Create Repeatable Sales Processes That Align with the Company’s Vision

The following is adapted from Fearless by Tim Kintz.

If you want to be a sales leader and not just a pushy boss, you have to think bigger than quota and longer than today, tomorrow, next week, or even next month. What I’m getting at is vision. Leaders need to have vision, but it’s not that simple. You also need to know what the repeatable processes are to achieve that vision.

Examples of repeatable processes in a car dealership include selling face-to-face, one-on-one training, closing a deal, negotiating, handling a digital inquiry, home delivery service to customers, and carrying out long-term follow-up with customers. 

As a sales leader, once you figure out what the repeatable processes are, you need to promote them in a way that aligns with your company’s vision.

Selling the Process

In order to get your people on board, it’s best to involve them in creating their own repeatable processes. If you don’t recruit their involvement, you’re just another boss handing out undesirable tasks to be completed. If your team members don’t fully understand the method and purpose, they’re likely to push back on the process. Whereas if you involve them, you’re securing their buy-in.

The “why” behind the process is key to selling it to your people. Try asking some of these questions to help your team see why a process or a change might be needed:

• What result am I trying to achieve?
• Why do I want to do this? 
• Why should my people want to do this? 
• What will it look like when we’re successful?
• What specific steps need to be taken to actually pull this off?
• What training do my people need in order to successfully carry out those steps?

Communication and collaboration make everyone better. These questions can be posed to anyone and everyone, including your best- and worst-performing salesperson. 

Communicate to Collaborate

Ultimately, you want a free exchange of ideas to flow throughout the team. Nobody’s opinion (including yours) is more valuable than anyone else's. The key is to listen with intention and not fall in love with your own ideas so much that you inadvertently devalue the contributions of others. 

If you get stubborn about your idea of how a process should be done, you risk crushing all the creativity out of your people. That’s when resentment can set in, and some people might start to secretly oppose everything you do, even if it’s just for the sake of spite.

Leaders shouldn’t feel like they need to be the smartest person in the room. It’s far more important that your people know that you value their input.

Effective leaders with vision don’t establish a dictatorship. You can’t just call a meeting and say,  “Hey everyone; here’s my vision of what our repeatable processes should be. We’re going to do A, B, C, D, and then E. Go get ‘em!” 

In that situation, you’ll see a room full of bobbleheads. Most of your employees will say, “Yeah, that sounds great boss.” Of course, most of them will be nodding their heads in agreement exclusively to get you off their backs, and then go and do whatever they want, ignoring your supposed words of wisdom completely. 

Let’s say you send out an email to your team that says, “Our digital retailing needs to evolve. Let’s all sit down on our own time and think about how we could improve our model.” Then you might start to stoke the fires by meeting with your people one-on-one and get the brainstorming started. 

Eventually, you bring the group together, and you open by letting them know that all ideas are welcome, and nothing is “stupid.” You tell them that you might not run with every one of them, but every idea will help ultimately lead the group to the best possible repeatable process. 

Once you’ve collected everyone’s ideas—encouraging suggestions that are out of the box—take the best of everyone’s feedback and use it to create a process that everyone in the room has been striving for.

Don’t forget that communication might mean shutting up. Don’t do all the talking. Good communication is about listening—and not just listening to respond, but listening to understand.

Everyone has had a conversation with someone who clearly was just waiting to talk; they weren’t trying to genuinely listen. Those people are frustrating to be around, and they undermine the creative process. Effective communication with someone can only take place if you’re genuinely trying to understand what the other person has to say.

Always remember to listen to understand—not just to respond.

Evolve and Adapt

Let’s say you finally arrive at what seems to be a nearly perfectly repeatable process. Great! Just don’t get married to it. Your business will need to evolve constantly as your customer demographics, market, or circumstances change.

All processes are living documents. They need to evolve over time. Sometimes these tweaks will be minor speed bumps—a slight revision, and you’re good to go. Other times, the issues will act more like roadblocks, signaling a need to pursue a brand-new direction entirely. 

As you set out to refine and improve your processes, target those that will give you the maximum amount of gain with the least amount of pain. Spend as much time as you need to sufficiently develop each process, but don’t fall into the trap of paralysis by analysis. 

Sometimes, thinking too hard or too long about something will get you stuck, proving the old saying that “perfection is the enemy of progress.”

Pull the Trigger on New Processes

Once you’ve completed the steps above, you’ll need to put your new processes into practice. At some point, you need to fire, even if you’re not feeling quite ready or aimed.

All along the way, be sure to measure the outcomes of your processes. Track progress toward your goals and make sure you’re staying on track with the plan. Decide from the outset how to measure the performance and effectiveness of a process, and be ready to pivot when needed. Because it’s not about who is right and wrong—it’s about winning as a team. It’s about hitting goals and celebrating when you do. 

Establishing repeatable processes that align with the company’s vision is all about leading everyone toward a better, brighter future. So, sell the process properly, communicate by listening with genuine intention, and be ready to constantly evolve and adapt those processes you create together. Long-lasting success can be found in that methodology.

For more advice on how to create repeatable sales processes that align with the company’s vision, you can find Fearless on Amazon.

Tim Kintz is the author of the Amazon bestseller, Frictionless, and president of The Kintz Group, the automotive industry’s premier sales and management training company. A graduate of the NADA Dealer Academy, Tim has worked in almost every position in the dealership. He delivers hands-on coaching, workshops, and presentations throughout the world, teaching universal sales and management strategies that have proven effective in every business sector. As a strong believer in the power of a great leader, Tim helps managers anticipate change, adapt to challenges, and focus on the individual.