Sales Strategy Turned into Sales Process

John Golden, the Chief Strategy Officer of Pipeliner CRM, interviewed me recently to understand the most important topics related to the creation and implementation of sales process. Listen in below on the topics we cover this week, and the recommendations made on how you can drive revenue through a customized sales process.

Q: You get your sales strategy down and you’ve done your proper homework and you want to translate this into a functional and well defined sales process, what are the first steps?

A: Well the first steps are to understand how people are buying from you, who are those individuals and what are the activities that they will be taking on as they determine what needs are in the organization. How will these individuals go through and make a purchasing process? How do they acquire products or services? Before we get into the selling and the misnomers of a sales process, we want to make sure we understand what’s happening on the customer or the prospect side to actually procure your product or service.

Q: One of the things I’ve come across a lot in the past is: you lay out a sales process but people interpret the stages differently. Define what happens within a sales process stage.

A: Yes, we define what happens in a sales process for the customer or prospect first, then we go in and figure out what things the seller or people who are supporting the seller should be doing during those stages. Are you advancing or are you continuing in stages? What’s the exit? The exit has to be agreed from one stage to the next by the prospect or the customer. We put these things in and don’t want it to be burdensome in a sales process. It doesn’t have to be contractual every time but we do need to get an agreement that we’re moving forward and it’s based on the definition within those stages.

 

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Sales Methodology is Dead: Long Live Your Customized Sales Process

It’s been thirty years since the inception of sales methodology as a product or service offering within the overall sales training industry. In the 80s, training programs like SPIN Selling, Solution Selling and Professional Sales Skills (PSS) were developed with the purpose of teaching sales teams to sell more effectively. This intellectual property (IP) was then licensed to organizations for their internal use. The burgeoning sales training field was accelerated with the Information Technology (IT) revolution in the late 80s, and even further with the explosion of the Internet in the 90s. And it remains ubiquitous today, as nearly all sales organizations have attempted to adopt one or more training methodologies to improve their performance.

We often speak to sales leaders who have been through two, three or four different methodologies and have become fatigued with the various iterations of what is the “best” way to sell. Too often companies try to get a certain methodology to work within their unique markets without taking the time to customize the steps, tools and content that will be used to approach their customers. This never works – instead of improving sales effectiveness, you instead lose the confidence of your team as they’ve invested their time and energy in a failed program.

Major shifts have occurred in buying behavior, as well as new strategies for customer engagement. Current sales methodologies have components that work and others that don’t. A customized sales process is good because it is designed solely for your organization, one that includes tools specifically geared for your teams and your customers. You can leverage the investments you’ve already made to make your sales organization even more effective.

What is certain with customization is that sales teams are much more likely to participate in a sales process that is uniquely theirs. A collaborative process helps create wide-scale buy-in from marketing, customer service, inside sales, technical support and other customer-facing departments.

If your organization has tried to adopt a sales methodology without success, or just needs some fine-tuning in your current process, please consider Flannery Sales Systems’ expertise to give your sales managers and teams a customized sales process approach. Visit our web site at www.drive-revenue.com. There are sure to be several questions and topics to consider, but whether you do this with us or with someone else, just remember — YOUR SALES PROCESS is the answer.

Pipeliner CRM visually empowers sales teams with their precisely customized sales processes. Download a free trial now.

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