When my friend Hilary started her pool cleaning business, it was just her and her husband. They knew a lot about pools and how to maintain them, but they didn’t know much about the sales process.
- What is a business sales process?
- Why a well-defined sales process is crucial for business success
- Key elements of an effective business sales process
- Steps to implement a successful business sales process
- Key metrics to track and evaluate your sales process
- Take charge of your business sales with a tailored sales process
The first thing they needed to do was create an effective sales process for themselves and any of their future employees — a good practice for any owner of a small- or medium-sized business. This clear strategy should lay out the process for a salesperson to shift a prospect to a closed sale in the most efficient way possible.
It’s obvious that Hilary needed to stock up on pool chemicals and purchase the right equipment, but all of that would sit idle without a full schedule of customers whose pools need regular attention. While digital ads are an important part of the customer journey, you must support them with a clear strategy based on human interactions.
After all, strong relationships built through personalized interactions are the key to growing any business — whether it’s a clean pool or any other product or service you may offer. When you want to nurture leads with potential customers, it’s easier to follow sales process steps than work off the cuff.
What is a business sales process?
A business sales process is a predetermined path that all salespeople within your company can follow to lead a potential buyer to become a loyal customer. Craft these steps in advance to help sales professionals seamlessly lure sales.
What is the sales process? In general, a business sales process follows seven steps:
- Prospect: Search for leads.
- Prepare: Research in-depth about your prospect.
- Approach: Set up a meeting over coffee or send an email.
- Present: Offer your value proposition.
- Respond to objections: Discuss and negotiate.
- Close the deal: Come to an agreement.
- Follow-up: This is the first step in strengthening the new business relationship.
Keep in mind that a sales process is different than a sales funnel, which digital marketing uses to attract potential customers into the sales cycle. The sales process is a traditional approach to bringing in clients in a more direct and personalized way.
To create a sales process, you need more than just a list of actions. Each of these sales process steps requires an in-depth understanding of the overall customer journey map for your individual business or industry, as well as a strong connection to your business and sales strategy.
All the work you do to create this sales process — and you will want to carve out time in your schedule to dedicate to this initiative — will help to build a foundation for your business on which you can scale appropriately.
Why a well-defined sales process is crucial for business success
There are many reasons why it’s worth the time to craft a formal document that outlines the sales process.
- Increased number of closed deals because sales reps know what they’re doing.
- Faster closing rates, meaning it takes less time for prospects to go from potential clients to customers.
- Ability to easily identify a customer’s problem to overcome obstacles quicker.
- Improved morale and attitude among sales professionals on your team.
- Less wasted time leading to frustration and annoyance among qualified leads.
- Better symbiosis between the sales and marketing teams as everyone can stay on track.
- Stronger relationships as a defined process can put human connection at the forefront.
- Helps identify problems in the sales journey that otherwise may go unnoticed.
Whether you are selling directly B2C or focused on B2B lead generation, a well-defined sales process can serve as a valuable tool for anyone involved in the sales pipeline. The idea is to create an infrastructure that guides your sales, no matter who will make the pitch.
Think about my friend Hilary with the pool cleaning business. When she crafted a document that outlined specifically how she would use the seven sales process stages in her company’s sales methodology, she no longer had to be responsible for all the sales. She could hire a larger sales team, who were easily onboarded and quickly able to start selling to her ideal customers.
Simply put, a clear sales process helps improve your bottom line.
Key elements of an effective business sales process
As you and your sales managers begin to brainstorm the sales process for your business, keep in mind that a sales strategy should weave in seamlessly with your overall business plan. Writing and reviewing the key elements of an effective business sales process will help strengthen your company for all initiatives you plan in the future.
Define your target market and buyer personas
Who are your ideal customers? Your target audience may vary with different sales campaigns, but who you are selling to should always be crystal clear. One way to ensure this is by developing what are known as buyer personas. A buyer persona is an avatar or fictional character who embodies everything you want in a customer.
For example, see how Hilary might create a buyer persona. Perhaps his name is Buddy, and he is the facilities manager of a community swimming pool. He lives in Indiantown, which is a town in south-central Florida where her company is based. He’s 45 years old, married to his high school sweetheart and has four children.
He has a high school diploma but took some classes in trade school, so he knows his way around a tool shed. He loves tinkering with old cars, eating pulled pork sandwiches and fishing. In fact, he’d love nothing more than to have the pool run itself so he could spend some of the PTO he’s accrued out on the water.
With that level of detail, you may even be able to see Buddy. This makes it a lot easier to understand the work necessary to prospect, prepare for, and approach him with a sales pitch. When you narrow down your focus like this, you’ll find greater success in your sales process.
Establish clear sales goals and objectives
Do the math on realistic and aspirational goals for sales growth during the next quarter or year, then create shorter-term, measurable objectives that support those goals. It’s important to create milestones for your sales teams to reach for, not only as a means for motivation but also because you can use these goals to achieve a larger goal related to overall growth.
For example, Hilary may wish to have a goal of growing her pool cleaning business by 25% over the next fiscal year. To accomplish this goal, she can create objectives such as prospecting everyone like Buddy in her geographic reach, as well as brainstorming other ways to enhance her B2B sales process. Perhaps she wants objectives that target facilities managers at senior living centers, high schools and water parks.
Develop a lead generation and qualification strategy
In your sales process, you’ll need to include clear methods for generating leads and determining who will qualify as a potential customer. For example, Hilary’s sales team may get interest from a private individual or from a facilities manager whose pool is too far away. If they don’t fit your target audience, it’s wise to turn down the business.
