Milestones in Prospecting

When working with a Prospect there are usually one or more Steps that define the main objectives of the entire Prospecting Process. It could be to have that exploration meeting booked or to get confirmation that the Prospect is willing to go forward, or even both. By marking those Steps in your Process as Milestones, Membrain will support your Sales Representatives by adding clear visibility to those objectives. 

VISUALIZATION

The Milestone

A Step marked as Milestones will, due to its distinct visualization, will stand out in comparison to the other Steps, making it clear what the main objective (or objectives) are in your Process. The Milestone in this example is obviously the Step Meeting Booked to the right.

Sticky Positioning

Milestones are mainly linked to the stage that they belong to and the upcoming Milestone Step that isn't actually visible in your view of the Process, will have a sticky position and will therefore be seen clearly anyway. The amount of Milestones with a sticky position is limited to one and the Stage they belong to has to be visible in your view for the Sticky Milestone to show.

• In this view, both Stage 1 and Stage 2 of the Process are visible and the upcoming Milestone Step in Stage 2 (Confirmation to go forward) has the sticky position which makes it clear what the main objective will be going forward.

• Side-scrolling in this Process and the preceding Steps of the Milestone Step in Stage 2 will show. Now we also have Stage 3 visible in our view which also contains a Milestone Step (Introduction Stakeholder). Just like in the view above, the upcoming Milestone Step has a sticky position.

Completing a Milestone

When a Milestone is marked as completed, Membrain will acknowledge that progress by shooting fireworks, giving a nice motivational boost to the salesperson working with the Process.

MARK STEP AS A MILESTONE

1. From the Process Editor, click on the step you would like to mark as a Milestone
2. Click on ADD TOOLS/DETAILS on the right-hand side
   
   
3. Select Milestone in the bottom right corner
   
4. Before the Step is marked as a Milestone and is visible in your Process, you need to either enable or disable the setting Hide Unstarted and Unimportant Steps that show when selecting Milestone as the tool you want to use.

Hide Unstarted and Unimportant Steps

Below you will find two screenshots showing the difference between having the setting above as disabled and enabled. The screenshots are based on the exact same scenario, following here:

The Sales Representative in this scenario skips the First Step of Stage 1 in the Prospecting Process, which is to do Research, and instead goes straight to the Second Step to make her Phone Call. While she is on that call, she manages to get a Meeting Booked with the Prospect, meaning she has now completed both the Phone Call Step and the Meeting Booked Step, which is a Milestone Step in this Stage of the Process. She has now not only skipped the Research Step, but also the Steps in between Phone Call and Meeting Booked.

Completing the Milestone Step in Stage 1 with the setting disabled:

Completing the Milestone Step in Stage 1 with the setting enabled:

If the setting is enabled, and you have one (or more) preceding step of a Milestone that you don't want to hide when completing the Milestone, you can add Importance to that step. It could for example be a case where you still want to be able to capture valuable information from a Step preceding a Milestone.