Often, I ask executives, “What is your sales process?” And often blank stares follow. “What do I mean sales process?” And with no surprise, the CEO is the culprit more often than not. The thoughts swirling in his executive head “is this guy is an idiot, our product is so great we just show up.” Show up and throw up is not a sales process.
A sales process has two characteristics; the process is defined and is measurable. Consider a sales team with 4 directs and a sales manager. The Monday meeting starts with “what are your top 5 deals?”
Each salesmen, in turn, describes deals in detail. The meeting eats time and money, lasting 2 hours. Meetings are ok but what if the sales process had teeth? All would know what “qualified” meant, what each sales stage which are the building blocks of the sales process is. How to define each stage is trained and is now communicated in the sales meeting.
As the process is worked by each salesman, metrics are collected. Close rates at each stage builds accuracy into a forecast. Now the sales team can see where deals reside, in a process. And best of all the process can be improved.
