What separates a “good” salesperson from a “bad” salesperson? You can blame it on personality traits, work ethic, or luck, but what it really comes down to is this: a sales process. Having a sales process in place can mean the difference between consistently closing new business and mediocre revenue for an agency. So why is a sales process so important? The benefits are so great, in fact, that I’ll be covering this topic in two articles. For this first article, I will be discussing how having a sales process benefits an agency’s operations internally, setting them up for new business success in the future. In the second article, I will be discussing how having a sales process benefits an agency on the actual sales side, leading to closing new business when interacting with a prospect.
Having a sales process helps an agency become organized and focused internally so they can meet new business goals. By setting up a strategic and formulated process to follow internally, agencies can seamlessly and successfully transition from pitch to close without any missteps. Here are the ways a sales process benefits an agency’s internal operations to set them up for future sales success:
- Forces Organization
Having a sales process in place is first and foremost beneficial because it forces you to be organized. By establishing steps and progressions that you need to take throughout the entire process, you will never be left guessing what should come next and nothing will fall through the cracks. This establishes consistency for your sales team, and gives each individual the tools necessary to be successful. By clearly laying out what is expected and what the next logical step to take is, you can guarantee a crucial element won’t be overlooked, which could be a major misstep leading to a lost opportunity for your agency.
- Creates a Solid Questioning Strategy
Along with organization, a sales process leads to a superior questioning strategy, because it forces you to lay everything out step by step. If you ask the right questions, new opportunities can present themselves that you initially didn’t know existed. By uncovering a prospect’s real pain points, you can leverage this by presenting additional solutions that may not initially have been factored into your pitch. Had you not known the right questions to ask by establishing a strategy in your sales process, you may have never uncovered that hidden opportunity and could have lost out on that connection.
- Helps to Monitor the Sales Team’s Performance
By establishing a sales process for your sales team to follow, you can closely monitor how they are performing. As mentioned in the first benefit, a sales process forces organization and gives each sales member the tools necessary to be successful. If a salesperson is struggling, you can see how closely they are following the established sales process to see where they may be veering off course and failing. This allows you to make adjustments internally through additional training or audits to ultimately achieve your new business sales goals. If you didn’t have a structured process to follow, evaluating a salesperson’s performance would be much more subjective and it would be hard to train on areas that they needed to improve upon without having any established benchmarks to assist you.
By having a sales process in place, an agency’s internal new business operations will become more streamlined and effective. An agency can benefit from establishing a sales process through increased organization, good questioning strategies, and enhanced monitoring of sales performance. By improving internal operations, an agency’s sales process will then set them up for future success during an actual sales pitch when interacting with a prospect, which will be discussed in part two of this article.