Optimizing your team’s sales process is a job that’s never finished. With new growth targets always part of the equation as well as changes in buyer behavior, you need a process that allows you to effectively recognize and take advantage of needed improvements.
Below are four tips for evaluating the effectiveness of your sales process.
Focus on Your Buyer
Elite sales teams have a sales process that’s focused on one thing — the buyer. If your process isn’t aligned with how your buyers buy, it will never be effective. A common mistake is to assume that one process fits all. Your market likely has different segments of buyers that have different needs. Some have regimented buying processes, while others may be less refined. All have their own key decision criteria. Your sales process needs to adjust for these different buyers. If you take a one-process-fits-all approach, you aren’t accounting for the different buyer scenarios and your sales process may unintentionally weed out real opportunities.
Simplify and Support
The best sales processes are simple but effective, and supported throughout your entire enterprise. Every person involved in the company knows his or her role and timing within the full customer engagement process. Every department in your organization has some part to play in selling and delivering value for your customers. Your sales process must facilitate the efficient coordination of people, resources, and activities, from those departments when needed by your sellers. As with anything, if it’s too difficult to follow, then it will fall by the wayside and reps will resort to bad habits.
Incorporate Best Practices
It is a mistake to look at your top rep and simply tell others to sell like that person. However, replicating key behaviors of your top performers with the rest of your team can help you instill best practices throughout the organization.
Document the key activities that should happen during prospecting, presentations, handling concerns, scoping, negotiations, etc… Don’t hesitate to elicit feedback from the team and adjust the new process as necessary.
Let Managers Coach
The best selling process is managed by a great sales coach. Your organizational culture must therefore support a sales manager’s ability to evaluate, coach and communicate with the team. A well-defined sales process will provide the manager with many opportunities to collaborate and enhance any particular sales campaign. Leverage the process with guidelines for how to use it. Encourage sales managers to find ways to leverage the organization while helping their sales people be more competitive, qualify better and productively win the right sales campaigns.
If evaluating your sales process is a top priority for your team, download the ebook: Improving Your Sales Process to get started now!