Review Each Activity Example and Place It Under the Appropriate Step in the Selling Process

Imagine you were asked to speak at an result. How would yous prepare?

Would you wing information technology and say any comes to mind? Or would you create a conspicuously divers outline that adds structure to your talk?

Unless y'all're a master of improv, you lot'll likely create an outline if you want your audition to gain value from your presentation.

Like to a proficient speech, your B2B sales efforts besides need a bit of construction or procedure.

Effective sales processes boost conversions, turn more than potential customers into closed deals, and ensure all of your reps provide customers with positive and consistent experiences — no matter who they're talking to.

However, many sales managers struggle with edifice scalable sales processes that bring in echo business consistently.

That's why we've created this guide to aid yous find the best tactics for building a sales process tailored to your concern.

1. Sales Process Steps

2. How to Better Your Sales Procedure

3. How to Map the Sales Process

4. Sales Procedure vs. Sales Methodology

5. Common Sales Process Mistakes

What is a sales process?

A sales process refers to a series of repeatable steps a sales team takes to move a prospect from an early-stage lead to a closed client. A potent sales process helps reps consistently close deals by giving them a framework to follow.

Why build a sales procedure?

Y'all tin remember of a sales procedure as a map that guides your sales team on their journey to plow potential leads into customers. Without the map, your marketing team's lead generation efforts would quickly go to waste.

Having a standardized sales process could also help less experienced reps quickly get up to speed with best practices and acquire what to practise at different sales stages.

You make more money when you build a proper sales procedure. When you provide your sales team with a common framework, they have a more efficient roadmap to closing deals. For a closer await at the "what," "how," and "why" of sales processes, cheque out this video:

Now that you know what a sales process is and why you should create 1, let'south consider the stages or steps that a typical sales process follows.

7 Step Sales Process

1. Prospect.
2. Connect and qualify leads.
3. Inquiry the company.
4. Give an effective pitch.
5. Handle objections.
6. Close the deal.
7. Nurture and continue to sell.

i. Prospect.

Prospecting is the process of sourcing new, early on-stage leads to brainstorm working through the sales process. It'southward a vital office of the sales process and part of well-nigh reps' daily or weekly workflow.

Prospecting might involve online research on sites like LinkedIn or Quora. Information technology also might take place at conferences or industry events. Additionally, you can prospect by asking current clients or colleagues to refer individuals who might be interested in your product or service.

two. Connect and qualify leads.

The connect stride of the sales process involves reps initiating contact with those early-stage leads to get together data. The second office of this pace is qualifying new leads — deciding whether or not they're a expert-fit pb for your business and whether or not they'll likely motion frontward in the buyer's journey.

A rep tin typically identify qualified leads over a "connect" or "discovery" telephone call (sometimes over email if not via phone) past request qualifying questions like:

• "What is your role inside your company?"
• "What do yous practise day-to-24-hour interval?"
• "What problem are yous trying to solve?"
• "Why is this a priority for your business?"
• "What other solutions are you evaluating?"

3. Research the company.

Next comes the research step, when reps learn more most each prospect and visitor.

Research helps your reps put themselves in the client's shoes to offer a more tailored and personalized experience, thus improving the likelihood of closing a deal.

The crucial part of this stage is agreement each prospect's challenges and needs and establishing your product or service as the solution.

You might need your rep to speak with other people at the company in different departments to become a holistic view of the business concern and its objectives. A skillful salesperson is expected to understand the visitor amend than the individual prospect who works at that place.

four. Give an effective pitch.

The presentation step is typically when your salesperson runs a formal product or service demonstration for your prospect.

This step is time-consuming, so it typically comes later in the sales process and is reserved for more qualified prospects — which is why the connecting and qualifying step is so critical. You don't want a sales rep wasting any of their valuable fourth dimension if information technology's avoidable.

Tailor each presentation to see the specific prospect's unique use instance and pain points. Additionally, a rep might bring an engineer or executive to the meeting with them to demonstrate the level of service the customer will receive when doing concern with your visitor. This besides allows them to answer more technical questions the rep might non be best suited to answer.

v. Handle objections.

It'southward not uncommon for prospects to take objections to your salesperson'due south presentation and proposal. In fact, information technology'due south expected — which is why this is a specific step in the sales process. Your sales team should be prepared to handle any and all objections.

Listening to your prospect's objections and questions tin assistance your reps better tailor your product to fit their needs. Through their research and presentation grooming, reps should place and anticipate possible objections, whether almost cost, onboarding, or other parts of the proposed contract.

