Decide Your Sales Process

Sales Process Means Deciding

contact classification, milestones, responsibilities and tools

20% of the salespersons intuitively know what to do but for the remaining 80% there must be a specific sales process that details steps along the way and the tools to use at each step. You should define and standardize your company's sales process based on best practices within your team, your industry, and the sales field in general. Here are some guidelines for creating a sales process workflow to get you started:

Decide Contact Classification Clearly

Start by defining who’s who by defining contact type

Suspect. A suspect is a name only and it may only be a company name. You may not know the contact name of the buyer most likely to purchase your products and services. Or, if you have a name, it may be a reader of a publication, a listener to a radio station, or an attendee at a trade show, and you don't know if this person is the appropriate buyer. You only suspect this "entity" is a target for your products or services. Your goal is to engage with him so you can know if he is a prospect.

Prospectis a suspect that has come in contact and have dealt with you in some way – clicking on a web site, calling up on phone etc. Your goal is to qualify this prospect to the point that you know the decision-maker & he has expressed an interest in your offer..

LeadA prospect becomes a lead when you've established a future (maybe not immediate) need. The more immediate the need, the more hot the lead. Before you can move the lead to the assess phase, you must determine what information you most need to know. For example, what is their decision-making process/timeline, do they understand your offering and value proposition, does your solution align with their business problem, etc?

Customer is someone who bought, or has contracted to buy, your product and/or service.

Decide Engagement Status Funnel Milestones

The process for converting suspects into prospects, prospects into leads, leads into customers is like climbing steps of a ladder. You'd love to be on top but for this to happen; you must make sure you must climb each step properly.

Engage. This is the first milestone in the sales process and usually happens during the Suspect to Prospect conversion phase. Engaging a suspect can include their inquiry into you or your inquiry into them, but does require that you have interacted with the contact (either through marketing or sales efforts) to introduce yourselves, your company, your offering, and uncover their general need.

QualifyOnce you've engaged the suspect and determined they fit your overall target profile, you need to qualify the lead further to make sure it's a "fit" with your company and what you offer. We recommend creating a Lead Qualification Checklist to help define what makes a good lead and to ensure it's fully qualified before moving the lead to the next milestone.

Assess  Once you have qualified the lead using the criteria you defined, you must assess the opportunity before expending the resources to develop a quote or proposal. You want to make sure you understand the key factors driving the lead's buying criteria. Such as, what are the specifics of their need, what is the main decision-making factor, what is their budget, do they understand your value proposition, and are they looking at competition?

ProposeYou've assessed the opportunity to the level you required during the assess stage, and now it's time to move into the proposal stage. Make sure your proposal process is appropriate for the buying cycle. You want your proposal created with the right amount of detail and speed to meet the decision maker's needs. Consider including all terms, as well as credit, inside the proposal to avoid slowing the approval, and therefore the sales process, down.

CloseAt this phase of the pipeline, you must follow-up to uncover and combat any possible objections, negotiate terms, and close the deal. Too many deals are lost at this phase due to neglect. In the sales and marketing industry we call this "dying on the vine." Define what activities, and how often, you must implement during this phase to stay on top of the closing process.

Sale!Hopefully at this point, you've done such a good job of managing your sales process and pipeline that you have moved your lead to a sale. Congratulations! In the event you lose a deal at any phase of the process, make sure to track why.

Decide Responsibilities and Tools 

Finally, you must determine what sales tools you have or need to help move your potential customer through the sales process from milestone to milestone. For instance you will use yellow pages to suspect, telephone calls to prospect, sales force to engage, technical managers to give quotes and manager to negotiate and close.At some stage you will use script, at some stage a video, at some other stage a catalog, etc. These are the tools.