For the next four minutes, you need to build flex into your thinking. The sales process is central to your company, and you need to think about the ideas in this blog as a helpful voice perched on your shoulder, not a rulebook.
Remember, how you sell is why you win.
Advice for Sales Leaders on Sales Processes
- Focus on Enabling Sales: The sales process is a tool to empower sales professionals to sell effectively, not a hindrance or a system solely for management control. Sales leaders need to design processes that prioritise building customer trust, advancing sales opportunities, and differentiating the company through its sales approach.
- Prioritise a Customer-First Approach: Build your processes around customers' specific needs and expectations at each stage of the buying journey. This includes tailoring the sales approach to different customer segments and individual client interactions.
- Build value into Every Moment and Touchpoint: What makes a great sales process is likely to be one where eethe buyer wins and finds value in the process too. Think about how you sell and define the gains a buyer gets during your sales process. List down the moments, interactions and touchpoints and review them.
- Describe your Most Common Key Value Interaction: Research and interview customers to find our their key moment. What was the tipping point, what moment defined the success of your deal or opportunity?
- Draw a timeline: On a large A3 sheet of paper, sketch the journey of a sale. If you like visualisation, add icons to show content exchanges, submissions of data and specifications, when subject matter experts are introduced, face to face and online/phone moments - and moments when things don;t go quite to plan.
Make sure to describe what actually happens and not what you 'hope' happens. Now rate your value /10 and the buyer or customer's value /10. Do they match?
You can use the icons, scores, events, interactions and the timeline to spot omissions and high points in the journey.
Note: Value is a win-win scenario
- Emphasize Research and Preparation: We need to stress the importance of thorough research and preparation, particularly in the initial stages of the sales process. Sales leaders need to equip their teams with the tools and training to conduct effective customer and industry research to identify challenges and tailor their approach accordingly.
HubSpot recently announced Breeze an AI tool in its CRM platform that not only enriches CRM contact data, it can research companies, tell you news and changes about the customer, and can even craft personalised outreach.
Make sure research and prep is happening, but don't waste your sales team time. Also, remember to offer coaching and training in these areas. Share ideas at sales meetings and share success stories.
- Implement Effective Tools and Resources: In addition to all the usual technology tools like CRM, predictive deal scoring (HubSpot again), calender and meeting links, and automated quote and proposal tools - advocate for more traditional tools like Deal One-Pagers (summarised deal advantages and features), Meeting Summaries, Opportunity Roadmaps, and Mutually Agreed Action Plans (MAAPs) throughout the sales process. Sales leaders should provide these tools and training on their effective use to support their team's efforts in planning, communication, and collaboration.
Technology helps you; it doesn't replace you and doesn't make you more interesting - the process still needs a you.
- Foster a Culture of Qualification: Sales leaders ought to instill a disciplined approach to opportunity qualification to avoid wasting valuable time and resources on deals with low chances of success. This includes establishing clear criteria for evaluating opportunities based on factors like solution viability, competitive landscape, and risk assessment.
HubSpot has introduced deal scores to help focus salespeople on deals with the best chance of closing.
- Develop a Strong Coaching Culture: Coaching is a core part of driving sales success. Sales leaders should need to be coaches to their teams, provide guidance during deal reviews or develop battlecards, account plans, processing issues, facilitating knowledge sharing and support among team members.
- Align CRM Systems with the Sales Process: The CRM system you use needs to align and be customised to fit the sales process. This ensures you maximise value and optimise your CRM adoption and adherence or conformance rate. This includes incorporating key elements of the sales process, pipeline stage movement checklists and mandatory task completion, including coaching questions and advice into the CRM system for improved tracking, reporting, and support.
- Promote Continuous Improvement: Conduct regular win-loss analyses and seek customer feedback to identify areas for improvement in the sales process and individual salespeople's performance. Create a culture of self-reflection and learning, encouraging teams to embrace feedback and continuously improve their skills and approach.
- Leverage the Sales Process for Recruitment: Finally, well for now at least, think about using your well-defined sales process as a foundation for recruitment and onboarding. By identifying the competencies required to successfully execute the sales process, leaders can create targeted success and core competence profiles, develop effective interview questions based on the sales story framework, and recruit individuals who align with the company's sales methodology.
An effective sales process is not static and needs to be continuously refined and adapted based on performance data, customer feedback, and evolving market dynamics. Hey, it's a role we often call RevOps these days.
Looking for an outline guide to a B2B sales process - you can start here
Stage 1: Identification: This stage involves pinpointing the ideal customer profile, researching potential challenges they face, and identifying the appropriate person to contact. The goal is to secure an initial meeting by demonstrating an understanding of the customer’s business and their specific needs.
Stage 2: Qualification: This stage is about evaluating the opportunity to determine if it’s worth pursuing. This involves assessing the viability of a solution, the likelihood of winning against competitors, and identifying potential risks.
Stage 3: Covering the Buying Centre: This stage centres on understanding the stakeholders within the customer’s organisation; who is involved in decision-making. What are the drivers, experiences, preferences and ambitions of each person in the buying centre? What problems is each person looking solve? What are their individual roles, needs, and relationships with the deal, the problem, you and your competition?
This stage requires developing individualised value propositions tailored to each stakeholder’s business goals and decision criteria.
Stage 4: Proposal: This stage involves presenting a tailored proposal that addresses the specific needs and goals of the customer. This can include a deal-one-pager, which provides a concise overview of the proposed solution, and a business case, which quantifies the benefits and costs.
Stage 5: Decision: This final stage involves negotiation and aims to reach a mutually beneficial agreement while protecting profitability. This stage often utilizes the identification of "Elements of Unequal Value," which are offerings that hold high value for the customer but low cost for the seller.
Exit criteria: Clearly defined milestones for each stage of the pipeline and be clear about how to exit to ensure alignment between the sales process and the customer’s buying journey.
Tools and resources: Utilise ideals and methods such as appointment and discovery call research and prep, producing meeting summaries for every meeting or call, writing down an opportunity roadmap (what does the road and timeline to success look like), and a mutually agreed action plan. It all helps enhance communication, planning, and collaboration throughout the process and makes a better experience for 'how you sell'.
Continuous improvement: Conducting win-loss analyses, seeking customer feedback, and fostering a mindset of self-reflection enables adaptation and improvement within the sales team and the process itself.
An ideal sales process is not a rigid framework but rather an adaptable guideline that should be tailored to the specific business, its best practices, and the expectations of its customers.
Start a conversation today with one of our sales and revops specialists. It might be just the time to talk.