6. Shut the deal.

This step of the sales procedure refers to whatsoever late-phase activities that happen as a bargain approaches closing. It varies widely from visitor to visitor and may include delivering a quote or proposal, negotiation, or achieving the purchase-in of decision-makers.

Closing a sale is what every salesperson wants to accomplish. It should result in a mutually benign, contractual understanding between the prospect and the seller. In one case a deal closes, the salesperson receives a committee on the price they negotiated with the client, and the account normally passes to an account manager or customer success representative.

7. Nurture and continue to sell.

Although closing deals is the ultimate goal in sales, it's not where sales reps stop working with customers. Not only should reps confirm that customers receive what they've purchased, simply they should also play a function in transitioning customers to whichever team is responsible for onboarding and customer success.

The final step of the sales procedure likewise involves continuing to communicate and reinforce value to customers. This can provide opportunities to upsell and cantankerous-sell, as well equally opportunities to get secure referrals from delighted customers.

Next, permit'due south unpack how you can ameliorate this process.

How to Improve Your Sales Procedure

1. Analyze your electric current sales procedure.
2. Outline the buyer's journeying for your target persona.
3. Define the prospect action that moves them to the next stage.
4. Define exit criteria for each step of the sales process.
5. Mensurate your sales process results.

These best practices will help you lot meliorate the bear upon of your sales process across your team and customer base.

one. Analyze your current sales process.

Consider what is and isn't working for your sales reps to tailor your new procedure to fit their needs meliorate, as it will help close more deals and delight more than customers.

One way to analyze the success of your electric current sales procedure is to observe reps as they piece of work through the process.

Look back at the last five or ten deals you airtight. What did these deals expect like from get-go to cease? What were the touchpoints with the customer?

Consider roughly how long the entire process took and how much time elapsed between each step. The more examples you have (and the more people on your squad those examples come from), the ameliorate.

Once you've outlined that timeline, work backward to understand the timeframe for each deal. For example, if vi of those x deals closed in approximately six weeks, have a wait at the average steps to get there during that period.

Working backward might look something like this:

• Ane week of deliberation before a signed contract (during the "closing" step)
• Three-to-five follow-upwards emails and phone calls (during the "treatment objections" step)
• I demo (during the "presenting" stride)
• 1 phone call and two to three emails (during the "researching" stride)
• 1 discovery call (during the "connecting" step)
• 2 warm emails and iii telephone calls to prospect (during the "prospecting" pace)

You tin as well dig a bit deeper to sympathise the subtle motivations and pain points that collection each deal to close.

2. Outline the buyer'south journeying for your target persona.

Outline the buyer's journey for your target audience or your buyer personas. This volition allow yous to look at your sales procedure from the perspective of your customers. You'll be able to get a better understanding of the interactions they have with your reps, the pain points they experience, and the reasons they need your product or service.

When yous outline the buyer'due south journey for your target persona, yous'll gain insight into how y'all tin can tailor your sales process to ensure your team has everything they need to build strong relationships with prospects and close more than deals.

Featured Resource: Buyer Persona Templates

Build Your Buyer Personas with These Free Templates

3. Define the prospect action that moves them to the next stage.

Y'all should understand what causes a prospect to move from one stage to the adjacent in your sales procedure. Ideally, the reason or crusade will be based on the prospect's actions, non the perception of the sales rep.

To decide the action that moves prospects to the next stage, inquire the following questions:

• "While conducting warm outreach, did a rep hit on a specific pain bespeak that motivated the prospect to schedule a discovery call?"

• "During the demo, were at that place objections that stalled the deal or features that moved it forward?"

• "When a rep made a pitch, was the reply an immediate 'yes' from the client? If so, consider carefully why that happened. How did they build upwards to the pitch?"

4. Ascertain exit criteria for each footstep of the sales process.

Define the exit criteria for each stride of the sales process for your team. This means you should place the things that need to happen for your prospects to move from one step of your sales process to the next. You lot can refer to the sales procedure steps and the buyer's journey (equally mentioned above) to become started with this.

For instance, suppose you're working through the "presenting" step. In that case, your reps might decide they need a specific blazon of content — such as client testimonial videos — to share with your prospects to motion them to "closing."

When determining exit criteria for each step of the sales process, consider the following questions to ensure all of your reps accept the same data. That mode, they'll provide all of your prospects with positive, professional person, and on-brand information.

