Start Increasing the Rate of Flow in Your Sales System

It's time for another edition of the?Art & Science of Complex Sales!?If you're new, this is where we talk about all things related to putting HOW you sell at the core of your business -- from sales process execution to best practices in sales coaching to driving winning behaviors to enabling growth in your sales organization.

Every week, I share ONE idea or strategy that sales leaders and teams can use to enable consistent growth for their organization. Whether you're a sales leader, sales consultant, sales manager, sales enablement expert or sales team member ready to accelerate your performance -- you'll find one action item that you can implement each week to get you one step closer to your goals.

My mission is to elevate the sales profession with technology and partnerships so that we can all improve our sales effectiveness and raise the bar in sales.

Now, onto this week's topic! ????

Start increasing the rate of flow in your sales system

If you visualize your sales as a pipeline, with leads going in one end and revenue coming out the other, it’s easy to see that the rate of flow through that pipeline matters.

Just as with water or gas or other material moving through a pipe, when there are blockages or twists and turns in the pipe, or even holes in it, the flow slows down, and less volume comes out the end. Fixing the holes, clearing these blockages, and reducing twists and turns will improve rate of flow and, in the end, the volume and quality of the output of the system.

Sometimes, we focus so hard on the volume of what’s going into the pipeline that we forget that it matters how quickly and smoothly it moves through the pipeline, and if there are losses along the way. Even more often, we forget that the rate of flow through the pipeline is related to other forms of flow - especially, the way in which our sales teams flow through their days, both as individuals and as teams.

When salespeople and their managers are in a state of flow, they can accomplish much more in less time.

When we started Membrain, our entire platform was built on the idea that we should not simply be putting information in the hands of salespeople. We designed our platform to actually improve the flow of sales. Flow is central to how we envision elevating the sales profession.

As a result, I’ve talked a lot about the concept of flow in this blog, about why it matters, the psychology of “flow,” and how to improve your team’s ability to get into flow. Here’s a short list of my most popular articles on the topic - and a little more info about how Membrain can help you.

The psychology of flow

One of the founding thinkers on the psychology of flow died in October 2021, and in honor of his passing, I wrote a piece about the?foundational psychology behind the idea of flow .

In this piece, I discuss the life and work of Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, including his insights regarding what it feels like to be in a state of flow, the qualities of activity that lead to a state of flow, and why salespeople and their leaders should care.

How to harness the power of flow to make more sales

When salespeople and their managers are in a state of flow, they can accomplish much more in less time than when they are in a state of interruption or struggle.?This piece ?covers the topics of:

• What is flow
• The six qualities of flow
• The four triggers for flow
• How to achieve flow in the sales workplace

Reducing friction in sales

Friction is an opposing force to flow. It refers to everything that slows people, projects, and activities down.?In this piece about reducing friction in sales , I discuss:

• Three key types of friction that impact sales
• How to identify the friction points on your sales team
• How to address friction from the top down

Membrain is designed to reduce friction and improve flow

From the very beginning, we designed our platform to support and drive flow within the sales environment.

Most CRMs on the market create friction rather than reducing it. They are built on technology that was designed to collect and aggregate information, not to improve the workflow and skills of the people using the technology. As a result, they tend to be organized around lists and databases, rather than around helping salespeople move through their day.

Membrain is different. We began with the premise that salespeople can be more effective when their workflow is smooth, frictionless, and provides everything they need within the flow of their day.

Our platform is organized around three key workflows, depending on what aspect of sales is the focus - prospecting, opportunity management, or account growth. Each workflow is fully customizable to your sales process and methodology, and guides salespeople through their workday with stages, milestones, steps, activities, and checklists.

The platform is beautiful and easy to use, and makes it easy to provide everything from training content to enablement content within the same workflow salespeople use for accessing customer information and visualizations that make it easy for them to see what needs to be done next.

It also provides managers with an easy workflow, giving them everything they need in order to coach to the process and help salespeople achieve the best performance.

When salespeople and their managers are working within a coordinated workflow, it is easier for them to get into the flow of their workday and the flow of their sales process, and to stay there. This, in turn, speeds up the flow of the pipeline and the flow of fresh revenue into your company.

I’d love to show you how it works.?Contact us ?for a quick to chat to find out if we can help you.

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This article was first published on the Membrain blog here: https://www.membrain.com/blog/how-to-increase-the-rate-of-flow-in-your-sales-system