave in such a way.

Ok, assuming your sales team has been been trained to use Opportunities “properly”, this Sales report will look like this:

Call History Summary Team

This screenshot above is for the entire app’s existence. In the close to a decade this app has existed, I’ve left over 10k contact notes of the ‘Call’ type; these are the default note type when working an Opportunity. You can see that a few other people have lightly used Opportunities in this app’s career.

As a sales manager, you can use this report to keep track of call volume per sales rep on a weekly, monthly, quarterly, etc. basis.

Call Log Report: “What notes are my sales reps leaving?”

This report is great for digging into sales rep performance and quality of call notes.

It is basically an expanded version of the previous report. Instead of spitting out the number of calls made, this allows you to look at the call notes directly.

For 2020, I’ve “made 811 calls” or rather, worked opportunities 811 times:

Call Log Report

It is important to understand that these reports are reporting on the Contact notes. So as long as your sales reps are leaving notes, this should show their activity.

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Sales Pipeline Summary: “What pipeline movement happened during a certain date range?”

This report is pretty cool. You can see a breakdown of all stage moves INTO a stage, and then all the resulting moves OUT.

This is handy to see where people are getting stuck in the sales process. And with what velocity.

Sales Pipeline Summary

For 2020 so far, I’ve had 10 sales leads created in the New Opportunity stage that exited that stage. That doesn’t tell us much.

Could some leads be sitting in New Opportunity that haven’t moved? Yes. That would be the job of the sales manager: to monitor and make sure this isn’t the case; which it isn’t.

Look at the Engaging stage though. All 12 leads that entered that stage moved out of that stage. This means people aren’t getting stuck there. This can also be interpreted as no Opportunity was created in that stage. As long as nobody is still in Engaging (they aren’t), then, yes, that is the case.

For the Qualified stage , how can 26 move out when only 19 went into that stage? This means there were 7 opportunities created in the Qualified stage from the get-go. At least.

As you can see, this report starts to get down to the brass tacks of pipeline efficiency.

There are no search parameters besides the time range. This is global for all Opportunities in that time range.

However, you can filter by Team, which is a group of Users. If you wanted to see individual sales rep performance, you could create a unique Team per sales rep and use it in this report.

Sales Pipeline Detail:
“What specific pipeline movement happened during a certain date range between stages?”

This report is super insightful. You can get lost in rabbit holes for sure. This report is how you can search between the individual Stage Moves; the Sales History tab of the Opportunity record.

Sales Pipeline Detail

This report lets you see global stage movement, all movement FROM a particular stage or, all movement TO a particular stage.

For example, here are all the stage moves for 2020 that ended in the Deposit Secured stage:

Sales Pipeline Detail 2

You can see that most people were in a proposal stage before becoming a paying client. Which makes sense. This also shows what stage the Opportunity is in right now.

For this example, since two of the stages are in Win, that means those projects are closed out. Otherwise they would still be in a fulfillment stage.

Like the Sales Pipeline Summary report, you can only filter by Team. So if you wanted to look at individual sales rep activity, you’d have to make them into their own Team.

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Opportunity Revenue Forecast:
“How much money is in the pipeline and what are the weighted chances of closing?”

This report is the most intricate of all the sales reports, in my opinion.

To get data from this report, you have to be doing three things:

  1. You have to be using proper Product and Subscription listings.
  2. Your sales reps have to be indicating what offers each lead is going to buy in the ‘Products/Subscription Plans’ tab of the Opportunity record.
  3. Your sales reps have to be using the Estimated Close Date field on the Opportunity record; ‘Commit to Forecast?’ is optional

For example, this Opportunity record has products listed and a close date:

Opp revenue forecast

The dollar value next to the name is a function of the products and subscriptions selected.

Assuming those three conditions, the Opportunity Revenue Forecast in Infusionsoft will spit out a report like this:

opp rev forecast 2

As you can see, I don’t use the Products/Subscriptions tab as good as I probably should. I am actually human after all 😉

But that works out for you, since it provides the perfect example for how this report works.

You can see the potential revenue and potential monthly subscription. This matches with the Opportunity record. You also have the option to filter based on the ‘Commit to Forecast?’ checkbox or not.

What’s with that weighted revenue stuff?

