It's Time to Get Back To Basics: Sales Process

Imagine that you’re running sales for a company that is growing quickly and new customers seem to be flying in. You’re crushing your goals you’re set to make more money this year than you ever have. You’re on a hell of a ride and you hope it never ends. You have one or two sales superstars that are making it all happen that don’t take much of your time to manage. Life is good.

You get halfway through the year and you’re at 80% of your goal for the entire year. You could sleep through the last half of the year and still beat the budget and go to President’s Club. But then… tragedy strikes. The two reps that were driving the results leave the company to start their own. They aren’t direct competitors in their new company, but they did just take all of the sales knowhow out of your company. A year that looked like a layup is now looking impossible.

?

Now imagine that you’re at a large multi-national company with several thousand employees across the globe. You’re running sales for a division of the company that has beaten their goals 3 of the last 4 years. You and your spouse have been mainstays to the annual President’s Club trip to the Caribbean. ?You’ve got a really good thing going.

Your team is using multiple systems to help them sell – contact databases, call tracking tools, CRM, video sales tools, etc. They’re all trained on how to sell and use the systems effectively. You’re running weekly team meetings but you only really have to focus on what’s being forecasted by your team. They know the rhythm and keep moving to the right beat.

Then, unpredictably, there is a major shift in the market. An underlying fundamentals have been disrupted and now your prospects are reacting. They’re changing their buying patterns and being more protective of their capital. There are a few competitors who seem to have figured this out early, but your team starts to struggle and numbers drop for 3 consecutive months. You need to turn things around… quickly!

What do these scenarios have in common? In both situations, you need to focus one of the critical fundamentals of running an effective sales organization – a standard sales process. In the first scenario (small, growing company), a sales process needs to be created to standardize the way you go to market. In the second scenario (large multi-national), you need to dig deep into the data to see what the sales process is telling you about your team’s struggles.?

What is a Standard Sales Process?

Think of a standard sales process like a playbook in sports – it guides your sellers through a process that should result in victory. ?There are various stages that you’ll need to have defined, a clear explanation of the expectations on your sellers in those stages, and the rules for exiting that stage. Here is a simple example below:

A sales process is essentially a roadmap that outlines each step your team takes to convert potential customers into paying ones. It starts from the first point of contact with a prospect—like an email or a phone call—and guides you through all the necessary stages until a deal is closed and beyond. This process includes identifying potential buyers, reaching out to them, presenting your product or service, addressing their objections, and closing the sale. Without it, you are leaving it up to your sellers to figure out what works best. You’ll get a different approach with each rep you have on your team.

If you’re the sales leader in the example above with the two superstars, then a sales process is your ticket to having more consistency, even when they leave. Having standards to follow makes it easier to train new reps coming into the company. It also helps you to coach reps through the process in a predictable way that will drive results. The biggest issue in the example above is that the reps were left to their own devices to sell. And while it was great that two of them figured out a formula to be successful, it wasn’t repeated through the rest of the team. That’s possible with a standard sales process.

This might be a simplistic review for you, but sometimes it’s important to go back to the basics to make improvements. ?If you don’t have a standard sales process in place, it’s already overdue. If you do have one in place, then the next question for you is:

What should a sales process tell you?

As long as you’re tracking your opportunities or deals through this process (hopefully you’re using a CRM!), then there is a real power that comes from understanding what the data is telling you. There’s always something to refine to help your team to be more effective. Some examples include:

·????? Stage Conversion Rates

If you see that reps are losing opportunities in a certain stage, you’ll know that there are skills that need to be improved in the stages prior. One very common example is a big drop in conversion rates after the proposal stage. When you ask your reps about why the opportunity was lost, they will tell you, “we were priced too high”. While that may be true in some situations, it points to not building enough value earlier by having a strong discovery process that uncovers the prospect’s pain points.

·????? Stage Duration

How long should it take to move from Qualification to Meeting/Presentation? Should it take 2 months to get that meeting scheduled? If your experience tells you that it should take 2-3 weeks to get that appointment set and you start to see times creep up closer to 2 months… then you’ve got a problem. Are your reps following up enough? Is the messaging not landing anymore? Are your reps even asking for an appointment? Note: I have seen this be the issue a number of times – the reps are “building a relationship” with the prospect and having pleasant conversations, but never actually ask for the appointment.

·????? Win Rates

Who on your team is winning a higher percent of opportunities than the others? What are they doing differently that you can learn from and make it part of the standard procedures? Note: If you have a rep that has dramatically higher win rates than everyone else, then there’s a good chance that they are only putting opportunities in their funnel that are further along the in the process… i.e. they aren’t following the guidelines earlier in the process.

·????? Loss Reasons

Understanding why your team loses opportunities should open up a world of understanding about what’s happening without you having to listen to every phone call your team makes. We addressed what to look for if your team says they are losing on price. Another common loss reason that you’ll see is “unresponsiveness”. It sounds like this: “I had a great meeting with them and gave them the pricing, but they stopped returning my phone calls and emails.” Obviously, there’s probably something more to dig into here than they just decided to stop talking. Listen to your team but read between the lines and dig in to find out what’s really happening.

?

Seeing these patterns in the data can point you to where you need to level up the skills of your team.

?

Conclusion

A standard sales process is the foundation to running an effective sales organization, whether in a small company or a larger, more established company. It provides the framework for managing a sales team while creating visibility and predictability.

As the sales leader in the first company above, establishing a sales process will help you get everyone on the team on the same page and set standard expectations across the board. It will also allow you train your team on what successful sales looks like. You’ll get a more consistent delivery across your team and you won’t have to deal with a roller-coaster result if your top 2 reps leave the company.

As the sales leader in the multi-national company, reviewing the data will help you understand where things have changed in the market. You may see that it points back to an ineffective discovery process. You can then dig in with interviews of your team and existing customers to learn that buyers now have a new concern that isn’t being uncovered. ?You can adjust the discovery approach to uncover that concern and then address it in the selling process, turning your year around and getting back to that Club trip.

?

If you haven’t reviewed or updated your sales process in a while, it’s time to dust it off and find the improvements to accelerate your sales.