Sales Process: How to Create and Improve a Sales Process

A sales process is a repeatable set of steps that a sales team follows to close deals and acquire new customers. Salespeople use this process to turn a potential customer into a client who could provide a firm with repeat business.

An effective sales process provides a straightforward workflow that empowers sales reps to lead a prospect (potential customer) through a predictable sales funnel. It makes sales reps confident they can contribute to an overall conversion rate that aligns with a company’s goals.

Companies that use a sales process reach key performance indicators (KPIs) and make new sales at a higher rate than those that don’t. Qualified sales professionals have to make decisions based on their intuition or personal experience rather than a concrete set of data without a defined sales process. They’re more likely to guide a prospect through the customer journey with that data in hand.

The exact steps involved in generating successful sales and anticipating a customer’s needs will vary from business to business, but here is a breakdown of the general starting point:

1. 1. Source leads: Before you start selling to a potential client, you need to create a pool of potential leads. Sourcing can take many forms, including direct outreach through networking events, cold calling, or research strategies like keeping tabs on possible connections on social media.
2. 2. Vet leads: The next step of lead generation is to make sure the possible buyers you sourced are “qualified leads,” which means you need to analyze your potential client’s pain points and determine if what you’re selling can help them. One popular method for vetting leads is BANT, a sales qualification methodology that helps salespeople identify qualified leads by focusing on four considerations: budget, authority, need, and timing. If it’s not a good fit, refrain from pitching.
3. 3. Research: The next stage is to dive deep into a prospect’s business so you can begin preparing yourself to craft the best sales pitch possible. Research could involve a discovery call to better determine the best use of your product by the potential client, as well as whether they’d have any interest in it.
4. 4. Pitch: Once your team has learned all relevant information, it’s time to present your findings to decision-makers at the potential client’s firm. Pitching is a crucial part of the sales process since your sales presentation may be your only opportunity to demonstrate how your product works and convince the potential customer that it’s worth their time and money. Learn how to make the perfect sales pitch.
5. 5. Field questions and concerns: A potential customer will rarely sign on immediately after the pitch, so handling objections is another reason extensive research is worthwhile. Your sales team should predict problems a potential buyer will raise and have competent answers at the ready.
6. 6. Close the deal: Assuming the buyer wants to move forward, this is the step where you hash out the rate and deliverables and prepare for onboarding.
7. 7. Keep in touch: The follow-up is an essential part of the sales cycle and neglecting it is one of the common mistakes sales teams make. New clients can be excellent sources of referrals or testimonials if they’re happy with the service you provide, so you want to keep track of them in your customer relationship management (CRM) database. It’s crucial to create lasting customer relationships (sometimes with a simple phone call) and connect customers with the relevant teams that will help them use the product and fix any problems.

Building each stage of the sales process is in itself a process that requires time to refine. Here’s a starting guide:

1. 1. Set clear sales goals. Without an endpoint, your sales process map doesn’t lead anywhere. So first, figure out what you want to achieve.
2. 2. Loop in all of the relevant parties. Sales teams are only part of a larger constellation of marketing teams, product teams, and more. To understand your customers, you need to gather data on how they interact with all parts of your organization.
3. 3. Map your sales approach as well as the buyer’s journey. Take into account your buyer personas (research-informed pictures of who you’re selling to) to map out how your sales team will approach prospects and how they’ll respond. This map will be the template you’ll work off as you gather data and fine-tune your process.
4. 4. Create clear exit criteria for your team. Your sales team can’t move from one stage of the process to the next without a means of ensuring they’ve ticked all the right boxes. Sketch out checkpoints for the sales team to use when meeting with new clients.

Your sales pipeline only works if it leads prospective leads through the buying process at a rate that hits your desired metrics. If that isn’t happening—or if the sales team has plateaued—here are some strategies to consider:

1. 1. Monitor sales activities. Monitoring doesn’t necessarily mean listening in on every sales call, but it does require conducting an internal study wherein you break your team’s sales activities down, step by step. Where does the process tend to stall? What kinds of approaches progressed the buyer’s journey?
2. 2. Research customers’ concerns. Talk to current customers to discover what they like about the service you provide and how you can better meet their needs. If your team can preemptively address those needs, you can streamline the sales process.
3. 3. Clear up ambiguities. If a sales process is too vague or leaves too much up to the individual members of the sales staff, it’s not a helpful tool. Meeting regularly with the sales staff to answer questions and share success (or failure) stories is key.

There are a couple of key distinctions between a sales process and a sales methodology. A sales process is an action plan that allows your sales team to measure their progress by hitting specific guide points. A sales methodology refers more to the overall approach a sales team uses when interacting with potential customers. What kind of posture or attitude are they adopting? How are you positioning your product to meet their needs? These kinds of questions get at the heart of sales methodology.

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