The Ultimate Guide to Building an Effective Sales Process

Why process is paramount in selling.
How effective processes are a means to enhance selling skills.
How to identify and fix the bottlenecks in your sales processes.
Why most sales systems are like diets and just as effective.
6 simple steps to control your selling and compress buying cycles.

Why Process is Paramount

This is one of the classic debates about sales and selling. It is very similar to the 'nature vs. nurture' debates that young adults without kids and too much time on their hands indulge in. (Anyone with kids quickly learns the answer to this...) The answer is that both process and skill are required to succeed in sales. However, process provides the platform for skills to flourish.

What Would Michael Do?

Take the case of an elite athletelike Michael Phelps, the all-time Olympic champion swimmer. Michael Phelpstrains like a demon, spending hours face down in a pool every day, to showcasehis skills on the world's biggest stage, the Olympics. He won an unprecedented8 gold medals in swimming at the Beijing Games in 2008. There is no doubtinghis obvious skills. Having conquered the world once, the question was would hereturn to the London games in 2012 and try again?

In preparation for the Beijing Olympics, Michael followed the training regimen put together by his coach, Bob Bowman. It was a process that focused on the quality of the daily work Michael did in preparation for competition. Every workout he swam and the details of how he performed in that workout, every weightlifting session, every cross-training session were meticulously recorded, tracked and analyzed. Bowman and Phelps knew that the most accurate predictor of how Michael would perform in the big competitions was the data collected about his daily training process over the previous months and years.

The Day-to-Day Process

This is similar to selling. How you execute your sales process on a day-to-day basis is the most accurate predictor of whether you will win orders and meet your objectives. An effective and disciplined sales process can do for you what it does for Michael Phelps. If you work hard, it will put you in a position to compete for and win orders. It is how well you execute the basic sales activities that comprise the steps of your process, and how often, that will ultimately lead to the order.

As he began his initialpreparations for the London Olympics Phelps strayed from the process that hadled him to the podium eight times in Beijing. And, with all the skills in theworld, his results in competition suffered. He was losing to swimmers thatpreviously couldn't compare to him. What did he do? He redoubled his commitmentto the process laid out by his coach. He might have rebelled against theprocess but he returned to it because he knew that if he invested his hard workinto it results would follow.

If you listened to Michael Phelpsbeing interviewed after a pre-Olympic tune-up race before the London Olympicshe defaulted to talking about his process. The race result might have been afirst place finish but he all talked about how well his training was going. Hisfocus was on how he was performing each day in each step of his trainingprocess. He knew that if he executed his process he'd put himself in theposition to achieve the results he expected.

In the same way sales process canprovide a much clearer snapshot of potential sales than simply looking at yourpipeline of prospects. Well-defined sales processes provide a method tocontinually assess and measure the underlying sales activities that will leadto orders. Using metrics to continually measure and fine-tune sales processes,just as Bob Bowman did with Phelps' training regimen, leads to improvedoutcomes for salespeople of all skill levels.

Your Process Enhances Your Skills

I had a client where one of themore senior salespeople, a grizzled sales professional, Ollie, was determinedto resist management's efforts to implement some fundamental and essentialsales processes to respond to a changing sales environment. Ollie had alwaysmanaged his sales territory his own way and while he possessed great salesskills and experience he was floundering. He found himself at odds withevolving prospect and customer expectations for salespeople in terms ofresponsiveness, follow-up, content delivery and service.

The processes that Ollie'smanagement implemented saved his sales career by requiring Ollie to become moreresponsive, more proactive and timely in follow-up, more knowledgeable of theproducts he sold, more conscious of eliminating time-wasting sales calls andmaking every customer interaction achieve the maximum impact in the least timepossible in order to compress buying cycles.

This does not mean that a salesperson should ignore the skill components of selling. We should always be working to improve our sales skills no matter how much experience we have. But sales skills need to be utilized in support of defined sales process to create the most value for the customer. And the salesperson.

Your Sales Can Only Be As Fast As Your Slowest Link. Do You Know Yours?

It is imperative for sellers in today's fast-paced competitivemarkets to focus on the speed of their selling to create value for theircustomers, quickly build trust and credibility as well as truly differentiatethemselves from their competition.

Taking advantage of the treasure trove of information availableon the Internet your sales leads and prospects today are substantiallypre-educated about your products and services (as well as your competitors')when they are inserted into your sales funnel. The quantity of information yourprospects require at that point to make their purchase decision issubstantially smaller than if they entered your funnel at the top. Mostimportantly, they have the expectation now, which is usually not met by theseller, that they can obtain the information they need to make their purchasedecision in a shorter period of time than usual.

What Are Your Sales Bottlenecks?

"Effortsto optimize work processes in order to more quickly respond to customers willbecome increasingly important,says (Lawrence Byrd), an Avaya executive, who points to a widening gap in customerloyalty where the younger generation is typically more fickle and bombardedwith choices."

But maximizing responsiveness can only be achieved witheffective sales processes that are continually measured, analyzed and improved.This is called Selling with Maximum Impact in the Least Time. If you areSelling with Maximum Impact then your sales objective is to empower yourprospects and customers with the information they need to compress their buyingcycles.

"Noting that businesses are only as fast as their slowestlink, (Lawrence) Byrd, director of collaboration solutions at Avaya, said itwas important for organizations to look at how they can speed up their businessbecause 'speed depends on the slowest link', he said. 'It's no point having acar as fast as a Ferrari, if your tires are flat. What's key is to fix thebottlenecks,' Byrd said."

