First of all, what is a sales deal? This is when the business owner buys the product from suppliers in bulk quantities but still sells them individually to customers while marking up their price by more than the cost he paid for each item. 

In other words, you sell something to yourself that you bought from yourself - do not pass go - collect 100 times the purchase price! With this kind of deal going on, you can see the profits begin to mount up pretty quickly. 

For example, if a person gets an LG plasma TV from a deal of this nature for $559 and then sells it to a customer for 800 dollars, he has made a profit of 260 percent - no other business offers quite that kind of return!

In order to get started with deals , first contact manufacturers or companies that you would like to work with. Explain your needs and ask them if they have any pricing information available. 

They should be able to offer you some sort of discount price on products in bulk quantities. This will help you save money while still making more than usual in profits when dealing with sales deals .

If your company needs something in particular but the manufacturers you ask do not have it or if they do but are unwilling to work with you, take advantage of your buying power and get in touch with the parent company. 

Sometimes there is a larger firm behind your chosen manufacturers that can help you get what you need at an even greater discount than what the companies themselves offer.

Many small business owners find that they can afford to buy themselves nice things while still making plenty of money for their businesses.

The trick here, however, is to be aware of your costs and make sure that the markup price on each individual product is enough to give you a comfortable profit margin should all go according to plan - which it never does!

If everything goes wrong - for example, if one item gets lost in transit or if a customer tries to return it - the business owner's losses are still minimized because of how he or she purchases each product. 

Remember that each item is being paid for at wholesale pricing, so any loss feels much less drastic than normal retail discounts.

Business owners can also keep their profits high by purchasing items cheaply from countries where wages are lower, usually China and India. 

For example, an iPhone may be produced for $100 in China but sold thousands of miles away in the United States for $500 - this is a huge difference! Therefore smart business people capitalize on these deals to make more money. 

All they have to do is buy as many units as possible from Chinese manufacturers and then sell them directly to end-users or other individuals that are looking for great deals.

You can also benefit from deals through buying products in the United States and then reselling them to international customers. 

If you purchase items at a low enough price, it is usually possible to mark up the prices by 200 to 300 percent and still offer customers a good deal compared with what they would pay if they bought directly from their own native country. 

However, shipping rates and time spent working with international customers will need to be considered when citing prices for such items so as not to lose money on shipping costs.

Business owners really do have the ability to walk away with huge profits while simultaneously putting themselves in great positions - all without putting much effort into the process.

Sales Deal Stages

Deals can be complex in nature and typically encompass multiple stages along the sales cycle. By understanding and identifying each stage, marketers and sales representatives can better plan out their account strategy and engagement plans, ultimately driving more value from their efforts.

The typical stages include:

1). Awareness Stage [aka Prospecting] - The "awareness" stage is when you first find potential customers to engage with. This could happen through prospecting campaigns likeinars or trade shows, or simply through outreach to existing customers.

2). Interest Stage - The "interest" stage is when you have engaged with a potential customer and they show interest in learning more about your product or service. This could be by sending them information such as white papers, case studies, or invitations for webinars or other events.

3). Desire Stage [aka Presenting] - "desire" is the stage where the potential customer desires your solution and expresses intent to do business with you (or another vendor). Presentations and demonstrations may take place here.

4). Intent Stage [aka Decision Making] - Here we see confirmed intent from the prospect; usually this comes in the form of a letter of intent (LOI) or request for proposal (RFP) to purchase your product or service.

5). Evaluation and agreement - For complex sales, there may be a need for the customer to evaluate multiple vendors before making their purchasing decision/agreement. 

This is commonly seen with enterprise software deals where customers will want to test each vendor's solution side by side for a period of time before making a final decision.

6). Negotiation and agreement - If complex sales do require multi-vendor evaluation, then there will likely be some level of negotiation and agreement required among all parties involved prior to moving forward with the sale. 

This could include agreeing on pricing terms, contract length or other details that must be worked out between multiple buyers and sellers; these types of negotiations are common in large deals.

Your sales organization will likely vary deals based on the type of company you are selling to, but there are some commonalities across most large deals that marketers can leverage in an engaging way. 

Sales Deal Pipeline

At each of these stages, your prospects will be developing a deeper understanding of your company from different sources, which is why it's important to have content that resonates with them at each stage. 

If you're not creating enough content or it's outdated then you'll find that prospects are either dropping off, losing interest or no longer qualify for whatever reason.

Once they reach the decision stage you can expect them to start asking for things like proof points, case studies, competitive comparisons and other forms of evidence to support one solution over another. 

This is where Marketing automation tools can shine since there are features built in to help you communicate all these details without overwhelming your prospects (see infographic below). 

The last thing you want is for Salespeople to try and tackle this stuff manually - it's too much data for them to manage and they'll end up spending more time creating content than actually selling.

Every company has their own version of the sales deal pipeline, but in my experience I've seen at least these five stages used by most organizations out there (in one variation or another). 

The idea is that you treat these stages separately when it comes to how your marketing team manages content for prospects at each stage. Here's an example of how HubSpot might map out this process:

Hubspot Sales Pipeline Example

Each stage in this pipeline is where your prospects are gathering information differently than they were before - which means different types of content will be required at each step. 

For example, at the evaluation stage of your sales the prospect is looking for proof points to show their boss before they're allowed to move forward. This means that at this step you need:

1). Proofs: These are things like case studies, customer quotes and other forms of evidence that will help convince a prospect's boss or another stakeholder that something should be approved. 

2). Executive summaries: These are short versions of important information on key features/benefits presented in the form of an executive summary. 

This ensures everyone can understand why they should care about what you have to offer without having to read lengthy materials - which are usually reserved for CRMs or other business-related documents.

3). FAQs: People love answers to their questions so the sales team needs somewhere to direct prospects when they have common inquiries that can't be covered in a call, email or with documentation. 

These FAQ pages should ideally include answers to the most popular questions your product faces - no matter who's asking it.

Conclusion 

You never know which side of the deal this information will come from so it's important to cover all your bases with content like this (especially if you sell anything remotely complicated).

At any point in this process, there will always be people who get stuck at different stages and drop off along the way due to lack of interest, resources or support from someone else in the organization. 

Unfortunately, those signups will never turn into customers, but it's important to make sure you're capturing as much information as possible from them at each step of the process. 

In fact, simply knowing where they drop off can be extremely valuable since this feedback is straight from a prospect that may have been ready to buy just a short time ago. 

This insight should give you great ideas on how to attract similar prospects in the future and increase your sales potential exponentially.

While Salespeople usually rely on CRMs to track and manage their pipeline, using Marketing automation tools takes things one step further by allowing teams to streamline what happens after someone becomes a lead or customer (as opposed to considering these activities separate processes). 

One way marketers can do this is by creating "next actions" in their tool when someone becomes a lead. 

For example, you can add a pause to send an email with next steps for the customer to take - or create a new task inside Salesforce based on what they need to do next in order to have a completed deal.

This kind of automation will ultimately help Salespeople focus on closing deals faster because there's less time spent going back and forth between Marketing and CRM teams just to find out what should be done next. 

Plus since all that information gets updated automatically in your CRM, everyone is kept more informed on how individual deals are progressing - which makes it easier for them follow-up at the right time during the sales process (i.e. just before someone gets ready to buy).