When we ask sales leaders if they have a sales process, they often respond that they have Salesforce.com. A CRM like Salesforce is a useful tool that supports a sales process, but it in itself is not a process. And a well-defined and adopted sales process is critical for repeatable revenue generation. Put simply, you cannot have sales success without it.
You may be wondering what exactly we mean by a sales process? A sales process is what happens once your sales organization acquires a lead. Things like:
- How do they initiate contact? How do they respond to gatekeepers?
- When they have only a minute to speak to a potential prospect, what do they say?
- How are they setting appointments, and what do those appointments look like?
- How are they qualifying prospects and moving them through each sales stage?
- How do they interact with your CRM to capture key account information?
If you are unsure of how your sales team is handling these activities or know that there is a wide degree of variability from rep to rep, you are in need of defining or refining your sales process, and we’ve worked with lots of companies to do just that