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The Ultimate Guide to Creating a Sales Process

Implementing business processes can streamline the completion of any task, simple or complex. Processes can also make your employees more efficient, consistent, and accurate both in their roles and their interactions with customers.

The benefits of processes in business apply to your sales department as well. A sales process that complements your business, sales representatives, customers, and products or services will allow you to boost conversions, close more deals, and ensure all of your reps are providing customers with positive and consistent experiences — no matter who they’re talking to.

However, building a scalable and repeatable sales process can be tough, especially because every business, sales team, and target audience is unique.

We’ve created this guide to help you. Below, you’ll find the best tactics to create and map a sales process tailored to your business that works for both your sales team and target audience.

Before we cover the details of creating and mapping your sales process, let’s review the answer to a common question: What’s the difference between a sales process and a sales methodology?

Sales Process vs. Sales Methodology

Understanding the distinction between a sales process and sales methodology is important. Although closely related, a sales process and sales methodology are two very different things.

A sales process, as we reviewed above, is a concrete set of actions your sales team follows to close a new customer.

A sales methodology is the framework for how your sales process is to be carried out and how it will help your business grow.

Here’s a diagram to help you visualize this:

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

Sales Methodologies

Choosing a sales methodology sets the foundation for your team as they approach your sales process. You might choose to incorporate one as they are another way to streamline your customer’s buyer journey and ensure professional, impactful, and helpful interactions between those customers and your sales team occur.

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 about a customer’s business, tailor their selling techniques to their needs and pain points, and challenge any of their preconceptions throughout the process.

2. Solution Selling

Solution selling requires reps to focus solely on the customer’s pain points instead of the products or services they’re selling. Products are framed as solutions and emphasis is placed on what a resolution for the customer’s pain point would look like.

3. Sandler Sales Methodology

The Sandler Sales methodology says the buyer and seller are equally invested in the sales process. Reps are trained to address customer objections early so valuable time is saved for both parties and the buyer is almost convincing the seller to make the sale.

4. Consultative Selling

Consultative selling places emphasis on the salesperson becoming a trusted advisor to the customer, gaining authority and trust over time. Consultative selling happens when sales align with the customer’s buying experience — it’s defined by the customer-rep relationship.

5. Inbound Selling

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

Source

With so many choices in today’s marketplace, it’s important for sales teams to put the needs of their buyers ahead of their own.

The inbound approach came from the belief that:

• Buyers can now find most of the information (online or elsewhere) they need about a company’s products or services before they engage with a salesperson.
• Buyers have become better at blocking out cold and interruptive sales techniques (cold calls and irrelevant sales emails, for example).
• Buyers have heightened expectations around the experience of buying. They can control the experience and move through the process largely on their own timeline.

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

With these changes in mind, it’s important for sales teams to adopt a more helpful, human approach to selling — or inbound selling.

Now that we’ve covered the difference between a sales process and methodology, let’s review the six steps of the sales process so you can begin developing one for your team.

1. Prospect.

Prospecting is the process of sourcing new, early-stage leads to begin working through the sales process. It’s a vital part of the sales process and part of most reps’ daily or weekly workflow.

Prospecting might involve online research on sites like LinkedIn or Quora. It 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.

2. Connect and qualify.

The connect step of the sales process involves reps initiating contact with those early-stage leads to gather information. The second part of this step qualifying new leads — deciding whether or not they’re a good-fit lead for your business and whether or not they’ll likely move forward in the buyer’s journey.

A rep can typically determine this over a “connect” or “discovery” call (sometimes over email if not via phone). To do this, a rep might ask qualifying questions like:

• “What is your role within your company?”
• “What do you do day-to-day?”
• “What problem are you trying to solve?”
• “Why is this a priority for your business?”
• “What other solutions are you evaluating?”

3. Research.

Next comes the research step, when reps learn more about each prospect and company. This allows your reps to offer a more tailored and personalized experience and improves the likelihood of closing a deal.

The key part of this stage is understanding each prospect’s challenges and needs and establishing how your product or service can help.

This might require a rep to speak with other people at the company in different departments to get a holistic view of the business and its objectives. Many longtime reps say a good salesperson understands the company as a whole better than the individual prospect who works there.

4. Present.

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

This step is time-consuming, so it typically comes deeper in the sales process and is reserved for more serious prospects — which is why the connecting and qualifying step is so critical. You don’t want your reps wasting any of their valuable time if it’s clearly avoidable.

Each presentation should be tailored to meet the specific prospect’s unique use case 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 business with your company. This also allows them to answer more technical questions the rep might not be best suited to comment on.

5. Handle objections.

It’s not uncommon for prospects to have objections to your salesperson’s presentation and proposal. In fact, it’s 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 can help your reps better tailor your product to fit their needs.

Through their research and presentation preparation, reps should identify and anticipate possible objections, whether pertaining to cost, onboarding, or other parts of the proposed contract.

