SALES PROCESS: A Step-by-Step Guide to Closing Sales Faster

Post Summary:

• Sales reps do not like following routines that are imposed, and one can’t blame them.

• Sales teams that use an easy-to-follow, structured sales process outperform those that don’t. But, how do you create a standardized sales process for your company?

• Here’s a simple 7-Step Sales process which can benefit your sales team, whether you are a B2B or a B2C company. Using the step-by-step process will help you improve your sales performance, sales forecasting accuracy and most importantly – revenue.

One Harvard study revealed that 48% of under-performing organizations have non-existent or informal sales processes.

Another Harvard research showed that businesses with a standardized sales process see up to a 28% increase in revenue as compared to those that do not.

There are a 100 different ways of doing anything. You can go from Europe to Asia by land, sea, air or several combinations of the three.

Unless your objective is to explore the world along the way leisurely, in most cases you will want to reach Asia in the shortest of time with the least amount of money & risk.

Sales people love their freedom and don’t like being tied down to routines,

Working in sales gives them a certain degree of independence in how they go about their daily duties.

Now, imagine leaving it to your sales reps to go from Asia of Europe. Each one will go their way, some will make it to the destination, and some won’t.

 But, what if you had given them a road map and a time frame to reach the destination?

I am sure you’ll agree that. the chances of the sales team reaching their destination would be highest. with a road map.

Well, this is what this article is going to do – give you  a formal sales process that will make your work more effective, improve performance, and even help you close sales quicker.

What is a Sales Process?

What are the 7 steps of the Sales Process?

1. Prospecting
2. Pre-sales Preparation
3. Making the First Contact
4. Discovery Call
5. Proposing The Solution
6. Closing The Sale
7. Nurture

PROSPECTING

According to the dictionary, the word ‘Prospecting’ is a verb, to search for mineral deposits, especially by drilling and excavation.

Prospecting is the first step in the sales process, which consists of identifying potential buyers or prospects.

Just like you mine and sift through a whole lot of soil and find gold, you mine through the internet, telephone directories, industry and consumer databases to arrive at one list or database of potential buyers.

Prospect database is often prepared based on certain specific Demographic, Psychographic and Geographic parameters.

Once this is done, then systematically communicate with them and convert them from being a prospect to a customer.

There are several models and tools to choose from on the internet.

Just keep this formula in mind when you are prospecting regardless of the tool you use.

ABC Formula for Sales Prospecting

Whether you are a B2B or a B2C sales company you may categorize your prospects into 3 broad buckets:

‘A’ category prospects

Companies or individuals with a turnover/net worth exceeding ‘X’ million or number of employees (Ex: $100 Million and above or 5000+ employees)

‘B’ category prospects

Companies or individuals with a turnover/net worth between  ‘X’ & ‘Y’million or number of employees (Ex: between $50 & $99 Million or 2500-4999 employees)

‘C’ category prospects

Companies or individuals with a turnover/net worth within ‘X’ million or number of employees (Ex: between $5 & $49 Million or 500- 2499 employees)

The key principle is to not put all your eggs in one basket.

It is best to have a prospect list with a good mix of A, B & C category prospect. General thumb rule is to have A, B, C in 50-30-20 ratio.

PRE-SALE PREPARATION

At the start of my every sales training program, apart from a ‘skill’ test, I administer a ‘knowledge’ test of 10 questions.

3 questions about the company they are working for, 4 questions about the products they are selling and 3 questions about their competition.

Though the answers to all the questions are available in the public domain, the average score is 20%, across companies big and small, across nationalities & geographies.

If the sales reps are equipped with the requisite knowledge, you don’t have to ask them to be more confident. They will automatically be confident.

Very few sales reps can prepare by themselves. Hence, the responsibility lies with sales leader or the organisation to provide them compelling and persuasive information about the:

1. Company – People, Process, Why they do what they do?
2. Product – USP – Why Buy Me?
3. Competition – Industry Overview, major players, company’s current position in the market and future goals.

