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Many people think that a sales win is a mysterious mix of luck, gifted sales representatives, and timing — full of elements you have little control over. But that’s a fallacy (and a lazy one). Employing strategic methods and processes improves sales efficiency. A structured sales process is key to increasing your chances of winning. In this article, we are pleased to share with you some considerations about how sales processes (so often forgotten or underused) are of critical importance in selling.
This article is particularly relevant for Software as a Service companies evolving in a Business to Business environment. It was co-written with Jean-Marc Bellot, business partner with CustomerCentric Selling.
Before going any further, we should define what a process is. We hear the word “process” a lot in everyday business jargon, and without thinking, we use processes every day. One can define a process as consisting of two elements: a succession of steps to get a result, and the particular order of those steps. Let’s take an example: consider a plane travelling from A to B as a process. In fact, it is a sequence of steps to achieve one result: get to B. Steps include going to the airport of A, passing through security, getting on the plane, flying, and landing at B. You cannot remove any steps (who can fly without going through security?) and you cannot change the order (obviously, you cannot fly without going to an airport first). The result is achieved by taking steps in order = the process.
Now that we have defined what a process is, let’s dig into what we’re all here for: sales processes, a succession of steps, executed by a sales representative, to take a prospect from initial interest to closure. Structured sales process is crucial when it comes to scalability. Two things help determine this: whether you have in your team at least one sales representative and ten clients to set up a structured organization, and/or you have shareholders, to present them with reassuring structured methods designed to bring high winning rates.
Is this a match ? Perfect ! With an implemented sales process, you’ll be able to: • Focus on the right deals with better qualification and reliable Go/NoGo qualifications, • Examine deals with a common language: defining steps and processes will allow you to have a common understanding amongst the sales representatives, and a clearer view on how sales deals are moving forward during sales meetings, • Forecast right with the help of a better and more documented pipeline to hit targets, • Hire better: you’ll notice the positive influence of your sales processes on the hiring, onboarding, and training processes — new talents are more likely to go to a company where the onboarding and the sales processes are clearly defined, • Structure your budget better, • And most of all, drive your sales efficiency.
Let’s consider you’re a salesperson about to meet a prospect. It’s understandable to come to an introduction meeting and to talk about your product, you’re entitled to be proud of it and it definitely has great features. But when you think about it, it’s not the features that convince your prospect to buy, but the fact that the prospect believes his or her needs will be met by these features.
You create and sell a customer value, not features.
Let’s take an example. Just imagine that you have developed a technology to tag automatically images. If you sell on features, the pitch will look like “instead of tagging images manually, our technology allows an immediate and automatic tagging of the images of your products”. Good and accurate, but that pitch risks your prospect failing to see the link between your technology and his issues. Selling based on value, however, the sales pitch sounds more like this: “you’ll detect new trends on social networks faster and easier thanks to our automatic tagging technology”. Now the pitch is focused on the prospect’s need and on the value your product brings. Just imagine the difference in terms of deal size for the same technology between these 2 pitches !
This is why we advise focusing on the Customer Centric Selling method, a method that consists of making the customer or prospect see that your solution is the best way to reach their targets and tackle their issues.
We’re now getting to the sales process; a sales process focusing on value and customer needs.
During a sales process, you will meet three levels of representatives: