Learning a sales process

In the last blog, there's an applied checklist to see if your sales process is, well, a process at all (as opposed to random hopeful activity, sometimes getting results).

Let's think together for a moment about how you (and anyone else who sells with / for you) learn and improve your selling process.  And comments / additions / disagreements are most welcome!

First, let me confess one bias, from an observation by my friend Bob Davis of the McCourt agency of Wilson Learning - most salespeople seem to have ADD / ADHD. 

That's often a great asset - it adds liveliness, charm, hyper-focus when it's needed, very high intelligence, great creativity, and the ability to notice things others miss.

The liability comes with following rules - especially when that's a highly complex sales process.  (I actually saw one flow-charted out that took two pages and had about 30 steps - and the IT executive who created the process was really frustrated that nobody would use it to sell)

So how can you balance the need for a process with a smart, creative salesforce that would rather do anything else than follow the "rules" of the process? 

From working with salespeople for several years, and coaching and teaching sales, these guidelines for instituting a sales process seem to work -

Sensible - The process has to make sense to the salespeople.  If it's more convoluted than necessary, they'll employ their creativity to find ways around it.  Making it graphically oriented helps those who think visually, and makes it more memorable for the rest.

Easy - Salespeople are hyper-focused on results, and resent what smells of bureaucracy (which is why getting them to do expense reports, much less input into a CRM, can be challenging).  If it's easy, they can explain it to you - without notes, in less than two minutes.  And then they'll use it.

Linked - The process has to be connected in several ways.  The first link is to compensation - how does following the process effect their pay?  It also has to link to how the client or customer gets what's promised.  When there's a clear line from "I spend one minute filling this out..." to "My client/customer gets what I promised - so they're glad to see me again!" --salespeople will get that done.

Learning - Salespeople love to tell stories!  And the best salespeople are always looking for ways to sharpen their skills.  What if stories got captured, in a way that the others who sell got better prepared for their next sale?  What if SNAFU (Situation Now All Fouled Up) stories also got shared, as warnings of what to watch out for?  What if your salesforce could get smarter with every call?

So if your sales process is Simple Easy Linked & Learning (SELL), you stand a much better chance of it really working.

What do you think?