MAKING THE FIRST CONTACT

First impression is the last impression. You will not get a second chance to make the first impression.

Making the first contact is like meeting your partner’s parents, for the first time. It is in your interest that – they already know something about you, they were more or less expecting you or at least not taken totally unawares when you make the first contact.

This is what will help you sail through this step –

1. Write an email with a catchy headline, compelling content on some challenges your prospect could be facing and your solution or success stories.
2. Track his response or actions if you have email marketing software which will tell you if your prospect opened the email, how much time did he spend on it and what link/s did he click thereafter.
3. Call him using a specific, tested tele-script or an email that has the elevator-pitch in it and seek an appointment to explore further.

Your objective here is ‘not to make the sale’ set the date and time for the Discovery call. This is a much smaller and reasonable commitment you can attempt to get from the prospect.

DISCOVERY CALL

The objective of this stage is to help the prospect acknowledge the problems and

check his readiness for ‘a’ solution.

This is the most crucial part of the sales process where you need to:

• Understand and make the prospect acknowledge the problems/challenges he/she is facing.
• Make the prospect quantify the loss in terms of money, time and resources of continuing to live with the problem.
• Make the prospect quantify the benefits of solving the problems.

Do not make the mistake of talking about your product at this stage.

Click here for a free ‘Discover Call Template’ with questions you can ask on your very next call!

PROPOSING YOUR SOLUTION

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. This is the stage where the prospects will be making up their minds – to go with you or someone else.

So, what should the goal of your product presentation be?

To INFORM the prospect about your solution? Or,

To INFLUENCE the prospect about your solution?

Most product presentations start with the intent of Influencing, but end up being very benign or just informing.

There are many tools available to package your information to be more incisive, influencing and persuasive like Power of 3, Current state to desired state formula etc

Click here to know more about sales presentations and download template that is guaranteed to wow your prospects and your manager!

CLOSING THE SALE

Like a farmer you have sown the seed during the first contact and grown the fruit during subsequent interactions. Now, the fruit will magically pluck itself and land in your hand.

Of course not, and you know that.

Closing the sale is like harvesting. If you don’t harvest the fruit you have grown, somebody else will.

A.S.K for the sale.

You will lose 100% of the sale you don’t ask for. 

There are many closing techniques like –

Fear Closing – This offer is available till _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _

Assumptive Closing – When do you want the delivery? Which color?

Alternative Closing –

Next Step Closing – Now that we have seen how our solution can help save _ _ _ money/time/effort, the next logical step would be an order confirmation from you.

By when can we have your confirmation?

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NURTURE

There are many reasons why people don’t buy or decide immediately, especially in high-value sales. Just because our product solves their problems doesn’t mean that the sale will be closed within expected timeframe.

Some of the common reasons are:

1. Budget constraints
2. Acceptance by other stakeholders (individuals or departments)
3. Internal crises unrelated to your product.
4. Change in priorities on the clients; side. Etc

Whatever, may be the case, if they met your qualifying criteria, acknowledged their problems, asked / agreed to see your solution, it only means they are not ready yet. They need to be nurtured instead of being pestered with follow-up calls and reminders.

Instead of trying the old world way of following up, Nurture them by doing the following –

1. Keep them engaged with emails of specific, relevant success stories, testimonials, preferably a new one or a more detailed one than the one you may have shared before.
2. Offer to get them to talk to one of your customers to get their questions answered.
3. Do some research on the client’s industry, problems and email some link/info about a report or a research finding.
   
   Summary:

• Sales people like their freedom and do not like routines being imposed on them.

• Several researchs show that sales teams that use an easy-to-follow, structured sales process outperform those that don’t by atleast 25-30%

• Hence, it is important to get the sales reps on board with a simple step-by-step sales process. Using the 7-Step as a template and customising the same will help you improve your sales performance, sales forecasting accuracy and most importantly , revenue.

How did you like this article? Which of the topics, sub-topics do you need help with? Comment below and let me know.

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