Glad you asked. That is a hidden fourth condition for the report to properly work. This is related to the Probability setting of each sales stage.

If you never noticed, there is a Probability field for each sales stage when setting it up:

Opp Revenue Forecast

This is the probability of the sale closing.

So the weighted revenue is the total Opportunity revenue times the probability of selling.

As an example, if someone was considering a $1,000/month service, and they were in the Qualified stage (with a probability of 50), the weighted revenue would only be $500; they are only half way through the sales process.

The reason both the potential and potential weighted revenue match in the screenshot above, is because they are an active client in the ‘Retainer Fulfillment’ stage; which has a probability of 100. They already bought and are a paying client.

This report is particularly helpful for sales manager dashboard stats that show pipeline volume.

Opportunity Sales Report:
“How much money did we actually make off closed opportunities?”

This report shows how many Order records exist for a Closed opportunity.

Which does not mean that every opportunity contributed to the sale.

That is what makes this report sometimes slippery. Especially if someone can buy on their own without talking to a sales rep for some Offers. There is a risk that an Order record is being “credited” to an unrelated Opportunity record.

With that in mind, here is how the report looks:

Opp Sales report

This means that I’ve got 45 closed Opportunities this year for a total of about $8,300 in orders. And about $5k of that came from upfront revenue.

Nearly every Order is a function of our assisted sales process, so this is pretty accurate.

There is an extra gotcha: this report only shows “Closed” opportunities. It has to be in either the Win or Lost stage. Because I use stages for Fulfillment, beyond the sale, this report isn’t 100% accurate.

To be accurate, all closed projects for 2020 have driven ~$8,300 so far. There are still a handful of open projects including retainers who technically never “close” until they cancel their subscription.

Still, this report gives some interesting data on sales results per rep.

Sales Cycle Report:
“How long do opportunities stay open by sales rep?”

This report shows how many opportunities have gone from creation to a closed sales stage, and the average time to get there.

For 2020, this is how the report looks for me:

Sales Cycle Report

45 Opportunities have been closed out in an average of 141 days.

This doesn’t exactly tell me, specifically, the sales length though. Remember, I use sales stages for Fulfillment, so technically the Opportunity is active throughout the whole process.

If I wanted to see the specific sales cycle, I would have to use other reports to see the average time to the Deposit stage.

For a more traditional use of Opportunities, where the record is closed upon sale, this report gives a fantastic high level view of sales process velocity and efficiency per rep.

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Opportunity Pipeline Summary:
“How is my entire pipeline doing?”

This report is the big mamba jamba. It’s the closest thing you have to a speedometer for your sales pipeline.

There are no settings for the search. There are no extra columns to add. This is a raw “What is so?” right now about your sales pipeline:

Opp Pipeline Summary

Right now, as of this blog post draft, I have one person in Engaging for 12 days so far. 3 in Assessment completed. And so on.

You can see I’m not adding in the forecast revenue to those Opportunity records. This is a great reminder to get into this habit. Even as a one-man show, the more data I have, the better 🙂

This report gives you a high level view of everything, right now. If I was a sales manager, I might use this report as a Tool to build the team as a whole. Keep everyone all on the same bus. Everyone wins together, and everyone loses together.

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You made it.

Whew!

So there you have it. From the annals of an esoteric PDF produced in 2013, you now have a full-blown explanation of every single Sales CRM report for Keap. All twelve of them.

Arguably, one of the most thorough and rigorous explanations of the topic to date. 🙂

What do you think? What’d you learn? What questions do you have? Let us know in the comments below.

Opportunities 101

Opportunities 101

Keap, Opportunities, Tips and Tricks

How to get around this guide:

What are Keap Opportunities? What is the pipeline? Do I need it? How does it work? What does it do?

I’ll be honest – when I first started working with Keap, I didn’t know what “opportunities” were. I didn’t get it.

It felt abstract, and I didn’t see how it tied together with the rest of the platform.

So, even though I was using the software daily, I avoided it…for months.

And I know I’m not the only one.

I don’t have a course covering opportunities, I might someday, but for now, consider this Opportunities 101 – for anyone who has ever wondered what they are or where they fit, but has been afraid to ask, or just hasn’t taken the time.

