Sales Process Design

"How To Build A Sales Process Map For Your Business"

IIt is important to have a great sales process design for your products and services that captures the best steps and practices for moving your sale through the pipeline. Having a sales process helps you execute each phase of your sales process with assurance that your salespeople are doing the right things at the right time.

Below is an outline of the areas you need to consider when building and documenting your sales process design. This outline will help you create the "gates" that need to be passed through during your sales process. The steps below are broad categories that you can rename or expand to make them more appropriate to your situation. In general though, these are a good set of basic stages to get you thinking about the content of your sales process map. The main areas of consideration are:

Prospect

Prospecting involves all the analysis and activities around identifying potential customers and getting them into the top of your sales funnel. In this stage you identify and initially prequalify potential customers to confirm that an opportunity may exist for your solution. Decide which characteristics will indicate a good possibility of somebody needing your product or service. This is the first step in your sales process design.

Qualify

Qualifying involves determining if a specific opportunity is worth pursuing. The key criteria are whether your products and services can add value to the customer. You will want to develop a list of what characteristics a qualified opportunity has for your organization.

Develop

The next step is to develop your understanding of the customer's requirements. Based on what you learn you need to decide if you can compete with a favorable chance of winning and if you should continue investing.

Solution, Purpose and Objectives

Develop and confirm a solution that meets or exceeds customer business and technical expectations. Craft a solution that gives you a competitive advantage.

Proof

Here is where you position yourself to win by proving your product or service in the customer's environment. And this is when you resolve any differences and issues. Think of the activities you need to ensure that you are addressing the customer's key business issues, and those that give you a competitive advantage.

Close

Closing means that you have won the right to do business with your customer. Finalize agreements and confirm delivery, deployment and the implementation plan. Work with the executives and influential players to gain agreement and move forward. This stage involves people who are generally not part of the sales effort such as management, legal, order processing, finance, etc.

Implement and Support

Once you have the order, the work begins. Turn over implementation and support to the appropriate people in your company and at your customer with plans and resources in place to be successful.

Remember, these stages in your sales process design are not "do it once and be done with it" activities. You and your sales team should always be prospecting. Strategically qualify at multiple points in the sales process to ensure that the limited resources available to your being invested in the best possible way. Throughout the entire sales process, you'll be developing your understanding of the customer's needs, and continually formulating and refining your solution to make it better.

Think strategically as you build each stage of your sales process design. Ask yourself where you want to be in this stage. How do you want to progress from this point in the sales process? What needs to be done to move the sale forward?

Thinking this way will help you build key elements for each step related to your business and products. Look at each stage and determine how it best makes sense for your sales process. Feel free to add your own bullet items in a category if it works better for your situation.

In addition, for each stage outlined above, there are many variables. At a minimum, you need to address the following:

• Purpose and Business Objective - The purpose for each stage defines the reasons for the stage, and the high-level business objectives that you must accomplish.


• Key Sales Indicators - These key indicators are verifiable outcomes and activities completed by your customers. These indicators will help you know that your customer is engaged and acting appropriately, and that you're moving the sale forward.


• Milestones and Key Events - Milestones mark a specific desired achievement at each step of the sales process. Milestones define accomplishments as you complete a stage. It is important to align your milestones with your internal process as well as that of the customers buying process.


• Best Practices - Best practices come from many different sources. They can be from your knowledge, past experiences, training, and input from your team managers and support group. Always consider the best practices available for the current step in the sales process.


• Roles and Responsibilities - At each stage it is important to look at what team members are available to you and how they can best be utilized. Roles and responsibilities will change as you move through the stages of the sales process. Defining proper roles and responsibilities and linking them to actionable outcomes should be reviewed and revised at each stage of the sales process.


• Tools and Resources - There are a lot of resources and tools available to you for each sale. Think in terms of people, product, partners, customer references, infrastructure, money, marketing, and your support team.


• Possible Metrics - Try to determine the things you can measure at each stage of the sales process design. Which data points will confirm that you're doing the right things and moving the sale forward? Look for the key metrics that will help you best run your sales campaign.

The stages and variables you identify for your sales process are not a "must do" list. The goal is to get the order. If you can move a sale along quickly by skipping some steps in your process, and still get the order, then by all means take that road.

On the other hand, if you're stuck for ideas on how to move the sale along, review your sales process for fresh ideas.

In conclusion, a sales process design is like any tool to be used in your selling operations. It should be used to benefit your sales team.

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