The Five Step Plan to Build Sales Process for Your Team
Regardless of what industry you are in and what your company does, sales will form an integral part of your business’s success. The problem is, many business owners aren’t experienced in the art of sales, but more at building awesome products that people love. So, if this is you and you need help getting your sales team on the right path to success with a guided sales process, here is the five-step plan to follow.
1. Start Reaching Out to Potential Customers
Before you even have a sales process in place, you should start reaching out to customers yourself and discussing the product you offer. You will quickly get a good idea of the actual pains your customers face and where your product can help to cure those pains. You can do this through a variety of mediums, be it cold-calling, emailing or meeting face-to-face.
2. Create Some Qualifying Criteria
By talking to enough customers and knowing who is most likely to buy, you should start developing qualifying criteria for what makes a good lead. For example, you need to identify exactly what sort of customer persona can afford your product, has the exact problem you solve and who have the authority to actually purchase from you.
3. Build a Sales Script
Once you know how to sell your product, it is time to formulate a rough script of the process you take when trying to sell to somebody. This script is essentially the journey you take someone on, from identifying their exact pain points, to highlighting how your product solves these pain points, to eventually closing them.
4. Craft a Sales Funnel
A sales funnel is the process someone goes through from first hearing about you, to eventually making a purchase. Typical funnels are something along the lines of captured email –> initial outreach –> qualified individual –> used the sales script –> closed deal.
5. Test, Test, and Test!
No sales process will be perfect at the start, and it’s important for you to recognize this. As such, you should always be looking for ways to tweak the process and make it more effective. At the same time, however, there is nothing wrong with building this process early on so that you and your team all have a base starting point.
Advantages of Having a Sales Process:
- Increases productivity
- Improves sales efficiency
- Ability to focus on qualified leads
- Increases the chance of upselling
- More accurate forecasting
- Increase in sales closing
- Establishes the stronger relationship between company and customers
Ultimately, being successful in building your sales process means putting in the time to personally understand the entire customer journey. Then, you should work closely with your team to test and iterate the plan to optimize results. With a little hard work and creativity, you can soon have the perfect sales process to help scale your company and grow.