Lead generation looks different for every business. You may want your sales team to:
- Connect with current customers to seek out referrals.
- Visit different locations to determine satisfaction with your products or services.
- Network at local events.
- Collaborate with your marketing team to create a blog that highlights your company’s expertise.
- Schedule in-person appointments with decision-makers.
- Host events.
- Focus their time networking online on platforms like LinkedIn.
Be creative in your approach but use your formalized sales process to help your sales team delegate tasks to support each person’s strengths.
Craft a compelling sales pitch and value proposition
When Hilary first opened her business, I asked her the threshold question used to create every sales pitch: What makes you first, better or different? She told me that she had the only pool cleaning operation in the region that guaranteed the pools would stay clean and beautiful all year long. That meant more enjoyment for her clients.
In the sales process, write down all the reasons why potential customers should pick your company over the competition. Your sales team can then draw from that important information while they are preparing to present the proposal to their prospects. They won’t have to start from scratch with every new pitch.
Steps to implement a successful business sales process
Once you’ve written out the elements necessary for a successful sales process, it’s time to begin the work to implement the strategy. Work with your sales managers or top executives within your organization to make sure all stakeholders are in agreement from the beginning.
1. Research and analyze your target market
Hilary’s buyer persona, Buddy, shouldn’t come from her imagination, and the buyer personas you create for your business need a bit of backup, too. This work requires significant research and analysis of the target market to determine who is the best fit for your products and services.
Take a good look at your current customer base. You may want to reach out personally to loyal customers or send email surveys to gather demographics and other information that can help you develop a buyer persona. Also, analyze your competitors as well as any industry trends that may impact the market you operate in. Collect all the data you can to prepare effectively for your sales process.
2. Align your sales process with your customer’s journey
The customer journey tends to have similar stages regardless of the business or industry:
- Awareness
- Consideration
- Decision making
- Retention
- Loyalty
But what does this look like for your own company? The actual process of Hilary’s pool-owning customers, for example, may look very different from your own customers. Your sales process won’t be effective if you cannot integrate the plan with the reality of your customer experience.
3. Create a documented sales process and workflow
Using your research and understanding of your customer journey, you can now write down your sales team’s detailed sales process and workflow. Think through the entire process from start to finish, adding as many action steps as you can.
The workflow can be a visual flow chart that each sales professional can use as they work to convert prospects into loyal customers. Use color coding to make it easier to follow.
4. Integrate technology and automation tools
When possible within the lifecycle marketing flow and sales work, try to adopt sales process automation tools to make the sales cycle more efficient. For example, Hilary may want to create an email campaign that automatically begins every time one of her prospective customers signs up for her email newsletter. Or, she may want to use social media scheduling software to plan a week’s worth of posts.
5. Monitor, measure, and optimize your sales process
How will you know if your sales process is working? The only way to objectively critique your process is to measure effectiveness using quantitative metrics that connect directly with the objectives and goals you set at the beginning of this initiative.
Schedule time at least every quarter to analyze whether your sales process is working to meet your goals. If not, don’t hesitate to refine and optimize the workflow. After all, no business document should be written in stone — stay dynamic and willing to adapt as you learn what works best and what you can improve upon.
Key metrics to track and evaluate your sales process
As you measure the success of your sales process, pick one or two metrics to track. A common mistake is tracking everything, which makes the evaluation burdensome and time-consuming. Instead, drill down the measurements that directly connect with your business goals and use those numbers to identify your success.
Conversion rates at each stage of the sales funnel
If you have implemented a sales funnel, an excellent metric to track is the conversion rate. But don’t just limit the calculations to the end of the funnel. Instead, look at each step to determine ways to increase the number of qualified leads continuing their customer journey with your company.
To calculate the conversion rate, take the number of conversions and divide it by the total number of interactions over a specific time period.
Sales cycle length and time-to-close deals
Determine a baseline for the length of the sales cycle, which is the timeframe that starts with a lead first interacting with your brand and ends with a purchase. Then, as you implement your sales process, continue to measure this timeframe on a monthly or quarterly basis. If you’ve effectively streamlined your approach, this time should shorten.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC) and customer lifetime value (CLV)
Another great metric to track is your customer acquisition cost, which is the total amount you’ve spent to gain a new customer. When your sales process is optimized, the CAC should decrease.
At the same time, the customer lifetime value, which is calculated by multiplying the lifespan of the customer with average annual purchases, should increase. For example, Hilary may want to create a sales strategy to increase CLV with cleaning packages or add in additional pool maintenance programs.
Win rates and sales team performance
While sales are often the combined results of marketing and sales work, it can be worthwhile to focus on your sales team’s performance. To measure this, look at the win rate, which is the percentage of deals that close in a specific time period. Win rates can have a seasonal nature for many industries, but you can still compare them from year to year.
If the win rates are low, you know there is room for improvement in your sales team. Consider adding new training or discuss solutions with your sales managers.
Take charge of your business sales with a tailored sales process
It can take some time to think through a business sales process, but you can consider it a long-term investment in the sales cycle of your company. When you create a buyer persona, establish clear goals, and develop a clear strategy for expressing your value proposition, it is easier to line up new customers and strengthen the relationships with your existing ones.
To begin this work, schedule a time to meet with your sales managers to create a baseline for how the sales team currently operates. Learn about the informal process of the various sales professionals and identify strengths and places for improvement. Once you know the starting point, you can start researching, brainstorming, improving, and streamlining.
