The Value of a Structured Sales Process

Why have a structured sales process?

Structuring a proven process for conducting the sale puts your company in a position to define, prepare for, quantify, track, and increase sales success.

Allowing salespeople to “wing-it”, be mavericks, or sell in their own “unique” ways is unreliable. You need real data to predict sales with more accuracy, to prepare for a variety of scenarios, to identify areas for improvement, and to make your sales behaviors fit better with your customer’s buying behaviors.

Relying on the opinions of salespeople as a source of information is inaccurate and flawed. Consider prospecting—without clear guidelines as to what qualifies as a good prospect, salespeople tend to hold on to the “junk”—they favor the ones that talked to them the most, or maybe they liked the sound of the customer’s voice, or they made some personal connection with the customer—they need logical criteria, not their emotions, to guide their actions. We’re human—that’s why we have structure—it makes us more accurate.

Salespeople, regardless of their years of experience, need a proven process to follow. Even the best, champion-ship winning athletes structure their training to ensure continued levels of performance and success.

Additionally, new resources, new products, and new techniques can be more easily worked in, tracked, and evaluated when you have a solid grasp on how your current sales process is performing. Without an accurate bird’s-eye view of your sales process and your sales pipeline, adding new elements into the mix is like throwing stuff at the wall and waiting to see what sticks.

With that in mind, gather together a solid team from many areas and levels of your sales operation or consider bringing in an expert sales consultancy to design your structure.

Developing a Structured Sales Process

Clarify your sales philosophy. It’s not the same as your company’s mission statement, but specifically how you see sales or selling in relation to your buyers or customers. A short example would be, “Selling is about identifying the buyer’s needs and customizing a solution to fit those needs with our products/services.” Your sales philosophy will be your constant guide in developing, implementing, and revising your sales process.

Identify customer profiles. Who is your ideal customer? Who is the typical customer in your existing customer base? What kinds of customers in your existing customer base tend to have the most problems or complaints? What kind of customer needs your products/services? Your CRM system, if you have one in place, is a good source for this information.

Describe your most effective sales behaviors. Based upon your customer profile, you need to determine:

What your customers need to know, understand, and feel to interact with your salespeople and ultimately purchase
What your salespeople need to know, understand, and feel to interact with your potential customers and ask for the business

Do your sales require lots of technical explanation or mini-tutorials? Or do your sales need minimal, 1-2 interactions? What can stall sales? What keeps the sales process moving forward? What turns customer on and off? If you are finding that many potential buyers are putting on the brakes when they feel they don’t understand, then you need to structure a sales process that incorporates some solid and user-friendly tutorials. If on the other hand, you find buyers back away from sales when they have too much time to decide or too much information, then you need to structure a sales process that remains simple and swift. Will your sales interactions require lots of comparison with competitors? Would visual aids help your buyers?

Develop a model of your sales process.

Include a visual aid to map out the behaviors of your sales interactions - a Client Interaction Model. This model should identify certain milestones or marks to help your salespeople know where they are in the sales process. The model will also help show how and where the different parts of your sales process fit together. When should your salespeople be asking questions? Where do your salespeople need preparation time? What kinds of behaviors will your salespeople do on the first interactions? Where do price discussions fit in?

Implementing a Structured Sales Process

Implementing your sales process is different from developing your sales process. Implementing is what you will actually do to put your sales process into action and keep it on track. Here’s a general checklist:

communicate your goals to your salespeople and their support team
define the concepts
explain the steps and timeline of your sales process (using your model)
describe the actions required
create documentation (either hard copy or software system) to track steps and actions
take measurements and evaluate meaningful data
provide opportunities to evaluate and give feedback on performance
solicit feedback from your salespeople

Empower your sales team to succeed in implementing your structured sales process by making the process as clear to perform as possible, by expecting your sales team to follow the process as outlined, and by improving the process with their feedback and hands-on experience.

Next Steps

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