Are Your Sales Processes Optimized?

What is the slowest link in your sales process? Do you know? Orare you just guessing?

Ask yourself some of the following questions:

Do you have a written sales process for sales lead follow-up? (Our surveys show that fewer than 20% of sales teams do.)

Do you have a flowchart that shows how many sets of hands a sales lead passes through before it is placed in the hands of a salesperson who will follow-up with a phone call? (Same as above.)

How long does it take, on average, to follow-up on a sales lead from the time it is received until a knowledgable salesperson talks to the prospect? (It takes longer than you are guessing.)

Is the person who follows up on your sales leads A) an entry-level person (like the now ubiquitous Business Development Rep (BDR)) or B) a salesperson who really understands your products, services and customers? (Hint: A is not the right answer. Any sales interaction that does not create value for the customer is a waste of their time and yours; i.e., a bottleneck.)

Do you have a written sales policy manual that includes definitions and descriptions of all of your core sales processes? (Our assessments show that only 17% of company's have taken this step. Ignorance is bliss I guess.)

Do you have established responsiveness metrics for your company’s core sales processes? (No? Then how do you know if they are optimized?)

How often are your critical sales processes and their associated responsiveness metrics analyzed, evaluated and improved? (Our assessments show that 50% of companies never review their sales processes. Every company has sales bottlenecks. Most just choose to ignore them.)

If you don't have satisfactory answers for each of thesequestions then it's a guarantee that your sales processes are not optimized.And, most importantly, you are leaving valuable revenue opportunities on thetable.

Keeping The Wait Off: Why Most Sales Systems are Like Diets and Just About as Effective.

Most sales systems are like diets. And, for the most part, justas effective. Which means they aren't. If diets or sales systems really workedas advertised, if you were able to sustain your weight loss, or consistentlysustain your sales growth, you probably wouldn't be reading this article.

Just like dieters who jump from one new exotic diet plan to thenext in the hope that the next one will produce better results, so too aresales managers guilty of skipping from one new sales methodology to anotherhoping to find some magical solution to their team's anemic sales performance.

Much as dieter's are concerned about losing pounds and keepingthe weight off, sellers should be focused on eliminating wasted time from theirsales process and keeping the wait off their selling.

These days prospects substantially pre-educate themselves abouta product or service before they ever engage with a seller. Rarely are theyentering the funnel at the top but further toward the bottom. They have alreadyinvested time in their buying process and when they finally engage with theseller, they have fewer questions to be answered and a greater sense of urgencyto make a decision. The trouble I have seen with many sales systems thatmanagers implement is that they weigh down a sales force with unnecessaryprocess and methods that result in extra time being injected into their sellingprocess. For your prospects and customers, this is putting on the wait (andopens the door to your competitors.)

Ultimately, with dieting, the best results are found with peoplewho focus on the basics. Consume fewer calories and exercise more. The greatvalue of this prescription is that it is simple, straightforward and memorable.It doesn't rely on complex food preparations, expensive purchased diet meals,or other stratagems. It takes will power and determination, two factors underyour direct control.

Similarly with selling, you will succeed in transforming the shape of your sales results straightforward focus on integrating higher levels of responsiveness, information content and speed into every step of your selling. You'll compress buying cycles and win more orders by eliminating the wasted time that clutters up your selling; which means keeping the wait off.

6 Simple Steps to Take Control of Your Selling and Compress Buying Cycles (or How to Engage in a Healthy Sales Lifestyle)

1. Sell with Maximum Impact in theLeast Time (MILT)

Selling with MILT means that every interaction with a prospector customer has to achieve the Maximum Impact in the Least Time (MILT)possible. This means integrating a high level of responsiveness, informationcontent and speed into every step of your selling process and eliminating theuseless customer interactions that waste your prospect's time and provide novalue to them, or to you.

2. Immediately Follow-up All SalesLeads

There is no easier way to grow sales than to immediatelyfollow-up on 100% of your sales leads. The math is simple. Assume that yourconversion rate of leads into sales is 2%. And let's also assume that you onlyfollow up 50% of your sales leads. If you keep your conversion rate at 2% butfollow-up 75% of your sales leads, what happens to your sales? What if youfollowed up 100%? In addition, studies show that you are 100 times more likelyto contact a lead if you follow-up within 5 minutes vs. 30 minutes of receivingthe inquiry. What are you waiting for?

3. Always Sell with the Sharp Endof the Stick

Selling with the Sharp End means putting your people with thedeepest product knowledge and industry experience closest to the point ofattack, meaning closest to the customer. Make it fast and easy for yourprospects to get the information they need to make a decision.

4. Do Everything Now

The timeframe for every sales action is immediate. In today'sworld, potential buyers have gone online and gathered more than 50% of theinformation they need to make a buying decision before they engage with you forthe first time. When they do, their need for information is urgent. And thefirst seller with the answers wins.

5. Answer Your Phones

Your prospects have questions and the first seller with theanswers wins. And voice mail can't answer a question. Stop living in the darkages with an auto-attendant answering your phones. It is the 21st century andthat means that you need to answer your sales and support lines with livepeople. Provide the Human Touch to your customers and watch your orders grow.

6. Disqualify the Losers

Proactively disqualify all the prospects who are not a good fitfor your services or who are not going to make a buying decision. They arewasting your selling time and that time is the most limited sales resource youhave. Get rid of them.

Are you ready to lose the wait?