What is your Sales Process?
...for achieving the sales edge? Do you have one? Is it working? Do you need one? Our answer to this last question is a loud YES. Not all sales people are rainmakers. In fact only 20% of the sales population possess the intuition and luck to make things just happen. And with these sales personalities, your best bet is to let them "do their thing" with some management to make sure your goals are met and your image maintained. The remaining 80% of sales people, however, are most successful when they follow a specific sales process that details steps along the way and the tools to use at each step. You should define and standardize your company's sales process based on best practices within your team, your industry, and the sales field in general. Here are some guidelines for creating a sales process workflow to get you started:
LEVEL 1—Contact Type. First start by defining your contact types. One of the mistakes we frequently see is confusion (and therefore a lack of appropriate prioritization) around whether a contact type is a Suspect, Prospect, or Lead.
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Suspect. A suspect is a name and a name only. In fact, it may only be the company name. You may not know the contact name of the buyer most likely to purchase your products and services. Or, if you have a name, it may be a reader of a publication, a listener to a radio station, or an attendee at a trade show, and you don't know if this person is the appropriate buyer. You only suspect this "entity" is a target for your products or services.
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Prospect. A prospect is a suspect that has engaged with you in some way, whether it be an action taken on a web visit, a phone inquiry, etc. Your goal in this stage is to qualify this prospect to the point that you know the decision-maker and you've identified an interest level in your products and/or services.
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Lead. A prospect becomes a lead when you've established a future (maybe not immediate) need. The more immediate the need, the more hot the lead. Before you can move the lead to the assess phase, you must determine what information you most need to know. For example, what is their decision-making process/timeline, do they understand your offering and value proposition, does your solution align with their business problem, etc?
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Customer. A customer is someone who bought, or has contracted to buy, your product and/or service.
LEVEL 2—Process Milestones. The process for converting suspects into prospects, prospects into leads, leads into customers is much like playing a baseball game. You'd love to hit a home run every time you step to the plate, but the game is really won on first and second base hits. This is where your focus should be. And like baseball, where you don't get to skip second base to speed your journey to home plate, you must also make sure you touch every milestone within your sales process. Not doing so can result in wasted time quoting or selling to unqualified opportunities. Build out the second level of your sales process to include the milestones in your standard sales process, including:
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Engage. This is the first milestone in the sales process and usually happens during the Suspect to Prospect conversion phase. Engaging a suspect can include their inquiry into you or your inquiry into them, but does require that you have interacted with the contact (either through marketing or sales efforts) to introduce yourselves, your company, your offering, and uncover their general need.
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Qualify. Once you've engaged the suspect and determined they fit your overall target profile, you need to qualify the lead further to make sure it's a "fit" with your company and what you offer. We recommend creating a Lead Qualification Checklist to help define what makes a good lead and to ensure it's fully qualified before moving the lead to the next milestone.
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Assess. Once you have qualified the lead using the criteria you defined, you must assess the opportunity before expending the resources to develop a quote or proposal. You want to make sure you understand the key factors driving the lead's buying criteria. Such as, what are the specifics of their need, what is the main decision-making factor, what is their budget, do they understand your value proposition, and are they looking at competition?
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Propose. You've assessed the opportunity to the level you required during the assess stage, and now it's time to move into the proposal stage. Make sure your proposal process is appropriate for the buying cycle. You want your proposal created with the right amount of detail and speed to meet the decision-maker's needs. Consider including all terms, as well as credit, inside the proposal to avoid slowing the approval, and therefore the sales process, down.
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Close. At this phase of the pipeline, you must follow-up to uncover and combat any possible objections, negotiate terms, and close the deal. Too many deals are lost at this phase due to neglect. In the sales and marketing industry we call this "dying on the vine." Define what activities, and how often, you must implement during this phase to stay on top of the closing process.
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SALE! Hopefully at this point, you've done such a good job of managing your sales process and pipeline that you have moved your lead to a sale. Congratulations! In the event you lose a deal at any phase of the process, make sure to track why.
LEVEL 3—Tools. Finally, you must determine what sales tools you have or need to help move your potential customer through the sales process from milestone to milestone. For instance at the Engagement stage you will need Lead Generation Tools and at the Qualify Stage you will need marketing materials, lead qualification checklists, etc.
Defining your sales process is one thing, and it is important to optimizing your sales results, however success is only achieved by finding the discipline to follow it! To help you define your sales process workflow, and to see a sample of a sales process workflow that documents customer type, process milestones, and associated tools, please check out our Sales Process Template.
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Over 60 sales and marketing templates (DOC, XLS, PPT, and PDFs)
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