I want to be clear – you might not need opportunities at all. If your sales process is entirely online and doesn’t involve manual interaction, then this may not be for you at all.

But unless you know what it does, and how it works, you don’t know what you’re missing out on.

So, what are Opportunities anyway?

‘Opportunities’ are records (like contact records), but they represent an interest, rather than a person. In Keap Pro and Max, Opportunities are called “Deals”.

Opportunities in Keap are tied to a contact. And contacts can have multiple opportunities, but opportunities can only be attached to a single contact.

Opportunities serve as a vehicle to move someone through a process, most commonly, to track their progression through a series of stages, like a sales pipeline.

Opportunities module screenshot

Wait, what is a Pipeline?

The Keap pipeline, or sales pipeline, is just a tracking mechanism for a process. Any process, but usually a manual offline sales process.

You move opportunities through the pipeline stages you define.

Sales Pipeline module screenshot

The reason I say “Any Process” is that you could use Infusionsoft’s pipeline to track something other than a sales process. For example, if you have a manual fulfillment process that needs to happen after someone places an order, it might make sense to create an opportunity record AFTER someone purchases.

How does this benefit my business?

The primary benefit to a business is that it helps you get clear on the process and journey leading up to a purchase – so you can see where your sales are going to come from. As you use it, you can start to gauge “Hey, if they make it to this stage, they have an X% chance of buying.”

As you use the pipeline, it can also help you identify bottlenecks, and gives you transparency into your processes. If you know that people are getting stuck in a certain stage for much longer than you’d expect, you can then go investigate why.

Opportunities in Keap also afford you the ability to assign a projected revenue range – which helps you know the total value of the opportunities in your pipeline, or in a specific stage. When you combined this with projected “close” dates and weighted forecasting it unlocks robust reporting and analysis that can be used to inform key decisions.

You can literally help a sales team decide how to allocate their resources, or prioritize their day.

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Opportunities help you track your prospects through your sales process without letting any slip through the cracks. And once you’ve got that – you can also use the stage moves to trigger automation for the repetitive follow up.

Mallory Balnis

Plum Crazy Automation

When do I create an opportunity?

If you’re going to use Opportunities to track prospects through your sales journey (or any journey) then a natural question is “When do I create an opportunity?

As soon as I get their business card? When the prospect signs up for something? Only after they’ve asked for a quote?

Opportunities sequence screenshot

The answer is “it depends”. My rule of thumb is that an opportunity record should be created when it’s time for a human to get involved. And the good news is that no matter when you decide an opportunity should be created – it can be automated.

So, if the prospect has expressed interest enough to merit some human interaction, then that’s usually when I recommend creating an opportunity to track their progression.

Here’s a good article from Brett Farr over at Blick Digital covering this question, and some ideas for aligning your sales and marketing teams.

Read More from Brett

How do I get my team to use the sales pipeline?

The biggest challenge, in my experience, is adoption.

Sometimes sales teams will be resistant to the whole concept because a) they don’t want their process, or lack of process, to be exposed, or b) they worry that they’ll be replaced, or c) it’s technical, or hard, and they see it as one more thing that gets in their way.

So, because of those reasons, it’s really important that you own your adoption. Normally this is a sales manager. (I’ve been in a room with 8 sales reps who I was supposed to train on a $5k pipeline process that was built for them, and 0 of the 8 wanted it. Twas a little awkward.)

The trick is creating an appetite for it. It has to make their life easier. Usually this is by helping them focus their time. And saving them from repetitive shiz, like sending the same “I just left you a voicemail” email over and over.

Here’s a good post on sales pipeline adoption.

Can I build more than one pipeline?

Normally you’ll want to set up your sales stages to be broad or general enough that you can use it to track opportunities of all types, but in some instances, you may find that the sales journey for two of your offerings is quite different. So, in those fringe cases you can set up multiple pipelines using this strategy.

Can I automate it?

Previously my answer to this was “Moving an opportunity between stages is ALWAYS manual*. Which is by design.”

And I’d go on to explain that it’s because the pipeline process largely happens offline. Moving someone from one stage to another is a representation of offline interaction, like, having a conversation.

But in 2021 Keap released a feature that allows you to move an opportunity automatically as a step in a sequence – more on that here.

So now you can move an opportunity using automation, or trigger automation when you manually update an opportunity.