• What information should reps know about your brand, what they're selling, and your sales procedure steps before getting in contact with a prospect?
• What actions should your reps take throughout each step of the sales procedure?
• What should your reps say throughout each step of the sales process? Make sure your reps are aware of the multiple ways a conversation could potentially go and that they know how to manage all of them.
• What specific types of content should your reps testify your prospects during different steps of the sales process? This is peculiarly of import in the "presenting" stage, where your reps might demand to provide your prospects with videos, blogs, testimonials, or case studies to move that prospect to shut.

5. Measure your sales process results.

Your sales procedure will evolve equally your team finds ways to work more efficiently and move prospects through your pipeline faster. As you ascertain and enhance your sales process, you'll want to mensurate your success to ensure information technology successfully coordinates your team'southward efforts and reaches your target audience.

For instance, note how many prospects transitioned in and out of each step of the sales process over a given menses.

This style, you can conclude, "In July, we started with 75 prospects in the 'awaiting demo' step ... at the end of the calendar month, we had moved through 28 prospects and added 19, leaving us with 66 prospects in the 'pending demo' step."

Here are some other examples of metrics to consider for the different steps of your process:

• The average time prospects stay in each step
• The footstep (if any) that takes besides long for prospects to move out of
• The percentage of prospects who close afterwards a demo
• The percentage of prospects who request a demo after a discovery call
• The churn charge per unit (i.e., if certain customers are churning quickly, how tin y'all use this data to identify mismatched prospects early in the sales process?)

These are the basic metrics about teams find value in measuring. Requite some thought to metrics specific to your concern that will aid you ascertain success or the need for improvement in a particular step.

Learn how to create a robust, buyer-centric sales procedure with our free HubSpot Academy lesson 'How to Map a Sales Process. '

Another swell way to mensurate your results is with the three levels of sales process success. Determining which level of success yous're in will provide yous with more insight into what you need to fine-tune for your squad and prospects regarding your sales process.

Level i: Bustling

Your sales process is humming when 80% or more than of your reps are hitting their quota every month. This is also when all of your new hires are being ramped upwardly quickly to target functioning, and your team isn't providing you with whatever negative feedback about the sales process.

Level 2: Experimenting

Experimenting is when your sales process isn't quite humming, so your team is experimenting and testing different tactics to determine what'southward nearly effective.

For example, a team might be experimenting with dissimilar modes of contact in the "connecting" step of the sales process to get sales discussions going with prospects. They tin test whether or non their prospects reply best to a specific email template when starting a discussion with a rep.

Footstep iii: Thrashing

Thrashing is when a team is chop-chop moving from one solution to another within a specific sales procedure. Thrashing is ineffective and something you'll want to ensure your squad gets out of as speedily as possible if you're always experiencing it.

For example, your reps might exist trying dissimilar presentation techniques in the "presenting" phase, making it impossible to determine what's working for the bulk of prospects.

Think, your sales process is never perfect, but it should constantly be evolving to fit the needs of your team, business concern, and prospects.

Now if you have a sales procedure already, but haven't mapped it out yet, here'south where to offset.

How to Create a Sales Process

1. Start at the end.
2. Bring all stakeholders aboard.
3. Outline the sale process steps.
4. Map the buyer's journeying.
5. Implement changes, test, and measure.

Mapping your sales procedure is the exercise of walking through each stride in real-time and understanding how it applies to your business organization, sales team, and customers.

This process allows you lot to uncover inefficiencies, proceeds insight into what's working, and align your sales process with your business organisation goals. Information technology helps your team develop a sustainable strategy suitable for long-term growth.

When y'all map your sales procedure, you lot answer the "why" behind every decision you brand — which is critical because your sales process is the foundation of everything your team does. Let's walk through how to map the sales process using a fictional business example.

Recommended Resource: Free Sales Plan Template

Download for Gratuitous

1. Starting time at the end.

To know where y'all're going, you must know your destination. In terms of sales procedure mapping, this involves setting goals for your sales team. Keep your plan specific but elementary.

Case: Fred's Vegan Food Supply is mapping its sales process. They've set their destination "goal" to increase their win charge per unit by 5% adjacent quarter.

2. Bring all stakeholders aboard.

Your sales team can't meet their goal lonely. Other departments across your organization — including marketing, product, client service, IT, and more — take a stake in your sales process and impact your customer experience. Gather these stakeholders, share your goal, and involve them in your process.

Example: Fred brings together his sales team, marketing managers, client service leaders, production designers, and distributors. These teams touch potential and electric current customers and tin, therefore, affect the sales team's win rate.

3. Outline the sales procedure steps.

We covered the sales process steps above, and now it's time to walk through each pace equally information technology pertains to your concern, products, and sales team. Take a look at your sales process history. What steps were effective, and where did prospects fall off?

