Is your sales process broken?
Do you feel like you or your team are working too hard to win new customers?
Do you feel like there a lot of sales activities that don’t necessarily result in winning new customers?
Prospects have different needs for information and guidance in the sales process.
How do you meet these varied needs while stepping prospects through your sales process?
Here are the top three ways to start fixing your sales process to win more deals.
1-Use what the prospect wants to get what you need.
Too often we deliver a demo or present a proposal before we understand what’s important to our prospective customers. When we do this we run the risk of not showing our prospects solutions that are important to them and missing their key issues or concerns.
Use your prospect's requests for more information, a demo, a proposal, etc. to both dig deeper to help you and your prospect get very crisp and clear on what is important to them to solve their problems and to prioritize how you present your solutions to them.
When you have this information, use it to position your demo or proposal presentation to address their key issues in order of importance.
After presenting your solution to each of their key issues, stop and confirm that they feel your proposed solution will resolve their issue.
Keep confirming and refining your solutions until they agree it will resolve their issues completely.
2-Experiment, Test, Measure, Improve
Too often we react to the requests from our prospects without carefully considering how our response will impact our ability to advance a deal at the next step or stage of the sales process.
One example is sending a quote or proposal before fully developing the prospect's problems could result in sending a proposal that is incomplete or not as competitive as it could have been.
We need to be prompt, attentive, and act with urgency with our prospects but we need to guard against acting prematurely.
To improve the quality of your sales process, think about each stage. Start with a blank whiteboard or sheet of paper and ask, “What is the desired result of this stage of our sales process?”
Work backward and define each step that needs to happen for you and the prospect to achieve the desired results.
Then list the tasks and how you will accomplish them for each step.
Next, test the improved process on live deals.
Document and discuss the results.
Keep what’s working and improving the sales process, stop doing what isn’t helping.
Continue to improve and refine the process.
3-Write it Down
Most sales playbooks are reviewed during the annual sales kick-off and rarely referred to for the rest of the year.
Enterprise sales can be very complex
.
Document what works in your sales playbook.
Refer to it and update it regularly. Get in the habit of referring to it when answering questions and debriefing on the successful won deals to get everyone in the habit of using it to improve their odds of winning deals.
When you pause and take the necessary time to update and improve your sales process you’re investing in maximizing the long-term success of your sales team and their ability to generate revenues.
What have you found are the most effective ways to fix a broken sales process? Please let me know in the comments or send me your thoughts!