Is it Myth?-There is nothing like Sales Process!

In this article I am going to talk about what is the Sales process. It is very important to have a Sales Process and I will show you howto create one for your business. Every great sales person has a Sales Process which he/she follows. Sales Process is like a Recipe, systematic steps and standards followed which performing the act.. Imaging for a moment, you are Baking Cake and you are not following a standard Recipe every time. You are gathering the material adhoc and preparing the cake. Wow you have got the Cake prepared and somehow cake was good and everybody liked it. The next week you again prepared the same cake but this time your cake doesn’t taste the same. The third week you again prepared the cake and again that doesn’t taste the same and there is no consistency in the taste of the cake. This happens because there is no consistency in the Cake Making Process. Actually you do not have a precise Recipe for the Cake and every time what you are doing is actually adding something or taking away something differently then you did the time before. And because you are doing that the cake will not be consistent it terms of its outcome. So what we want to do is to be consistent in whatever we do..

Similarly is selling we need to be consistent. We need to have a Recipe, just like we have one for Cake, and which we call Sales Process. If we do not have a Sales Process, then we are not going to be consistent in selling and similarly to the Cake Analogy, we will be getting frustrated, because, you would be saying, I sold this earlier, but why I am not able to sell it now. Maybe you don’t have a sales process and your recipe keeps on changing. So you don’t know when you are successful or why you are successful, because you keep changing things. So what we are looking for is Consistency and for that what we are going to do is to design a Sales Process for you. As defined below, find the suggested Sales Process for you. Just like in any process, it has a defined steps, here I have shown you the seven steps of Sales Process. You just need to tailor it to your product or services.

Now the first step of the Sales Process is called Research. This is what we do and prepare before actually approaching the customers. It is the Pre-Approach Phase, wherein we research about the Customer and Market Segment. We list down our Product/service Features, Benefits and Advantages. We research about the Competitors and do the Competitor analysis. I have explained this in detail, in my previous articles on How to do Customer Profiling, Product Inventory and Competitor Analysis? It stands as the base of your Sales Process. It is like the foundation. Every Building has a Foundation built first and then the Building is constructed. The stronger the foundation, bigger the building stands. Similarly, this step of the Sales Process defines the success in selling. Every sales outcome depends upon how well you have prepared yourself during the Pre-Approach Stage, which is the Research Step.

Now the second step is the Approach Phase. Here, you actually meet the customers. You basically have 2 ways of approaching the customer. One is you take the appointment through telephonic talk or email communication, or you get the appointment fixed by Tele-caller. Second is, you go directly to meet the customer, without any appointment. Now in both the cases the main aim is to move higher on the Sales Process, i.e. to meet the customer. You can only identify the customer as Prospect, if you have actually met the customer and discussed and understood about their present scenario. Till then the customer remains as the Suspect in your Customer List. I will be discussing this in my next article and also explain you How to take the Appointment of the Customer and How to Handle the Objection on Telephone? I will also explain you How to do the Need Analysis, and Fact Finding by asking lot many relevant questions to the customers?

Now once you are very clear about what the needs of the customers are and what's their present scenario, then we are in the better position to suggest them with the solution. This is exactly the third step in the Sales Process, in which we give the presentation. It is the Solution Phase of the Sales Process, wherein we give the Solution to our customer, by giving them the relevant Presentation of our Products Feature, Benefits and Advantages, so that, we can solve their present need. Here we may be doing the presentation one-on-one across the table, or one–to-many in a formal presentation over a power point up the screen, or through catalog presentation, or showing about our products through various content or things on our Tab/laptop/computer screen. That’s the Presentation phase, which is aimed at providing the solution to their problems and fulfilling their need.

The next step in the Sales Process is called the Demo. Here you demonstrate the customers how your product actually works? This is the step in which you answer all the “HOW-to” questions of the customers. In the physical product you can actually show the customer the Product demo at your existing client’s place or if product is portable, you can show the product at the customer’s place. Every Industry and Product have the unique way of giving Demo. For example, in IT industry, the software product demo is called POC which stands for Proof Of Concept, wherein, the software is run with the data received from the customer so that they can be shown how the software will work in their environment. In education industry, to get the feel about the product, i.e. various courses, customers are allowed to attend the relevant sessions and learn about the curriculum and content they will be going through during the courses. If the product is like insurance, then you show them the illustration sheet about the product customized for them displaying the various results.

Once the Demo is completed, then the next step is to present some of the different options that we offer as a company. I will be talking about this in my later articles in detail. It is always good to provide the different choices to the customers.

Mostly Prices varies across the options and so when you go to the Pricing Step, you can very well put the pricing to the different options you have suggested and so now customer have the decide which of the option the customer would like to go for.

And the last step is actually the step wherein you complete the formalities of the sales, close the sales and take the references from the customer. The moment you take the Reference the Sales Process cycle gets completed, because, then again you start the research of the reference given and complete the sales Process for that reference customer. Again I will be taking about this in detail in my next articles.

Now, once you establish this Sales Process as shown above and start following the steps, it may be possible that it may not work always. You may need to tweak a little bit or do changes here and there until it is a fit for you or your industry. May be when you are going through the steps of the Sales Process, you may realize that certain things don’t seem to feel right or turn out right. Or you may notice that when you are doing the presentation, may be there is something you need to be doing in the presentation that’s different, because the customer is just not responding or maybe when you are doing the demo, you realize maybe showing a video would be a better way of doing the demo. Hope you are getting what I mean to say here. You need to adjust your recipe as you go through the Sales Process and customize it according to your product and industry. May be you feel going ahead in the Sales Process, that in the third step, you are giving lot of information and need to give limited information to the client in the presentation. You may need to pull back a little bit. Hope you get the idea. What will happen over time is that this will become your second nature and you will tweak it to the point where it’s perfect. It will become so second nature, that you need not to remember and it comes naturally to you. You become so passionate that you will sound so natural that people will say I believe that person. This is higher level of Sales Mastery that many people don’t achieve, because they do not stick to a process. So again, the key to be successful in Sales is to develop your Sales Process, implement the process, tweak it, adjust it, till it’s become yours own sales process.

I have seen various sales process. Some with 3 steps and some with 5 steps also. You can also have your own steps but it cannot be more than 7 steps and cannot be less than 3 steps.

Note: Mr. Paresh Bahuguna is the Sales Excellence Coach, Business Consultant and Motivational Speaker. He is writing a Book on "Business Booster" which will soon be available for open market. This article is from his Book.

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