Should a sales process be dynamic or well-defined?
There are two trains of thoughts regarding this, while some sales professionals strongly believe that every sale requires a different approach. The other side advocates in favour of an elaborate sales process.
From our experience in sales & marketing for numerous partners and of course ourselves as well. We’ve come to the conclusion that every business must have both of these aspects in order to maintain a competitive edge in the market.
While being readily adaptable to change, your sales teams need to follow a sales process to align themselves with the larger organisational goals. Businesses with a robust sales process experience a 28% higher revenue growth than their counterparts, as it ensures their leads don’t fall out of the funnel or go cold before any action is taken on them.
If your business doesn’t have a sales process or you wish to strengthen the one you have in your company.
Then please have a look at the below-mentioned sales process practices.
1) Leak-Proof your Sales funnel
Yes, your business is getting leads, conversions and sales, and you might be thinking that everything is hunky-dory, but sadly that might not be enough. What you need to ask your self is whether you’re getting the maximum output from your sales process?
If the answer is no and you see that although you’re receiving enough leads and conversions, the number of successful sales is not up to the mark. This means there are leaks in your funnels and your leads are falling out of it. In this case, you need to get on top of things and start working on ensuring that your sales pipeline is leak-proof and streamlined.
To do that you need to determine the stage in your sales process through which your leads are falling out of and then start fixing the cracks.
For instance, if you have high conversions but the final sales are low that means there might be a challenge with lead prospecting which requires a revisit to the buyer’s persona. So that the right prospects are targeted by the sales team.
In the case of high customer churn, there might be an issue with customer support, leading to customer dissatisfaction. You need to double-down on customer support ASAP.
2) Unclog your sales bottlenecks
Having a sales bottleneck is annoying mainly due to the fact that it can be easily identified and hence easy to avoid. When your sales pipeline has a bottleneck, your leads do not move past a certain stage. The sales process gets clogged and leads lay dormant with no movement.
Once you identify the stage with the bottleneck, you can determine the best way to unclog the pipeline.
Your business might have a lot of leads entering the sales funnel, but become redundant if they don’t get qualified. Not all leads that you reach out to would be willing to purchase your product or services right away. The best way is to set up a lead nurturing campaigns that nurture these leads over time so. That when they’re ready, they will bring their business to you.
In some cases, your sales reps may also forget to touch-base with a warm lead, making them go cold. This is unacceptable because that lead might have been your ideal customer. Reduce the load from your sales teams by automating your email communication with a CRM tool. This will ensure that all your emails are always delivered at the right time.
3. Keep updating your sales process
As your business expands it is bound to be dealing with different industries and territories. With this transformation, your sales process will have to adapt accordingly. The Growth requirement for a small business is very different from an enterprise company. And your sales process plays a crucial role in that.
One of the biggest change would by the variance of the sales cycle which depend on the industry you are selling to. To deal with this can, you might have to radically change your sales process starting with creating new buyer’s persons as per the new industries.
You need to constantly analyse the results of the selling efforts in the new territories. Some of the key element to analyse would be the conversion rates from cold email prospecting. Cold emails might od the tricks in some regions, however, in some cases, you might have to tweak your approach. An alternative, to reach out to your prospects is by applying Account-Based Selling (ABS) methodology.
Account-Based Selling is a highly personalized technique for targeting high-value companies. In this sales process, the sales team will reach out to multiple decision-makers within an enterprise.
Although the number of emails sent out using the ABS method will be less. But this lack of quantity is compensated with quality. Each & Every touchpoint that your sales reps perform will be highly personalized, with the aim of establishing a relationship with the prospects.
4. Measure the KPIs of the new sales process
Once you’ve reconfigured your sales process. You need to make sure that all the changes are implemented throughout the team and everyone understands the process flow.
Keep an eye on the key metrics to determine what changes are working best and what did not. Set quantifiable goals that will help achieve your sales targets.
Determination of a broken sales process and optimisation is quite tedious. You have a lot on your plate, with all the metrics that need to be tracked and deals to be closed. To take care of all these tasks your business must have an effective CRM in place.
Yes, the initial setup might seem complex but the long term benefits are immense!! In case you need more information on Freshsales CRMs or you need help in getting the most out of your CRM please feel free to contact us and we’ll get back to you in no time.
Cheers!!