Is it time for your company to implement a sales process?

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Is it time for your company to implement a sales process?

Written by Ted Gulas

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You Do Need A Game Plan for Success! Develop A Selling System

This truth – that good systems make people effective -- operates in every area of work. Talk to effective professionals in any field, and they will verify that they use effective principles, processes, and tools to complete complex tasks. They use a system.

"I Have My Own Style of Selling"
I have heard this countless times, usually from relatively inexperienced salespeople. What they really mean is, “I don’t have any real system to what I do, I don’t want any scrutiny, and I probably am not going to learn anything from you.”

Does every salesperson have a unique style of selling? Or, are they just trying to hide from accountability under the cover of individual “style”? Or is there some other explanation?

More importantly, should your company allow every salesperson to have their own style, or should you have system for selling to which everyone adheres?

Do You Have A System?
Almost any work can be systematic. “Systems” are how good work gets done. McDonald’s did not grow its business by hiring people and letting them figure out how to best greet a customer, take an order, fry potatoes, and assemble a cheeseburger. Instead, they figured out the best way, secured the tools, documented the process, and trained everyone to do it that way. Because of the system, McDonald’s can make almost anyone, regardless of capability, into a productive, effective employee.

This truth – that good systems make people effective -- operates in every area of work. Talk to effective professionals in any field, and they will verify that they use effective principles, processes, and tools to complete complex tasks. They use a system.

In fact, the more important and complex the task, the more likely that the principles and processes have been defined and codified. How would you feel if you buckled the seat belt on an airliner and listened as the captain announced that he has his own way of flying the plane?

This is not to say that there is not room for individual differences, for continuous improvement, and for variations based on the specifics of the situation. But those are more embellishments than structure – like the icing on a cake.

You probably apply this principle in every other aspect of your business. Don’t you have a system for almost every important process in your business? Aren’t your customer service reps expected to input an order in a certain way, and respond to a customer in a certain fashion? Don’t your purchasing people follow certain procedures, and aren’t they guided by certain principles and criteria to ensure that they make the best decisions? Don’t your warehouse employees ship, receive, stock and pick orders in a certain well-organized, duplicable fashion?

Develop a Game Plan
Why should sales be different?

It isn’t. There are principles, processes and tools that have been proven to be more effective than others in sales. A selling system addresses the interaction between the salesperson and the customer, providing a “game plan” for success. Think of it as a template for the salesperson’s face-to-face tactical encounters.

Study any successful company that fields a large number of salespeople, and you’ll discover that almost every one has a well-defined, duplicable selling system. And they teach that system to their salespeople – “This is the way we keep track of our files, this is the way we collect information about our customers, this is the way we present this product or that one, this is the way we think about strategy, this is the way we develop a weekly plan,” etc. The larger, older, and more successful a company is, the more likely it is to have a highly sophisticated and refined selling system.

To be effective and productive in your sales efforts, sooner or later you need to develop a selling system.

Your system should have variations for each major market segment. For example, the “best way” to sell to a truck line may not be the best way to sell to a tool and die shop. Typically, a selling system defines a sales process for each segment, and then addresses the best ways to accomplish each step in that process.

Take truck lines for example. The most effective process may be to make an appointment with a purchasing person, to collect information at the first face-to-face meeting, to prepare a written proposal, to personally deliver that proposal, and then to make a personal face-to-face follow up call. That may be the process piece of the system. The tools might consist of a script for making the appointment, a profile form to collect the information, a capability brochure to use to describe and introduce the company, a standard “proposal” form, and a set of carefully crafted questions to use throughout the process. The tactics may be a series of techniques to facilitate each step of the process.

When all those pieces are put in place - the appropriate processes, tools and tactics - you would have a selling system. And when you have a selling system, and when you have trained all your salespeople in that system, you will have taken a major step forward. You’re ready for the big leagues.

The Disappearing Sales System

Since 1989 the Gulas Group has administered numerous sales assessments for sales candidates and sales people. It is amazing to discover the large majority of these reports come back stating the sales person has no selling process. When asked by leaders of organizations, “What do you mean we do not have a selling system,” the Gulas Group responds this way to the answer “ask those on your sales team to write down you sales process.” The result is most on the team struggle to write down their sales process and end up listing the activities they engage in. For instance, they list activity items such as prospecting, or meeting with clients and prospects, closing and making presentations. If you thought this was bad wait till you discover the results when we compare each sales person’s response in the sales team to other sales people in the team. The Gulas Group gets as many distinct responses as they are sales people.

Sales People must stop “shooting from the hip” and calling that a sales process.

Our DNA Solution Sales model is designed to give the 84% of sales people not using a sales process one they can use to increase sales from 15% to 30%

Some information from the CSO Insights research shows that:

1. Only 45% of companies surveyed have a formal sales process, and of that group less than half actually monitor the process to make sure it is being followed.

2. 81.4%of companies don’t have a consultative sales process, or are not following the one they have.

3. 90% of sales organizations that follow a structured sales process demonstrate improved overall results.

Finally, Neil Rackham, author of the best selling book, SPIN Selling, says “A good sales process lets ordinary mortals perform like rock stars.”

So what exactly is a sales process? It’s a series of steps that a salesperson must execute to move and opportunity from lead generation to initial meeting to closure. It identifies milestones and competencies for each step of the sales cycle. A process gives managers something to measure, and without something to measure, it’s virtually impossible to improve it, and if you can’t improve it ….well, you can imagine the rest of the story.

A sales process is the way you sell. It’s a step-by-step outline of what salespeople are expected to do.

The benefits of have an effective, standardized sales process are:

1. People will know what they need to do to succeed.

2. New people will become productive much faster.

3. When a opportunity stalls or is lost, one can usually find one or more areas in the sales process that were not executed well.

4. Having a repeatable process improves efficiency, and eliminates much of chaos caused by “winging it.”

5. You always know what to do next if you have a sales process.

6. The company has a common selling language and management has something to manage.

Once a sales process is in place, the stage is set for transformational performance improvements. Yet despite these obvious benefits, too few sales organizations invest the time and energy required to develop a formal sales process.

The stakes are simply too high these days to continue “winging it” on sales calls.

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