The second one is where Keap really shines – tying this offline interaction to automation. Moving an opportunity between stages and trigger and stop automation (this happens by achieving a campaign builder goal).

So, your sales rep (or whoever) will manually move an opportunity record from one stage to another – but then that manual action can trigger an automated reaction. It’s like tipping over the first domino, and then watching what you’ve built run it’s course.

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Opportunities will force you, wearer of many hats, to organise, simplify and automatate your sales process – which will make it possible for you to hire someone for that role in the future.

Jake Lunniss

JakeLunniss.com

What should my campaign look like?

Once you’ve defined your stages, and you’re ready to start layering in automation, you’ll want to design a campaign. This article shows you how to build the actual Keap campaign structure which will support the automation between each stage move.

Are you sure you don’t have a video training on this, Greg?

I’m sure. But Keap Academy has two courses on using the pipeline features.

Opportunities snapshot

Who can own opportunities?

Just like you can assign an owner on a contact level, you can also assign an owner on an opportunity level. But there are a few things to know:

First, for someone to be the owner on an opportunity record, they must be part of the group you’ve selected in the Opportunity Defaults section. This is usually the “Sales Rep” group, but you can change that selection under CRM >> Settings >> Opportunity Defaults.

Viewing opportunities module

The second thing to know is that the opportunity and contact owner could be the same person, and in many cases, that’s what you’ll want – but it doesn’t have to be. You could have one person responsible for the relationship with the prospect at large (if they’re a long term client) and a different person responsible for the specific conversation happening around that individual opportunity.

For that reason, you’ll notice settings above that allow you to choose whether or not you want to sync the owner of the contact and opportunity – and a separate setting for active vs closed opportunities.

In the screenshot above, I have “Yes” selected for syncing open opportunities – because I always want the contact owner and opportunity owner to be the same.

But I have “No” selected for syncing closed opportunities because I want to be able to see who was the owner an opportunity that has already closed, and if those were updated when the contact owner changed then I’d lose that historical record.

Can I use them on my phone?

Yup.

I get it, maybe your sales reps are on the go. And if they’re going to  use Opportunities in any meaningful way, they need to be able to access and update the opportunities in their pipeline from their phone, or tablet, palm pilot, or whatever.

The Infusionsoft Mobile app DOES support opportunities. Check out this article for an overview.

Opportunities allow you to track and manage your leads. They also allow you to automate the actions that need to take place in different stages, which keeps your sales process consistent and makes you a better rep.

Josh Hindeman

Capsule 5

How do I report on this?

One of the biggest benefits of using the opportunity pipeline is that it offers you data about your sales process.

You can see where people are in the sales journey, forecast upcoming revenue, as well as highlight bottlenecks or areas where folks may be slipping between the cracks.

There is a pre-built dashboard widget that sales reps can use to manage their personal pipeline, and there is a set of reports specifically to help sales managers keep tabs on how things are going.

Sales Report GIF

Ugh – do you even look at those reports and think “Why can’t they just say what they do in plain English?”

Well, apparently you’re not the only one – because Paul Sokol wrote a juicy blog post that does exactly that – it breaks down every single Sales Pipeline Report to explain not only what it does, but what questions it answers, and why you might find it valuable. Check it out here:

Opportunity Reporting Explained

* You may have noticed that I said “Moving an Opportunity Stage is ALWAYS manual” and then I tossed a cheeky little asterisk in there.

Most of the time you WANT an opportunity to be moved manually because it means a human is recording an outcome that happened offline. But there are a few legitimate times when you may want to automate this – like if someone purchases, and you want to just move that opportunity to a “Won” stage – so, the truth is that an opportunity CAN be moved from one stage to another via the API.

This can be accomplished through this native feature, or with custom development, or by using a tool like PlusThis Opportunity Updater, FixYourFunnel’s Opportunity Advance Bot, or the Pocket Developer tool from The API Guys.

Okay, how’d we do?

Do you feel more confident? Let me know in the comments below if there is anything I overlooked, or if you have any additional questions!

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Where do I learn more?

The Keap Academy platform features two detailed courses covering the strategic and technical aspects of using a pipeline in your business.

There’s one course for Keap pro and max, and another for Max Classic (formerly Infusionsoft).

View Courses