Setup for Closers (Traditional)

Overview

Closers can go by a few different names (Account Executive, Sales Consultant, Sales Rep, etc) but the idea is generally similar - we're trying to get that signature!    

Spiro works extremely well out of the box for a traditional closing team. There are a few things you'll potentially want to tweak prior to setting your team up:

  1. Make sure your team has the proper VoIP setup 
  2. If the team is in the field at all, make sure that they download the Spiro mobile app form the app store
  3. Customize opportunity stages
  4. Customize opportunity fields
  5. Add a products or line item item list (**Optional**)  
  6. Best utilizing the Assistant

Spiro VoIP Setup 

This is an easy one - your CSM will turn this on for you! If you haven't already discussed, please let them know which area code each individual would like to use for Spiro VoIP. A few things to consider: 

  • It's best practice to turn on call recording if your locale allows for it. This not only will allow you to review phone calls after the fact, but also will allow Spiro to transcribe the phone calls and make them easier to search. 
  • Set up your voicemail for Spiro - please reach out to your CSM to learn how to do this. 
  • Think of Spiro VoIP as a new office phone number, that can call your desktop via the web or your mobile app. 
  • If you have poor wifi or cell service, the call quality may not be that great.  
  • You can have Spiro VoIP forward a call to your mobile or direct line in case you miss the call for some reason 

Download Mobile App 

If your closers spend any time in the field visiting prospects, it's important for them to have the mobile app downloaded. You can distribute the following: 

Apple: spiro.ai/iphone

Android: spiro.ai/android

Spiro does not support apps on Windows phones or Blackberrys. 

Customize Opportunity Stages

Opportunities represent the potential customers that your team is trying to work with. There are a few stages that come in Spiro, out of the box. You can see the current stages by going to Settings, and clicking on the Sales Stages option on the left navigation bar: 

The Spiro out-of-the-box sales stages are defined below. They would work perfectly fine for most traditional B2B sales processes: 

Stage Name Type Description
Prospecting Open Very early stage - passive or no interest from the prospect yet. 
Qualifying Open There is a passing level of mutual interest between yourself and the prospect. During this stage, you are running your qualification process to see if they are a fit. 
Proposing Open There is an increased level of interest - during this stage, you are comfortable talking about terms, numbers, creating quotes, etc.
Closing Open You have received a verbal commitment to move forward with this prospect, but no signed contract.
Closed Won Won The customer has signed or otherwise given a solid commitment that they will be moving forward with you. 
Closed Lost Lost Prospect has opted out of the sales process. 

If you would like to add a sales stage, press the orange plus sign. You can choose what kind of stage it is. Saying a stage is Open means that it counts in your open pipeline - this has a downstream impact on things like the assistant. Think of open stages like the ones that should be actively worked by the closer. Won and lost stages indicate that the closers are finished with these opportunities 

You can simplify and take away stages, add them, or change the ones we have in place for you. Common things our customers may add: 

  • An open stage for Leads ( if closers are also the openers and want to manage it all in one spot)
  • A Lost stage for "Qualified Out" (if the salesperson decides to opt out of the process, rather than the prospect) 

Customize Opportunity Fields 

Spiro comes stock with a few standard opportunity fields that will help you track your potential sales. The most important ones are: 

Field Type Description
Amount Currency The total value of the opportunity. This can represent a contract value, annual recurring value, or product value - it's up to your organization decide. Its important to keep consistent! 
Close Date Date The expected date of sale. This is meant to just be an estimate. The close date will affect the forecast. When we mark something closed won or closed lost, the close date automatically updates to the current date.

You may want to customize the kinds of information that you want your closing team to capture during the sales process. A few common custom fields that we may add to the opportunity level are: 

  • Competitors (Single or Multi Picklist, use the names of your top competitors as the list values) 
  • Contract Type (Single picklist with values of New, Upsell, Renewal) 
  • Close Reason (Single or Multi Picklist if you have common lost reasons; a text field if you would rather your team be open ended) 

Creating custom fields for opportunities is very easy. Let's create a custom contract type field now - Navigate to settings and custom fields:

Click into Opportunities and NEW and in the pop-up that comes, type "Contract Type" into the label area. Select Single Pick-list from the Type drop-down. In the options section, type in "New Business, Up-sell, Renewal". You can set a default option if you like. Hit Save - now you've created your first custom opportunity field! 

**OPTIONAL** Products or Line Items

If it is important for you to keep track of products you sell during the sales process (or different types of services), you may want to create what we call a "List Entity" underneath the Opportunities Entity. A list entity allows you to store multiple line items for the entity it is related to. In this scenario, please navigate to settings and then to the Custom Fields/Entities section.  Press the "New Entity" button to show a page where you can type the name of the entity, which entity it is related to, as well as what kind of entity it is (List vs Section). 

You can also set the Quote Products list to only display when it hits a certain sales stage, and you can enter that criteria when you are creating the new entity or later, by editing it.  

To add custom fields to the product table, click on the entity you just created, and click on the New button.


A few ideas for custom product fields with the suggested data type that you may want to add: 

  • Product Name (Single picklist if you have under 20 products, Text if you have over 20) 
  • Price (Currency) 
  • Quantity (Number)
  • Notes (Single-line Text) 

Utilizing the Assistant 

Closers can click on the Assistant tab to see recommendations generated for them by Spiro's AI Assistant. The AI assistant generates recommendations to your closers based on the opportunities that they own, and the communication data surrounding those opportunities. To get a more detailed breakdown of how the Assistant works, please refer to the linked article.

To understand more about how Spiro can be more proactive for your team, please refer to this article. 

The Closer Process

  1. The Closers generally start when they have a converted Contact given to them from an Opener (or they hunt for leads themselves) 
    1. They can monitor the contacts tab with a filter based on the Lead status (described in the Openers page)
  2. When they feel that they are ready for an opportunity, they would create one by navigating to the Contact or Company page, scrolling down to the Opportunities section, and creating a new opportunity. 
  3. Generally the closer would only create opportunities for themselves, and thus would set the owner to be them self. 
  4. For every opportunity created, Spiro's assistant will give closers proactive recommendations to make sure they are on top of their opportunities. 
  5. Once an opportunity's stage is set to Closed Won, this is generally when