Have you formally defined your organization’s sales process?
In other words, have you documented the specific steps you or your sales team must execute to move from identifying a lead to closing the sale?
If so, are they the right steps? Have you mapped the key objectives and activities for each step? How about measuring team performance on a step-by-step basis? Are people working on the right things? Have you identified the best opportunities for continually improving each step and, as a result, the entire process?
We’ve found that those who place a strong focus on these things are able to execute the sales process much more effectively and, as a result, enjoy a number of advantages, which include:
- Consistent approach which can more easily be analyzed and continually improved, most often resulting in a greater competitive advantage
- Common language throughout the organization, facilitating more effective strategizing
- More consistent and diligent lead qualification, thus promoting efficiency and reducing waste
- More precise definition of transaction status and progress, thus more accurate forecasting
- More comprehensive need assessment, which promotes a consultative selling style and higher margins; better assessment also tends to bring-about a heightened responsiveness to customer needs, interests and priorities, and often yields larger average order size
- Heightened ability to incorporate the voice-of-the-customer into organizational decision-making
- Higher levels of conscious competence and team development
- Shorter sales cycles
- More natural closing
- A better customer experience, as the “diligent” execution promotes differentiation