The Disappearing Sales System

Past articles have covered four vital keys to maximizing sales potential. These keys are the commodity confine, procrastination and its costs, retooling the sales team and finally pipeline management. Another very important ingredient to maximize sales potential is to manage and execute the proper selling system.

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:

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

• People will know what they need to do to succeed.
• New people will become productive much faster.
• When a opportunity stalls or is lost, one can usually find one or more areas in the sales process that were not executed well.
• Having a repeatable process improves efficiency, and eliminates much of chaos caused by "winging it."
• You always know what to do next if you have a sales process.
• 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.

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