Moreover, how long, on average, did each step take? With your stakeholders on board, you tin map what teams affect each stride and what actions they tin take — particularly your sales squad.

Example: Fred'southward sales team maps the six sales procedure steps and jots downward the actions they take inside each stage. They also review the concluding 12 months of sales activity apropos each stride to understand where they can amend their new sales procedure to meet their new goal.

4. Map the buyer's journey.

Next, take a look at your sales process from the customer'due south perspective. On the aforementioned document, jot down your customers' actions and reactions to your sales procedure. Continue your buyer personas handy to ensure your team stays customer-axial.

Example: Fred's sales squad now maps the heir-apparent's journey inside their established sales process. Past adjustment these actions, they can identify where their team is experiencing inefficiencies, what steps are working well, and where they need to amend to run across their goal.

five. Implement changes, examination, and measure.

Once you've mapped your sales process from both the seller'south and buyer's perspectives, you're prepare to put it to work. Y'all won't know if the process will aid with your goal until you examination information technology and measure out the results.

Example: Fred puts his new sales procedure into action with his team. They walk through each stage and the appropriate deportment, and they pay close attention to how their customers react. Equally they movement through each stride and towards their new goal, they tweak the parts of their process that aren't working and so smoothly.

Now that you have a map, you can identify key action points using a sales procedure flowchart.

Sales Procedure Flowchart

A sales process flowchart is a certificate that shows the steps each salesperson should take as they nurture a atomic number 82 from prospect to customer. What distinguishes a sales process flowchart from other documents is that information technology features yes/no scenarios, providing action items depending on the customer's response.

The chart guides your team and so customers have a uniform experience regardless of the rep they talk to.

While you lot tin create complex aye/no scenarios, you can also create a simple flowchart that shows the process from showtime to end. Below is an instance:

At present that we've covered the details of creating and mapping your sales process, permit's review the reply to a common question: What'south the departure between a sales process and a sales methodology?

Sales Process vs. Sales Methodology

Understanding the distinction betwixt a sales procedure and sales methodology is essential. Although closely related, a sales process and sales methodology are two very different things.

As we reviewed in a higher place, a sales process is a concrete set of actions your sales team follows to shut a new customer.

A sales methodology is the framework backing your sales processes, practices, and tactics. It's more of a philosophy than a set of steps.

Here's a diagram to assist y'all visualize this:

Retrieve of your sales process as the high-level map of the steps your team takes, while your sales methodologies are the dissimilar ways your team can approach the sales process.

Sales Methodologies

Choosing a sales methodology sets the foundation for your squad every bit they approach your sales process. You might choose to contain one, every bit they are some other way to streamline your client's buyer journey and ensure professional, impactful, and helpful interactions between those customers and your sales squad.

Here are five popular sales methodologies.

1. Challenger Sales Methodology

The Challenger Sales method is an approach to sales that says the seller, or Challenger, must teach the prospect. Sellers learn nearly a customer's business, tailor their selling techniques to their needs and pain points, and claiming whatsoever of their preconceptions throughout the procedure.

ii. Solution Selling

Solution selling requires reps to focus solely on the customer'due south pain points instead of only selling products or services. Products are framed every bit solutions, and emphasis is placed on the customer's pain betoken.

three. The Sandler Selling System

The Sandler Selling Organization says the buyer and seller are equally invested in the sales process. Good sales managers train their reps to address client objections early to save valuable time for both parties. And the heir-apparent is nigh convincing the seller to make the sale.

four. Consultative Selling

Consultative selling emphasizes that the salesperson becomes a trusted advisor to the customer, gaining authority and trust over fourth dimension. Consultative selling happens when the sale aligns with the customer'southward buying experience. In other words, the client-rep relationship defines the sale.

5. Inbound Selling

The inbound sales approach is characterized past attracting buyers with tailored and relevant content rather than advertising irrelevant messages and hoping they'll buy.

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With so many choices in today'southward marketplace, sales teams demand to put the needs of their buyers alee of their ain.

The inbound approach came from the belief that:

• Buyers can now observe virtually of the information (online or elsewhere) they demand nigh a visitor's products or services earlier engaging with a salesperson.
• Buyers have become better at blocking out cold and interruptive sales techniques (common cold calls and irrelevant sales emails, for example).
• Buyers take heightened expectations effectually the experience of buying. They tin control the experience and motility through the process primarily on their timeline.

These shifts in buying trends are examples of how buyers have seized command of the sales process from the sales reps who once held all the ability.

