Boring, boring, boring!
What sales person wants to get bogged down worrying about a silly sales process when they could be getting on with what they are paid to do – adding value to clients – and so earning peer respect, the respect of internal management and – more often than not – fat, juicy commissions?!
A Common Problem
You certainly don’t want your sales people getting bogged down in unnecessary process.
But conversely would you be happy if your people working entirely without regard to any sales process or method?
Asking how we might be able to do things better and optimising the type and sequence of sales steps to get to the closed deal might make obvious sense.
But so often sales organisations apply the sales ways of working and partially formed processes to every sales situation – a very common situation (and Einstein’s definition of insanity!).
The most successful B2B (business to business) sales people and sales organisations are those that work together as a well co-ordinated and practised team, adhering to a tried, tested and optimised way of selling. Which is a considered sales process, as boring as that might sound.
Whilst we would never suggest that an organisation or sales person not following a sales process proves madness, what is incontrovertible is that it makes sound business and financial sense to make sure you know what methods, messages and tools work best with your prospects.
Then, once you know what works, continue to repeat what has been proven to work well in the past. (Why wouldn’t you … a reasonable definition of sales sanity, perhaps?).
By documenting and sharing best practice across the sales organisation you are spreading the necessary foundations of team level success. And success breeds success.
The sales process workshop is the cornerstone of optimisation and future sales success. In order to get the most from the workshop we will meet with a representative sample of your sales team, as well as with those performing support functions around sales (e.g. Marketing, Product Management, Operations etc.). These intimate discovery interviews point the way to how processes can be bettered and on this basis the workshop is designed and structured for maximum participation and impact.