6. Close.

This step of the sales process refers to any late-stage activities that happen as a deal approaches closing. It varies widely from company to company and may include things like delivering a quote or proposal, negotiation, or achieving the buy-in of decision-makers.

The close step is what every salesperson works toward. It should result in a mutually-beneficial, contractual agreement between the prospect and the seller. Once a deal closes, the salesperson receives a commission on the price they negotiated with the customer, and the account usually passes to an account manager or customer success representative.

7. Communicate 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 oversee that customers receive what they’ve purchased, but they should also play a part in transitioning customers to whichever team is responsible for onboarding and customer success.

The final step of the sales process also involves continuing to communicate and reinforce value to customers. This can provide opportunities to upsell and cross-sell to customers as well as secure referrals from delighted customers.

Next, let’s unpack how you can improve this process.

These four best practices will help you improve the impact of your sales process across your team and customer base.

1. Analyze your current sales process.

Consider what is and isn’t working for both your sales reps and prospects to tailor your new process to better fit their needs. This will help close more deals and delight more customers.

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

Look back at the last five or 10 deals you closed. What did these deals look like from beginning to end? What were the touch points 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 team those examples come from), the better.

Once you’ve identified that timeline, work backward to understand the timeline for each deal. For example, if six of those 10 deals closed in approximately six weeks, take a look at what the average steps were to get there during that time period.

Working backward might look something like this:

• One week of deliberation before a signed contract (during the “closing” step)
• Three-to-five follow-up emails and phone calls (during the “handling objections” step)
• One demo (during the “presenting” step)
• One phone call and two to three emails (during the “researching” step)
• One discovery call (during the “connecting” step)
• Two warm emails and three phone calls to prospect (during the “prospecting” step)

You can also dig a bit deeper to understand the subtle motivations and pain points that drove each deal to close.

2. Lay out the buyer’s journey for your target persona.

Lay out the buyer’s journey for your target audience, or your buyer personas. This will allow you to look at your sales process 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 why they need your product or service.

When you lay out the buyer’s journey for your target persona you’ll gain insight into how you can tailor your sales process to ensure your team has everything they need to build strong relationships with prospects and close more deals.

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

Get a clear understanding of what causes a prospect to move from one stage to the next to really understand your sales process. Ideally, the reason or cause will be based on the actions of the prospect, not the perception of the sales rep.

To determine the action that moves prospects to the next stage, ask the following questions:

• “While conducting warm outreach, did a rep hit on a specific pain point(s) that motivated the prospect to schedule a discovery call?”
• “During the demo, were there objections that stalled the deal or featured that moved it forward?”
• When a rep made a pitch, was the answer an immediate “yes” from the customer? If so, consider carefully why that happened. How did they build up to the pitch?

4. Define exit criteria for each step of the sales process.

Define exit criteria for each step of the sales process for your team. This means you should identify the things that need to happen for your prospects to move from one step of your sales process to the next. You can refer to the sales process steps and the steps of the buyer’s journey (as mentioned above) to get started with this.

For example, if you’re working through the “presenting” step, your reps might determine they need a specific type of content — such as customer testimonial videos — to share with your prospects to move them to “closing”.

When determining exit criteria for each step of the sales process, consider the following questions to ensure all of your reps have the same information so they can provide all of your prospects with positive, professional, and on-brand information.

• What information should reps know about your brand, whatever it is they’re selling, and your sales process steps prior to getting in contact with a prospect?
• What actions should your reps take throughout each step of the sales process?
• 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 show your prospects during different steps of the sales process? This is especially important in the “presenting” step, where your reps might need to provide your prospects with videos, blogs, testimonials, or case studies to move that prospect to close.

5. Measure your sales process results.

It’s likely your sales process will evolve as your team finds ways to work more efficiently and move prospects through your pipeline faster. As you define and enhance your sales process over time, you’ll want to measure your success to ensure your sales process is successful in coordinating the efforts of your team and reaching your target audience.

For example, look at how many prospects transitioned into and out of each step of the sales process in a given time period.

This way you can draw conclusions like, “In July, we started with 75 prospects in the ‘awaiting demo’ step … at the end of the month, we had moved through 28 prospects, and added 19, leaving us with 66 prospects in the ‘awaiting 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 step (if any) that takes too long for prospects to move out of
• The percentage of prospects who close after a demo
• The percentage of prospects who request a demo after a discovery call
• The churn rate (i.e., if certain customers are churning quickly, how can you use this data to identify mismatched prospects early in the sales process?)

These are the basic metrics most teams find value in measuring. Give some thought to metrics specific to your business that will help you define success or the need for improvement in a particular step.

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

Another great way to measure your results is with the three levels of sales process success. Determining which level of success you’re in will provide you with more insight into what it is you need to fine-tune for your team and prospects in terms of your sales process.

