What Is a Sales Process?
The sales process is the steps a seller takes to move a potential buyer through the sales funnel, from being aware of the product or service to being interested, then wanting it, and finally wanting to buy it.
Awareness: The customer knows about a particular product or service.
Interest: The customer shows a lot of interest in the business offer.
Desire: The customer wants to buy a brand, service, or item.
Action: The customer does something that moves them closer to buying the company, service, or product they want.
The process itself is very different between companies, industries, and salespeople. To close a sale, each person has their criteria and steps.
Since marketing experts and academics study how customer behavior changes over time, they have changed the sales process model to account for new technologies and how people buy things today. The model, also known as the “purchase funnel,” has been used in many areas, such as lead creation, online search, and pay-per-click (PPC) advertising.
When a consumer learns about a product and decides to buy it, this is called the sales process. The term “sales process” can also describe the steps CRM programs and campaigns take to manage leads, which are meant to reach customers at all stages of their journey.
Synonyms
- Sales workflow
- Sales stages
- Purchase funnel
- Purchasing funnel
Advantages of a Good Sales Process
The way a business sells things can make or break its roots. Because of this, it’s even more critical for businesses to ensure they have a good sales process in place to get the benefits and keep customers.
Better sales performance
A robust sales process has many advantages; one of them is that it makes selling go faster. Inefficiencies can be easily found and fixed by ensuring everyone takes the same steps, uses the same technology, systems, and solutions, and keeps the data in the sales funnels up to date. With this, you don’t have to do things like follow up multiple times. There’s also less chance of losing customer data, and sales reps have a solid foundation for their sales that they can use repeatedly to secure leads.
Much faster hiring of sales reps
When everyone in a company uses the same sales process, it’s much easier to update, change, and improve certain parts. For instance, if a business needs to hire more sales reps to meet its yearly goals, it may need to increase its sales efforts. It’s much easier to bring new team members on board and train them when everyone uses the same tools and systems. This is especially true if you already have a good sales process.
Keeping up sales
Regarding sales, uniformity is essential in two main areas: how the sales process works and how the brand is represented.
As part of the entire sales process, the sales process can provide consistency in sales. This lets sales managers quickly figure out where the problems are and suggest behavior changes to ensure that their sales reps are doing and saying the right things at the correct times. The result is that selling behaviors will be more consistent across the company because the sales process is better. This will also speed up sales results.
Able to be measured and tracked
Reporting, measuring, and keeping track of sales are essential parts of the sales process. That’s why sales results that are easier to measure and keep track of come from a good sales process. Businesses can easily see and keep track of every interaction with a customer if they use the right technology, systems, and processes and ensure that the whole sales team follows them. This makes everything more transparent and more accessible to everyone.
Sales reps who are more interested and happy
Effective sales processes do more than boost sales, keep customers happy, and make sales more efficient. They also make the experience of sales reps better. A more streamlined sales process that works for both the business and its target customers and for sales reps makes employees more engaged, willing to learn, and eager to see results. This makes employees happier and more likely to stay loyal to the company, which saves time, resources, and money for the business.
A good sales process has many benefits, but businesses must first figure out how to improve the current process before they can think about how to make it even better.
How to make your sales process better
There are a few essential things businesses can do to improve their sales process and turn a useless one into a good one.
Look at your current sales method and decide what works and what doesn’t.
To improve the sales process, the first thing that needs to be done is to look at the present one. Businesses need to know what’s working and what’s not so they can improve. Companies can figure out why certain parts aren’t working as well once they know where to improve them. Back-end systems might not be properly connected, so they’re not giving the sales team real-time data. This means different reps follow up with the same customer more than once. This could ruin the experience of a possible customer and cause you to lose customers and money in the long run.
Outline the steps a buyer takes.
A good sales process should consider every step of the customer journey. If a business wants to improve the sales process, it needs to make a plan for the buyer’s journey and every possible touchpoint. Making buyer personas, which divide target audiences into groups and list their shared traits, buying habits, and preferred purchase paths, is one way for businesses to plan these trips. Businesses need to think about things like the preferences of different groups and the best ways to sell, like online vs. offline, among other things.
List each step in the sales process.
The four main parts of the buying journey are awareness, interest, desire, and action. The sales process is made up of five to seven specific steps:
- Prospecting: Hubspot describes prospecting as “the process of initiating and developing new business by searching for potential customers, clients, or buyers for your products or services.”
- Preparation: This is where the sales rep then conducts research and analysis into the customer(s) they want to target, their pain points, and how the product or service they are selling can alleviate those pain points.
- Approach: Next, it’s time to approach the customer. This may be through an event, networking, email, or phone; research shows that 92% of all customer interactions happen via SMS or even through targeted marketing or advertising techniques. There are a few different types of approach methods, including.
- Premium: where the salesperson offers a gift within the first interaction
- Question: Engaging the potential customer by posing a question
- Product: offering a free trial or sample of the goods or service being offered
- Presentation: This is perhaps one of the most critical steps, demonstrating how the product or service being sold to the prospect can alleviate the challenges that they’re facing.
- Handling objections: Once the presentation aspect is over, the customer will undoubtedly have concerns and trepidations. This is the phase where the sales rep needs to address these concerns and reassure the prospect.
- Closing: The prospect now decides whether they’re going to move forward with the deal or not.
- Follow-up: The final stage of the cycle is to follow up. This stage is essential for the sales rep to maintain a relationship, keeping a customer retained, satisfied, engaged, and loyal—possibly upselling.
Remove Roadblocks
Get rid of obstacles.
Taking out obstacles in the sales process can be challenging, but it can also be very satisfying. It would be best if you had a mix of skills and knowledge to get past the problems that stand in your way and reach the customer. You can make sales more efficient, and turn leads into customers if you know how to find and fix problems that might get in the way of the sales process. The first thing you need to do to spot possible problems is understand how they appear in your sales process. The most common problems that stop people from buying are harmful marketing materials, lousy customer service, people not trusting your brand or product, leads or customers not responding, confusing pricing structures, or economic downturns. Identifying these problems early on lets you do something about them before they cause damage that can’t be fixed.
Create an easy-to-use sales process.
A sales process that can be used repeatedly is an essential step for any business. Ensuring customers always get the same high-quality service from the business helps build trust and customer happiness. Having a process that can be used repeatedly also cuts down on mistakes when dealing with customers, which leads to better ties with those customers. Having a process that can be used repeatedly also helps salespeople learn how to do their jobs well. Employees can quickly learn the skills they need to do their jobs correctly and efficiently if you give them clear advice on each step of the sales journey and make templates for everyday tasks. This also helps workers feel more confident because they can do their jobs without guessing what is expected of them every time. Lastly, having a sales process that can be used repeatedly saves time by cutting down on steps or jobs that aren’t needed when dealing with customers. This can help employees be more productive because they can help more customers while still giving excellent service.
Set up KPIs.
To see how well salespeople and their teams are doing, you need key performance indicators (KPIs). It’s not all about hitting quarterly goals, though. KPIs should also include how many prospects a sales rep has contacted, how many contact points have been made, or how often the sales process has been initiated and finished. Companies need to set KPIs and ensure they align with their general sales goals.
Check and Record
A good sales process doesn’t work the same way for everyone. The sales process may need to be tested and measured regularly to get the desired results, depending on the business goals and the desired results. Businesses must contact their sales reps daily to get feedback and find ways to improve. When new systems, technologies, or processes are put in place, they must be checked often to ensure they’re working as planned.
