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Have you struggled to close that deal with a prospective client?
It happens and when deals aren’t closed, the flow on effects are can be damaging to your sales pipeline.
Your sales process and your sales pipeline impact how you close a deal.
What is a sales process?
A sales process is a clear and defined set of steps your salespeople follow to add prospects to your sales pipeline.
At SG Partners we have assisted sales leaders, managers, salespeople and organisations to improve their sales processes for more than 10 years.
Sales Leaders/Managers, ask yourself:
Why stick with something that isn’t bringing growth, revenue and market share to your organisation?
Here are my top 3 steps to assisting your sales team’s sales process:
1. Review your sales team’s sales activities:
Before you can build out your sales team’s sales process, you need to have a clear understanding of what your team are doing on a day-to-day basis.
Be sure to review your salespeople’s individual pipelines. What are they succeeding at? What are they struggling with? Do they require further coaching / training? Can they effectively use the organisation’s CRM?
From this, you as a sales leader will have a clear map on how long it takes each salespeople to prospect, identify, engage and close a deal.
2. Speak with your salespeople about what works for them:
It sounds simple, though this is often forgotten. Having a one-on-one chat with each of your salespeople will add further to your understanding of them on an individual level and as a sales team. A simple 10-15 minute conversation is all you need.
Ask each salesperson:
What is your current sales process?
How do you prospect and what tools do you use to engage with prospects?
Do you actively engage with the company’s CRM?
What is your ideal prospect to close timeframe?
Do you require further training or coaching to assist in creating more for our company’s sales pipeline?
By collating information from each of your one-on-one team catch ups, you can now build out your sales team process.
3. Be open and transparent to change:
There is no set and forget when it comes to building out and maintaining a sales process. Check in monthly with your team’s sales process, maintain regular one-on-one catch ups with your salespeople and analyse your CRM data weekly. If change is required, make it happen.
