Tip of the Week: Higher sales effectiveness, by having a defined sales process
Pinnacle Sales has been serving the automotive and industrial markets for nearly 30-years. Over these past 4 decades, it has become apparent that there is a one thing that the sales profession is lacking in these industries, which other professions have made into a science. That is a Defined Process.
Yeah, a simple word, but something that goes overlooked in sales. Yet, this is the single most important thing in professionals such as; doctors, lawyers, engineers, chemists, and just about everyone. For a doctor to properly diagnose an illness, there are established protocols that they must go through. Would you feel better if you listed off your symptoms to a doctor and they immediately wrote you a prescription? Wouldn’t you want them to look at you, listen to your heart, or at least ask a few questions?
Let’s say you are interviewing a design engineer that you wanted to contract for a special project. You have presented your vision of this great project or product, and they open a drawer – pull out a file – hand it to you- and say, that will be $15,000 thank you. You want to them to put everything on a Gantt chart, control plan, process flow diagram, and give you facts and figures of how this thing is going to work.
As I have written in this blog as well as my book, PROFITS. In order to be considered a professional, you must act like one. There is not an exact process that is used in every sales situation. All industries are different, but there is something that YOU and YOUR industry has in common for every situation. It’s up to you to define what the key milestones are in your process, and map it out so that you are more efficient.
You need to define your process clearly. Define the phases which are always required. Make sure you don’t miss those phases in your quest for the new business opportunity. Skipping phases will cause you to miss important things that you will need for this project to be considered a success at its completion. In the old days, we called that “leaving money on the table”.
As a true professional, you should be able to identify what is needed to be done, where you are at any specific time in the process, and how you are going to map yourself to the finish line. This entire process could be 1 hour long, or 1-year long, but the cycle must have a starting and ending point. Don’t rush through it, and make sure you prepared along the way.
Once you have identified these milestones, put together your action plans within each one. If you are in the discovery phase, make sure you are discovering and not closing. Before you negotiate, make sure you’ve completed the problem identification phase. Obviously, if the customer starts writing the check you may think you are finished. At the end of the transaction phase, you start the next one immediately – retention, feedback, support, customer service, or discovering the next opportunity. The sales process is an ongoing event, you need to identify where you are at every moment, and be aware of what needs to be completed from that point on.
If you are having issues developing or even identifying your process, Pinnacle Sales can help. Give us a call or send us a mail. Your first meeting with Pinnacle Sales is our discovery phase, where there is no charge. From discovery we move on to defining the problems, SWAT, and presenting solutions and action plans. Our overall process can run from 2-3 hours, or we can become part of your permanent process as we have with many companies around the world.
We look forward to hearing from you …