Have you Defined your Sales Process?
If not, it's time to. Here are two perspectives to help drive closing rates.
Problem: unpredictable revenue, lack of transparency into my pipeline.
Solution: defined sales process
It sounds simple but clearly defining your sales process from two perspectives is very important. The first helps you understand your internal process from “stranger to client” then second helps you understand your customers journey and how they interact with your process.
Let me give you an example of perspective #1 - your internal process.
Here is a simple process that is easy to understand from our reps perspectives.
Stranger (they are in our marketing funnel - we are talking to them but they may not be talking back)
Two way dialog (we are engaging them personally, and they are responding!)
Commitment (they have indicated they are going to do business with us)
New Client (we have signed a deal)
The idea being; a sales person should be able to know who of their prospects are in which bucket (or zone) at any given time.
Here’s a visual for our business:
The second way to look at this is from the clients perspective. Some call this the customer journey (Jen Epp does a great job in defining this for companies). I like looking at this as the milestones that a potential client needs to go through to end up becoming a customer. This will inform the types of interactions reps need to help the prospect arrive at the end as a win-win and become a customer.
PS: this is all predicated on our ability as sales people to build a genuine relationship with our prospects.
Here is perspective #2 - but from a prospective client’s point of view.
Milestone 1. they recognize that we have a service they need or could be useful to them
Milestone 2. they acknowledge that we are a player in the market and are different than our competitors
Milestone 3. they see value for them and their clients in doing business with us and can answer the question, I will do business with their company because….
Milestone 4. they have an opportunity to direct business to us and they take action by sending us a deal.
When we look at the sales process through both of these lenses it will help inform the types of conversations and value I need to bring to be successful.
Many look at their internal process and define it, fewer look at that same process through the lens of their client experience and each milestone they need to go through to decide to do business with them.
What do your customer milestones look like?
Send them to me if you decide to go through the process to identify them!