The Importance of Having and Following a Sales Process

Sales isn’t rocket science. We’re not putting a man on the moon. Literally hundreds of millions of salespeople have gone before you and they’ve left clues on how to sell successfully. The key is to put those clues into a system that works, and something you can follow again and again with predictable results. This system is a sales process. 

Without a process, you leave everything to chance and you can’t identify what you’re doing wrong because you do it differently every time. There’s no consistency, there’s no benchmark, there’s nothing to compare to. If something goes wrong you can’t look at the process and see where you went astray because there is no process. That’s why the most successful companies, the most successful teams, and the most successful individuals, all have a process. Do you think Amazon has a process for everything they do? Yes. Even if you hate him, do you think Tom Brady follows a well-thought-out process? Of course, he does. For his diet, his training, his sleep, his morning routine, his evening routine, for EVERYTHING. It’s all codified and spelled out, piece by piece. If something goes wrong, he looks for a break in the process. What went wrong or what needs to be changed. Having a process is like having a roadmap or GPS along with goals and an itinerary if you’re driving from N.Y.C. to L.A. Every turn and calculation figured in, no guesswork.

So, you need a step-by-step sales process that leaves nothing to the imagination. You know exactly what you’re going to do, and when. A process that covers every part of the sales cycle and everything around it. It’s identifying prospects, knowing who they are, where they are, and the most effective ways to get in touch with them. It’s making sure you have markets or products and services for the industries you’re chasing. It’s calling on prospects, getting through gatekeepers, getting to decision-makers, getting their attention, setting appointments, making sure they aren’t just saying ‘call me next week’ to get rid of you, which most are, following up with prospects, qualifying, finding problems, finding solutions, doing presentations and presenting proposals, overcoming objections, stopping them from going to their current salesperson where they simply match you on price and service, closing sales, fighting off buyer’s remorse, building long-term, iron-clad relationships that the competition can’t break, and getting referrals, among a few other things. You have to have a process for all of that and everything around it: time management, organization, motivation, morning and evening rituals, you name it.

That sounds like a lot of work and it is, upfront, and that’s why more than 90% of salespeople don’t have a process. As humans, we’re conditioned to avoid short-term pain at our long-term peril. What we don’t realize is if we just took a year or two to build that process and get in the habit of using it, your closing ratio and your sales would skyrocket. Even better, you wouldn’t get frustrated chasing people who said they were interested but really weren’t, you’d only be spending time with quality, truly interested people, oh, and you’d be making about four times as much money, or more.

Yeah, it’s work, short-term work in the whole scheme of things, but if you want to be successful, and not be frustrated with people ghosting you, competing on price, sure they’re going to buy then they don’t, you’ve got to have a successful process and you have to put in the work.

And the process itself has its own process. It’s one that you build one piece at a time, not all at once. I’ve seen people wake up one day so frustrated from chasing their tail, or they read something like this and get motivated and say, “Today’s the day, I’m going to change.” Then they pick 20 things to change ‘right now’ and that doesn’t work because it’s too much all at once. They forget some stuff one day, different stuff the next day, they’re going in too many different directions, they get frustrated, and three months later they’re right back to square one. So, you have to take on one or two pieces at a time. Work on one or two new ideas per month and really lock them in before moving to something else.

If you don’t have a process, or you’re not working on one, your sales results will be inconsistent over time. When your sales are down, you’ll get frustrated and blame your product, pricing, the competition, your prospects ‘not getting it’, when all along it was you. You changed something and that’s led to a slump but you can’t identify it because you didn’t have a process, you were winging it and hoping for the best, and now you can’t identify what’s broken.

John Chapin is a motivational sales speaker, coach, and trainer. For his free eBook: 30 Ideas to Double Sales and monthly article, or to have him speak at your next event, go to www.completeselling.com John has over 33 years of sales experience as a number one sales rep and is the author of the 2010 sales book of the year: Sales Encyclopedia (Axiom Book Awards). You can reprint provided you keep contact information in place. E-mail: [email protected].