With these changes in listen, information technology'south important for sales teams to adopt a more than helpful, man arroyo to selling — or inbound selling.

Common Sales Process Mistakes

Let's accept a look at some mutual mistakes made when developing sales processes. Avoiding these will help you create a sales process ideal for both your team and customers.

1. Leaving Sales Process Steps Open to Interpretation

It's essential to define specific, concrete actions that move your business'south prospects from one phase to the side by side. If y'all don't place these triggers, your sales team might come away with a less than authentic understanding of what is and isn't working for prospects, potentially causing them to mishandle part of the procedure.

Once yous define your sales process, document, share, and practise it with your team. Role-play exercises to drive home the valuable techniques your team should have away from each step.

2. Expecting One Sales Methodology to Be the "Silvery Bullet"

While some teams choose to stick with and follow 1 methodology closely, others prefer to study several pop sales methodologies and combine bits and pieces they find useful from each.

Regardless of which approach you take, information technology'due south a good idea to stay aware of what'south new and changing over time. Equally the needs and desires of buyers and your concern change, unlike approaches, methodologies, and ways of managing your sales procedure will fall into and out of favor.

On that note, it'south important to recollect your entire sales procedure is as well always-changing.

3. Forgetting Your Sales Process Will Always be a Work in Progress

Your sales process is never complete or perfect and should always exist a work in progress.

So, in addition to consistently measuring your success, you lot should also have check-ins with your reps. These check-ins assistance uncover any major bug or red flags with regards to your procedure.

Call back, continually developing and improving your sales process will make your work more straightforward and improve your customers' interactions and experiences with your salespeople and business concern every bit a whole.

iv. Non Adjustment Your Sales Plays with Your Sales Process

Creating a sales process is futile if you don't align your sales plays with the process. The plays each rep must take at every step should be written downwardly for futurity use.

This is where a sales playbook comes in. For case, in the prospecting stage, you lot might typically send up to three emails to each prospect before qualifying them. Write down those emails and keep them in a shared location where everyone in your squad can access them. Your sales playbook can be a formal PDF document or you can create one in a tool such as Sales Hub.

By marrying your sales plays with your sales procedure, yous can ensure that your sales organization is as efficient and constructive as possible.

v. Leaving Marketing Out of the Loop

Marketing needs to know what's happening in your sales organization — which prospects take been proven to close, which industries are less assisting, and which market segments have potential. You want your marketing team to have all of this data so that they tin can better supplement each part of the procedure.

For instance, they can provide better prospects and better lead nurturing materials — and when it's time to continue nurturing the customer, they can even take that off your hands by creating drip campaigns on your behalf.

Marketing and sales alignment is disquisitional to any system, and that'south no unlike when creating a profitable sales process. Y'all can schedule monthly meetings with your marketing organisation, or you tin asynchronously stay aligned using an all-in-one solution such equally HubSpot, where both marketing and sales tools live in one platform.

6. Centering the Procedure on Closing Deals

While sales is most endmost deals, it's e'er about providing value first and foremost — which will hopefully stop in a closed deal downward the line. Even if a prospect doesn't seem similar they want to purchase, yous must continue providing value at every step of the process if their business needs tin be solved by your product.

When your sales reps research the prospect's business, they're not just looking at company size and leadership boards. They're looking for the problem that prospect is experiencing so that they tin deliver a pitch that makes it hard to pass on the solution.

Heart your process on providing value every step on the fashion and not just on meeting quota and endmost deals.

7. Forgetting to Mensurate KPIs

Not tracking key sales metrics or not measuring KPIs is an easy way for your sales procedure to go ineffective. Don't forget to measure out KPIs later creating or adjusting your sales process to sympathize what's going well and what'southward not.

While the focus shouldn't be on numbers only, this will help you understand your success. You tin and so dig deeper into the information. Maybe fewer deals were closed in one quarter, but the average contract value (ACV) increased by $1,000, which is a boost in performance.

You can go on track of these KPIs automatically using a sales dashboard like the one included in Sales Hub. Your CRM might also provide basic functioning metrics, which yous can then use to adjust your existing sales process.

Dive Into Your Sales Procedure to Abound Ameliorate

Creating and mapping a sales process will help your sales team shut more deals and convert more leads. This will also ensure your squad provides every prospect with a consistent experience that's representative of your brand. Follow these steps to create and map a sales process tailored to your business, sales team, and customers to boost conversions and build lasting relationships today.

Editor's notation: This postal service was originally published in Nov 2020 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Originally published Jun 22, 2021 i:15:00 PM, updated November 08 2021

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Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/sales/sales-process-

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