5 Parts of an Effective Sales Process
When more than one person is selling in an organization, the organization has to make a choice as to how individuals will sell. Will they be allowed to sell on their own, doing whatever they want in order to get the business? Or will they have to follow a company-wide sales process?
While letting individuals do things their way might sound entrepreneurial, it really hurts the company because sales managers are left in the dark. They can’t learn what is working or failing, and share that with the rest of the team to build effectiveness. They don’t have a way to track exactly where in the process prospects are being lost. They are unable to identify coaching opportunities for things that are stalled. They can’t duplicate the things that are effective, because you don’t know what they are.
A single, well-defined sales process should be used by everyone in your company who sells. It is the step-by-step process through which a prospect becomes a customer. To be effective, the process must:
-
Identify the steps (meetings, conversations, and demos) that a prospect must follow on the path to becoming a client.
-
Identify information that the salesperson must know to be able to qualify a prospect to move through each step in the decision making process.
-
Be segmented into specific stages, so that you can track movement through the sales pipeline.
-
Correlate to the company’s sales language and selling system.
-
Force salespeople to qualify prospects before giving too much information, fixing problems, or sending proposals.
Examine your process and decide whether or not it is effective and should be used by everyone before implementing it across your entire sales team. You can evaluate your process by using this free tool.