A recent TOPO Benchmark report revealed that 59% of companies lack a clear sales process. A strong sales process is crucial because it provides a reliable method to help prospects make buying decisions. While it’s termed a “sales” process, don’t be misled by the name – it impacts all teams that interact with customers. Even if you belong to the 41% that have a clear process, there’s no assurance that it will grow with your organization as it expands.
In today’s vlog, I sat down with Craig Rosenberg, Chief Analyst at TOPO, and ask him, “How do you design and manage a sales process that will scale?” He takes a very simplified approach to help teams build processes around people and action.
Here’s Craig!
TRANSCRIPT:
– So how do you design and manage a sales process that will scale? Hey everyone, Brandon Redlinger here, Director of Growth at Engagio. And the clown that’s laughing with me today is the one and only Craig Rosenberg, here to explain to us his thoughts on the topic.
Sure, let’s just say it’s really important, okay? It’s one of the key things you can do. So, I’ll keep it straightforward. We need to understand the buyer’s journey. Not in a cheesy way, like what coffee they prefer, but more about how they usually assess products similar to yours.
And look, it doesn’t take that long. People make it really hard, but it’s not. It’s just simple things like do they trial? How many people are typically involved? Those things do matter because the next thing you’re gonna do is, I believe sales process should be driven by very specific but sequential plays.
So the first thing you do is discovery, then you do the pitch, then you do the demo, then you do the trial, then you deliver a proposal. I don’t like when they’re given, sort of, conceptual names. Sort of, give it the main pockets.
I think sales people think in terms of action. So you identify the plays you wanna run, okay? Those become the steps, and then you define it. You model it, you don’t just say, “We’re gonna do a demo.” You say, “Here’s how we’re gonna do the demo. Here’s how long it’s gonna take, here’s what’s gonna happen after. Here’s what we have to enable against it.”
And you build the process against the plays. I think, you know, I think we make it a lot harder than it needs to be. I think most people know the plays they should run. And let’s document that, and then let’s figure out how we want to run that.
That will inform a lot of things. For example, if a demo is a 20 minute quick one, it might not have as much of a meaningful impact on advancing the customer as the next step. Where as in some demos, like ERP demos are two hour demos, and they’re customized. You’re gonna come out of that with the ability to get them proposed. You know what I mean.
So it’s like two, so it’s the same play, it’s just how you do it is gonna have a direct impact on where that puts you in the sales process. But look man, I mean I’m telling you, we’re gonna figure out the plays. We’re gonna figure out the most common sequence in those plays, then we’ll model a process after that. One more thing before I go through those. The every buyers are on snowflake thing. Okay, cause they get that every once in a while. It’s always young guys like you too, it’s ridiculous.
– I never said that in my life.
– Yeah, I know, thank you. It’s funny because when someone says that to me I go, great, do they listen to your pitch, yes. Do they watch a demo, yes. Okay, do they do a trial, yes. I’m just thinking, so what’s different? I think people get confused about the ups and downs, in between play steps. And think that that’s some weird, individual. Everyone says “Ah,” and it’s this shoots and ladders. And it’s all over the place, of course it is. But at its core, there’s a reason why most sales process look the same, because most buying processes look the same.
– There you go.
– There you have it.
– I love it.
– How about that?
– Great.
– Alright.
– Sounds good.
– We need a Colonel sword.
– We’ll do it again, here.
– What is that? Oh, it’s just tape, we’re good. It’s not lettuce, yeah that’s good.
– Colonel
– Oh man, alright. Well that actually doesn’t stop getting old. Two things is the intro and the ending. Those things can make me laugh hysterically. If you can make me laugh, you’re one of my best friends for life. So you did that, so you did it buddy.
– Thank you sir.