What sales process do you follow?

How well do you know it – well enough to sense when something starts to break?

Most who sell follow some sort of process, or try to.

Maybe it works well because you follow it, or maybe you follow it because it works – but both have to happen - consistently!

Taking the process apart to look at it can be very productive.  Who knows what you might find if you do?

Maybe there’s a step that just doesn’t work.  The results or outcomes you want just don’t happen when you follow that part of the process.  That’s GREAT news!  The first step in fixing a problem is finding it – and if you find one broken part in your sales process, that may be what’s holding you back.

Maybe there’s a step that’s often skipped, like a follow-up note.  When you skip a step, you’re breaking the process yourself.  How many sales are lost for a simple missed step? 

 

Maybe there’s a step that only a very few can do with any skill.  That’s great news, too!  Just isolate and model how the best do exactly that part – and then "clone" that excellence for others.  (The cloning's a separate skill from selling, which I'll cover in another blog)

 

On Jan 23 Scott Plum and I are going to walk through some sales processes we each know, from various sources, so everybody can see -- they’re all built on the same frame, in theory at least. 

 

The difference is in execution -- how whatever process really gets used.  What matters is what the salesperson actually does "in the moment" - and that's not always the same process they espouse.

Then we’ll take a volunteer from the participants, and do “real-time mapping” to document exactly how his/her sales process works.  I’ll use XSOL software to do this rapid redesign exercise so everyone can see how the process fits together and works.

What usually happens in a conversation like that, about how a process really, really works, is this:

As it gets more specific, some things just pop out as obvious opportunities for improvement.  Some things might turn out to be broken, redundant, or waste.  Sometimes there's a Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious - which can be really valuable.

 

Or it might be that one attendee will be absolutely vindicated that she / he has the perfect sales process, combined with flawless execution.

And if that happens, I’ll wonder why they’re in a sales process workshop, instead of on a beach in Cancun…

Here’s a link to register for it: RSVP – Click Here

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?