1) Humming

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

2) Experimenting

Experimenting is when your sales process isn’t quite humming, so your team is experimenting and testing different tactics within the steps of the sales process to determine what’s most effective for reps.

For example, a team might be experimenting with different modes of contact, in the “connecting” step of the sales process, to get sales discussions going with prospects. They can test to see whether or not their prospects respond best to a specific email template when getting a discussion started with a rep.

3) Thrashing

Thrashing is when a team is rapidly moving from one solution to another within a specific step of the sales process. Thrashing is ineffective and something you’ll want to ensure your team gets out of as quickly as possible if you’re ever experiencing it.

For example, your reps might be trying different presentation techniques in the “presenting” stage making it impossible to really determine what’s working for the majority of prospects.

Remember, your sales process is never perfect. It should always be evolving to fit the needs of your team, business, and prospects.

How to Map the Sales Process [Example]

Mapping your sales process is the practice of walking through each step in real-time and understanding how it applies to your business, sales team, and customers.

This process allows you to uncover inefficiencies, gain insight into what’s working, and align your sales process with your business goals. It helps your team develop a sustainable strategy suitable for long-term growth.

When you map your sales process, you answer the “why” behind every decision you make — 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.

1. Start at the end.

To know where you’re going, you must know your destination. In terms of sales process mapping, this involves setting goals for your sales team. Keep your goal specific but simple.

Example: Fred’s Vegan Food Supply is mapping their sales process. They’ve set their destination “goal” to increase their win rate by 5% next quarter.

2. Bring all stakeholders aboard.

Your sales team can’t meet their goal alone. Other departments across your organization — including marketing, product, customer service, IT, and more — have 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, customer service leaders, product designers, and distributors. These teams touch potential and current customers and can, therefore, affect the sale team’s win rate.

3. Map the sales process steps.

We covered the sales process steps above, and now it’s time to walk through each step as it pertains to your business, 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? Also, with your stakeholders on-board, you can map what teams affect each step and what actions they can take — particularly your sales team.

Example: Fred’s sales team maps the six sales process steps and jots down the actions they take within each stage. They also review the last 12 months of sales activity with respect to each step to better understand where they can improve their new sales process to meet their new goal.

4. Map the buyer’s journey.

Next, take a look at your sales process from the customer’s perspective. On the same document, jot down your customers’ actions and reactions to your sales process. Keep your buyer personas handy while doing this to ensure your team stays customer-centric.

Example: Fred’s sales team now maps the buyer’s journey within their established sales process. By aligning these actions, the team is able to identify where their team is experiencing inefficiencies, what steps are working well, and where they need to improve to meet their goal.

5. Implement changes, test, and measure.

Once you’ve mapped your sales process from both the seller’s and buyer’s perspectives, you’re ready to put it to work. You won’t know if the process will help with your goal until you test it and measure the results.

Example: Fred puts his new sales process in action with his team. They walk through each stage and the appropriate actions, and they pay close attention to how their customers act and react. As they move through each stage and towards their new goal, they tweak the parts of their process that aren’t working so smoothly.

Sales Process Common Mistakes

Let’s take a look at some common mistakes made when developing sales processes. These will help you develop a sales process ideal for both your team and customers.

Leaving your sales process steps open to interpretation

It’s important to define specific, concrete actions that move your business’s prospects from one stage to the next. If you don’t identify these triggers, your sales team might come away with a less than accurate understanding of what is and isn’t working for prospects, potentially causing them to mishandle part of the process.

Once you define your sales process, document it, share it, and practice it with your team. Try role play exercises to drive home the valuable techniques they should be taking during each step.

Expecting just one sales methodology (if you use one) to be the “silver bullet”

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

Regardless of which approach you take, it’s a good idea to stay aware of what’s new and changing over time. As the needs and desires of buyers and your business change, different approaches, methodologies, and ways of managing your sales process will fall into and out of favor.

On that note, it’s important to remember your entire sales process is also ever-changing.

Forgetting your sales process will always be a work in progress

Your sales process is never complete or perfect. It should always be a work in progress. So, in addition to consistently measuring your success, you should also have check-ins with your reps, who are working through your sales process every day and communicating with prospects, on a regular basis to ensure they haven’t uncovered any major issues or red flags in regards to your process.

Remember, continually developing and improving your sales process will make the work of your reps more straightforward and improve the interactions and experiences your customers have with your reps and business as a whole.

Dive Into Your Sales Process

Creating and mapping a sales process will help your sales team close more deals and convert more leads. This will also ensure your team provides every prospect with the same type of consistent experience, representative of your brand.

Follow these steps to create and map a sales process tailored to your business, sales team, and customers to begin boosting conversions and building lasting relationships today.

For more on sales processes, take this free on-demand sales training course or download this sales process cheat sheet.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in June 2019 and has been updated for comprehensiveness.

Source: hubspot sales