Do I really need a Sales Process?

If an airline did not have a standard process for checking an airplane before each flight, would you be happy to fly with them?

If a company did not have a standard process for manufacturing its products, how reliable do you think they would be?

Having a process, while it may seem uninteresting, is crucial to success.  However, in sales, there is often little sign of any systematic process being applied.  Not surprisingly, therefore, success if often hard to come by.

One of the counters to the argument for a process is that every customer is different and so having a process is pointless.  It is certainly true that every customer is different and so the exact set of activities required to close a deal will vary, the overall sales process remains reasonably similar.  What is important to recognise is that every company and every product are different so potentially require different processes but overall, a process is still required.

When building a sales process, I start with four simple boxes of activities which I can Suspect (I think there might be an opportunity); Prospect (I know that there is an opportunity); Opportunity (I have presented a proposal to my customer) and Sale (I have closed a deal).  As ideas/leads/opportunities move through the process, there are less proscriptive actions that need to take place as indeed, each opportunity will require slightly different activities.  However, there are very definitely some specific actions that are required. 

For example, when producing a proposal, has everyone who needs to approve it reviewed and approved it?  Has finance, legal and compliance all agreed?  Has the customer been credit checked?  Have you determined that the customer has the budget?  Who is going to sign the deal and are they available when required?  These are all actions that need to be done.  Quite how you do them will vary but they still need to be done. 

At the start of the sales process, it is more important to be systematic about our activities.  In order to generate leads, we need to apply a consistent process so that we know what is effective and what is not effective.  Not all of our activities will generate a consistent supply of leads so we need to do what works and stop doing what does not work.

This very definitely means that the process will change over time, not least because your products and your customers will change but also to ensure that you are constantly being most effective.  Some activities will work all the time, some will come in and out of fashion.  So, it is important to continually review what works and adapt accordingly.

To build a process, start with the simple stages as outlined, Suspect, Prospect, Opportunity, Sale.  Consider all of the activities that you do and assign them to one of these stages.  There will be many more activities in the early stages of the process than there are towards the end.  From the point that you understand your customer’s needs and what you will do for them, writing a proposal, having it agreed, presenting it, negotiating and closing should all be well understood and easily defined.

The range of activities at the start of the process will be many and varied.  Review each of them and their relative success at generating leads and only include the activities that are most effective.  You may want to split the stages into smaller stages depending on how much activity is required.

Finally, try to document how a lead/opportunity moves from one stage to the next.  What do you need to have done or what do you need to know before you can move it to the next stage?

While we would all love to be free wheeling, fly by the seat of our pants, sales people, the reality is, the most successful ones are the ones that have a process and apply it rigorously.