To Stage 0 or Not? (Part 1)

Thinking beyond this question

A few weeks ago, I saw a poll from Jeff asking the community if they used Stage 0 as a way to capture pre-qualified conversations / booked intro calls, especially around SDR<>AE handoff. 

I’ve been on both sides of this debate, having implemented both of these solutions. 

TLDR - my take is “choose your hard” -- both approaches have benefits, drawbacks, and mitigations, though I have a personal favorite. And this question is one of many around this process that need to get answered -- I’ll be focusing on some of those equally, if not more impactful, considerations first.  

Let’s dive in! 

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What are we even talking about?

If the poll makes complete sense, feel free to skip this section. If you’re scratching your head a bit, let’s make this crystal clear. 

We’re working with a sales process that considers deals qualified once a first meeting has occurred and it meets the org’s criteria. 

If we’re using Salesforce, qualified deals are tracked on the Opportunity object. To be clear, this will be a very Salesforce-oriented discussion, as I’m not sure how Hubspot or other CRMs handle this. 

We also want to understand how the meetings that are booked convert to this “qualified” deal status. This is especially useful for organizations with SDR/BDR teams who schedule meetings for reps, as a way to capture details about the handoff. 

Two popular approaches to capture this information are:

1. Creating a “Stage 0” Opportunity record to indicate a meeting has been booked.

2. Creating a record on a different object that is not the Opportunity. Typically, this would be an Event record, a Task record, or a Custom Object that can be associated with a Lead/Contact/Account to indicate multiple attempts over time if needed. 

Why is this important? This will depend on your organization, but universally, this administrative decision cuts across object definitions (e.g. what is an Opportunity?), sales process, data quality, and more. For organizations that have SDR/BDR teams, this may also tie into compensation if your sales development team is paid based on meetings booked or qualified meetings occurred. 

How to make this process successful 

Prior to focusing on how to implement this in Salesforce, I suggest ensuring that there is alignment on: 

• Clearly defined qualification criteria are understood by the team / leadership

• How to hold team members accountable, and how this will look day-to-day. 

To make the implementation successful, I also suggest thinking about how to: 

• Communicate with and about the data

• Automating / simplifying the implementation and end-user experience

Define qualification criteria

Depending on your organization, sales strategy, and go-to-market motion, this might look very different from one company to another, and within a company between inbound and outbound motions. 

In short, three questions to ask might be: 

Who do we want to pursue meetings with? 

This will inform account/contact list building for the team, or decision making around which contacts they are comfortable outbounding to or how to follow up with inbounds for demos. This can help prevent some easily preventable issues, like reaching out to irrelevant roles or industries. 

(If set by a SDR/BDR) What do we need to confirm before sending a meeting to our AE team? This is especially useful for inbound motions, where a qualification call can be helpful. For outbound, you may be able to find some information publicly, but more private prospects might be difficult to learn from during cold outreach. Consider whether a qualification conversation in addition to the first meeting is helpful or detrimental to the outbound prospect experience, and align criteria accordingly. 

What is a qualified Opportunity? 

In my experience, a meeting needs to have occurred, and some additional criteria need to have been met for an opportunity to be considered qualified.

If you are defining or redefining qualification criteria, ICP is a good lens to start with. Then, common methodologies to layer in might be BANT or MEDDIC/MEDDPPIC to understand readiness to buy. Some other simple frameworks/acronyms include P-MAP, CHAMP, and many others. Consider what is critical to know before kicking off a full sales process, and how you might learn that information.

One example of qualification criteria I’ve developed before was a hybrid of ICP, BANT, and MEDDIC. We scrapped budget and timing for new opportunity qualification, and focused on questions like:

• Based on available information, were the account and contact in our ICP? (the answer to this question needed to be “Yes”)

• Was there a clear need/pain that we were solving for? (unknowns were ok to book a meeting, AEs need to answer with “Yes” for this to be qualified as an Opportunity)

• Based on interaction with the point of contact, did they have the authority to be a champion for us? (unknowns were ok to book a meeting, AEs need to answer with “Yes” for this to be qualified as an Opportunity)

Again, for us it made sense to specifically spell out what outcomes were okay or not, but your organization’s needs may be different! 

Whatever you decide to use for your criteria, make sure they are communicated in a variety of forums, easily findable, and built into the CRM. And if you’re early in your journey of defining and implementing qualification, you might find that these criteria will evolve with the company, so don’t stress getting things perfect the first time around. 

Hold team members accountable 

Make sure SLAs and review cadences exist and are clear! 

Common issues to solve for: 

• Meeting happened, the outcome is clear, but team members are slow to update the CRM. Solution: solve via automated reminders, reports, and manager intervention. Make sure the list of meetings that need to be dealt with is reviewed regularly. 

• Meeting is a no-show. How long does the SDR try to get it back on the books versus closing it out? Solution: Have a consistent answer for how to deal with this situation. 

• Meeting happened, parties disagree on whether it is qualified or not. Solution: Have a system for disputes, ensure that previous qualification assessments and the reasoning behind them are available and used as evidence. 

Communicate with / about data 

As with any system, process, and protocol change, be prepared to communicate at all levels early and often.

In particular, something to be mindful of is that the team will be talking about the data records in CRM as well as the actual meetings / deal progress that is happening. Make sure internal language is consistent to avoid confusion. With the Stage 0 approach in particular, it’s easy for different things to get conflated (e.g. “opportunities” versus “pre-opportunities” versus “qualified opportunities”), so be prepared with lingo to repeat over and over again until it’s internalized by the team. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing if the org is able to realize the benefits of a particular approach, but is something to be mindful of, and might force increased thoughtfulness around communicating metrics. 

On a macro level, be prepared with a point of view about how this might impact the business. A few examples:

• Marketing spend/priorities

• Conversion analysis to inform process improvement, coaching, messaging, etc. 

• Compensation 

On a micro level, think about how new data might be used not just in determining stage progression, but also in informing SDR/BDR<>AE and AE<>Sales Manager conversations. This is a great opportunity for using qualification assessments for coaching and learning via feedback, or reflecting on what made certain opportunities extra qualified to refine outreach / messaging. 

Regardless of the solution, visibility into meetings booked and potential new pipeline is critical. For example, I’ve sent alerts into a Slack channel for each booked meeting / qualified opportunity, which was a nice way to build excitement and for team members to chime in with tips if they had their own insights into the account. Reports / Dashboards can also go a long way here to foster transparency, and can help team members visualize progress against goals. 

In short, equip your stakeholders to answer questions, encourage them to ask questions, and make it easier for the team to learn from each other and hold each other accountable. 

Automate & Simplify 

As you figure out how to approach your implementation, consider how you might use automation, CRM functionality, or other tooling to simplify the process. 

A few examples:

• Automatically notify a Slack channel, send an email, or other communication of your choice upon booking meetings and qualifying opportunities

• If data entry is required, leverage UI elements like page layouts, Flow buttons, dynamic forms to remove clutter and highlight important information. 

• Use a tool (sales engagement platform or scheduling tool) to automatically create records when meetings are booked. 

• On a related note, confirm that your activity sync or entry process (calls, emails, meetings) is reliable. While this isn’t necessarily a dealbreaker, this could exacerbate challenges with either approach (especially if you’re leaning heavily on the Event object to understand qualification rates). 

• If data entry is needed, leverage automation as much as possible to prioritize the information that actually needs to come from a human, and pull everything else from other sources. 

Now if you’re a paid member I have a special video explaining Stage 0 and a Sales Process Map (stage overviews) template

But first!

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