Turning Your Sales Process Into A Sales Magnet

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It is time to expect more from your sales process. It is no longer enough that it delivers consistency and control in respect of sales.
Your sales process should also act as a magnet for your customers – it should add value for your customers and be capable of generating new levels of engagement and deeper relationships.

It is time to re-think the purpose of your sales process – its role in your success, as well as its value for your customers. Managers need to stop thinking of their sales process as set of steps that should be followed. The next generation of sales process is about customer engagement, as much as it is about sales consistency. That is key to its contribution to sales team success.

Does Your Sales Process Enhance Your Success?

How much does your sales process contribute to your sales success? That is a challenging question for any sales manager. An even more difficult question to answer is ‘How does your sales process contribute to your customer’s success?’

Most managers don’t see their sales process contributing significantly to winning sales. They seem to be happy to settle for a sales process that delivers increased:

Visibility – Predictability – Control
Uniformity – Consistency – Standardization
Efficiency – Productivity – Automation

These factors are important, but can a sales process do more to help win sales?

When most people talk about sales process there is little mention of the customer or prospect, or even the sales person. Little wonder that how the sales process contributes to increased sales is not clear.

Who Does Your Sales Process Really Serve?

Salespeople often complain that it is difficult to get their customers and prospects to open up fully and engage. They view with horror the rise of competitive tendering processes – where suppliers are kept at ‘arms-length’.

Salespeople resent being treated like just another salesperson who can be diverted to procurement, or left on hold. But most sellers have not given their customers a reason to want to engage more deeply and their sales processes don’t appear to help.

The question is: What does your sales process do for your customers and prospects? Just exactly how does it benefit them? The answer in many cases is little, if at all. This simply has not been a factor in how sales processes have been created. But your customers want more from your sales process. So too do your sales people.

Organizations need to re-think their sales process if they want their customers to open up and engage in a more creative and meaningful dialogue about their problems and how they can be solved.