Defining Sales Process Essential for Small Business Owners

Clearly Defined Sales Process Fundamental to All Successful Businesses

Tips for managing your pipeline by nailing down your sales process.

Working with small business owners is an enlightening experience for me and most of the WealthNet Partners team.  I share this with you because in the context of firing up sales for any small business it’s essential to clearly define the sales process.  What’s enlightening to us is how much we can learn by nailing down a clearly defined sales process.

A huge aspect of our sales coaching and virtual vp of sales consulting engagements is addressing the sales process and systems that impact sales results.  It boils down to people, process and systems when you look at any successful sales organization.

Here’s an indicator your sales process is working well.  My wife is a medical sales rep.  She just read me an email from a prospect that said, “We loved meeting you.  We want to proceed with a trial of your product.  What’s next?”  This communication is now secure in their CRM system and the sales reps are all trained to update the system reflecting that their prospects are closer to becoming customers.  (This literally just happened as I was doing my final edits.)

How effective is your sales process?  Where do you lose most potential new business?  What needs to be improved?  Where’s the best ROI on your marketing investments?  Who’s the most productive sales person?  What should your comp plan look like?

Managing a business is complicated enough.  Managing yourself as a sales person or building and managing a sales organization is a daunting process for most people in business.  And this is why it’s critical to talk about and define sales process.

What exactly is your sales process?  Picture a sales funnel or pipeline for a minute.  At the top of the funnel is your universe of potential new customers that you want to transform into paying customers.  As people move through this sales funnel or pipeline they are getting closer to making a commitment to doing business with you.  But in order to make this happen you have to magically massage the relationship in person, over the phone, with email follow up and maybe even the dreaded full-blown Request for Proposal (RFP).  This is your sales process.

For a more official definition here’s what BusinessDictionary.com had to say about Sales Process…

“Set of steps aimed at intiating and supporting the identification and evaluation of likely customers, prospects, sales presentation and successful conclusion of sales activities.  It requires a close coordination of people, equipment, tools and techniques and includes advertising and promotion.”

I could easily share a several very textbook kind of approaches to defining a sales process.  But simple is good in most cases and this is no exception.  The academics on this topic can very technical when it comes to sales force development and it’s important to keep this at a fundamental level so any small business person can move in the direction of defining their sales process and improving sales results.

Let me give you an example of a typical sales process for a consulting business like mine.

1. Introduction by social media, referral, ad, etc.

2. Initial contact and email exchange or conversation over phone.

3. Meeting and discovery in person or over phone.

4. Follow up note or email(s).

5. Conversation or meeting to discuss agreement. (Often the proposal stage and I hate proposals.  See other posts and rants.)

6. Prepare and send agreement for review.

7. Review of agreement.

8. Decision and payment.

9. Onboarding a new client.  (Goals, communication, and process.)

There it is.  Pretty simple sales process for someone like me, an accountant, an attorney and many, many small business owners.  Sometimes the process is more drawn out with multiple “influencers” and “decision makers” impacting the outcome.

Your business is unique and so is your sales process.  The sales process for someone buying a pack of gum is pretty simple.  The sales process for buying ballistic missiles is not so simple.  You and I are somewhere in the middle here.

Here are 3 tips to consider when it comes to defining and improving your well-defined sales process.

1. Segment your relationships in a solid customer relationship management (CRM) system.  We segment everyone in our system using “Tags” while other systems might refer to this as groups.  You segment your prospects, customers, suppliers, vendors, centers of influence and past customers.  You might also further segment more qualitatively assigning a value or number to the quality of the prospect or customer such as 1-10 or A-D.

2. Schedule everyone in your pipeline with a definitive date for follow up activities.  If they aren’t on your calendar or assigned an activity for follow up at a future date you don’t really have them on your radar.  So you can’t track, measure and follow up systematically.

3. Assign a value to each prospective new customer or client so you know where they are in  your sales process.  For example, we use the Opportunities module in our Infusionsoft system.  Every new prospective client is given an Opportunity which specifies in the system where we stand with the client on a specific project, fee, and payment.  You might assign a numbered system to match the number of steps in your sales process.

In summary, defining your sales process is essential.  Using a system to organize and manage your relationships is critical.  And organizing your relationships in a way that you can actually forecast sales numbers can be a very, very good thing for any business.

The real key to your sales process is making sure everyone in your organization is clear on what the process looks like.  Coaching and training your team to be disciplined enough to track and measure everything in your pipeline and system is an investment you need to make.  Every phone coaching session we do with sales people is focused on their CRM system, notes, activities, opportunities, lost business, and all the other critical information need to measure and assess to know how we are doing THROUGH THE SALES PROCESS!

Maybe I should have mentioned this at the beginning of this post.  The whole point of defining your sales process is knowing where you stand.  You can either add more clients, increase the volume of transactions with existing clients or increase your prices to grow your business.  Defining your sales process and tracking all your relationships enables you to measure results for essential information such as lead generation success, cost of acquiring new clients, lifetime value of clients, ROI of marketing and sales expenses (investments), and much more.

What are your thoughts about defining your sales process?  What’s working well for you?  What’s missing?  We always appreciate your comments and suggestions here on the WealthNet Partners blog.

Here are some other posts regarding sales process that you may find helpful.

Don’t (blindly) Follow Your Sales Process If . . .

There are some sales processes that are less than they should be. This is especially true when they ignore the great principles of effective selling.

Publish Date: 01/09/2011 22:28

http://thesalesblog.com/2011/01/don%E2%80%99t-blindly-follow-your-sales-process-if/

How Is Your Sales Process? – The Pipeline | Small business news …

Having a process that everyone adheres to and executes is what make professionals champions, be they in sports or sales. Having structure and metrics to drive success actually makes execution simpler.

Publish Date: 01/06/2011 1:07

http://www.bizsugar.com/Sales/how-is-your-sales-process-the-pipeline-/

When To Go With Their Gut (A Note to the Sales Manager)

You Are Making Too Little of Your Sales Process (A Note to the Sales Manager) Perhaps one of the reasons your sales force makes too much of following the sales process is that you as the sales manager make too. …

Publish Date: 01/11/2011 20:27

http://thesalesblog.com/2011/01/when-to-go-with-their-gut-a-note-to-the-sales-manager/

Thanks again for sharing your thoughts about the importance of sales process.