Sales Process Design

Companies that deploy a formal sales process, when compared to the mean, win  more, have shorter sales cycles and generate 2x the revenue per head.

The reason they have been able to consistently produce above average results is due in part because they have a formal sales methodology that the sales follow to manage their opportunities.

Sales process is focused on having a clear understanding of the customers buying process, mapping the company’s sales process directly to it, defining the work flows an opportunity needs to adhere to, and managing to the mission critical process of accelerating an opportunity from one stage to the next.

A Sales Process that is Properly Followed Produces these Results:

1. An improvement in forecasting accuracy
2. Repeatability of successes
3. Sales managers converting from administrators to effective coaches
4. Higher customer satisfaction due to improved rep professionalism

 
A high-performance sales process will allow you to scale your business, grow revenues and profits, and outperform your competitors. But the correct foundation is critical. Like others who have transformed the way they manage their sales process, you can overcome inertia and lead your organization to higher levels of performance.

Let’s ask some questions about your current sales process.

• Does it accurately describe each of the steps that your sales force must take to convert a prospect to a customer?
• Is your CRM system able to capture each critical action that your sales team completes? 
• Does it move sequentially through the selling process with logically-named stages like “Identify, Qualify, Present, Close and Implement?”

If you feel a churning sensation in your stomach caused by too many deals that are delayed or lost, your process is probably upside-down. Here’s a story that explains it:

In 2002, IBM undertook an enterprise-wide restructuring of their sales organization in order to capture a greater share of available market. More specifically, they reorganized a conglomeration of small sales organizations that had evolved in separate high-growth businesses over the years. To do this, they invested heavily in developing a unified sales process and deployed it across their combined 40,000-person direct sales force.

The result was SSM – the “Signature Selling Method.” It was revolutionary because it was the first large-scale effort to directly map the sales process to the way customers buy. It was influenced by the evolution of new buying behaviors caused by the internet.

Rather than focus on steps that a salesperson must complete, SSM measures movement through the sales process based upon actions the customer takes. Instead of CRM metrics to track sales rep actions, it tracks “verifiable outcomes” of customer progress through the buying process. The stages of the process have names like “Evaluate Options” and “Resolve Concerns and Decide.” These are not events in the sales process, but steps along the buyer’s journey.

When you look at a diagram of the SSM process, you see that the boxes showing the steps in the Customer Buying Process stretch across the top.

At the bottom of the diagram, there is a row of corresponding steps in the sales process that encourage, facilitate or gain agreement on each step of the buyer’s process.

​Traditional sales process diagrams either ignore the buyer’s process entirely or map it upside-down, as though the selling process dominates the buying process, rather than moving in harmony with it.

​A successful sales process must recognize that selling methodology is one part of a comprehensive buying-selling process. How could this impact you? And how can you improve the performance of your organization like IBM did?

1. Know that it can be done. Maybe your organization doesn’t have the resources of an IBM, but we now know that inertia is not an insurmountable obstacle. The two key ingredients for any successful transformation are clear vision and strong will.
2. You can stand on the shoulders of giants. You don’t need a breakthrough discovery to build a high-performance sales process. Leverage the lessons from IBM's Signature Selling and re-tool your sales process to focus on your customer’s buying process.
3. Your situation is unique. You cannot simply implement SSM. You must tailor your own sales process to your specific circumstances. Ask your top sales performers about how their customers make decisions. And talk to your best customers and find out the steps they followed in a recent purchase of your product or service. Understand the buying process and map your selling process to support and accelerate it.
4. Identify the “verifiable outcomes.” Customers generally purchase your products or services in similar ways. There are common actions that they take to move forward (and backward) in their buying process. Identify these outcomes, or find surrogates that indicate they have occurred. Use these to gain agreement with customers throughout the process. If there is some variation by vertical or market, you may discover more than one buying process. You need a selling process to match it, too.
5. Document it. Train it. Inspect it. Embrace it. Enhance it.

Contrast the new customer-focused sales process with the upside-down approach, and the difference is clear!

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