Episode 065 - How To Develop A Sales Process

When they take that step, you need to stop all that other automation, right? And the reason for that is, as they're in the sales process, from, from doing the consult to you quoting to them making the decision, you don't want an email coming out that's going to be like distracting them. Okay, so today we're going to be talking about a process that I think most small businesses don't spend a lot of time thinking about. Um, usually hear about this a lot more when you've got bigger businesses and sales teams and things, but I think any business, even a solo person that's selling like shoelaces on the side of the road, right, could probably benefit from this. And that's how to develop a sales process. So I'm going to ask you, what is your definition of a sales process?

My definition of a sales process? Okay, I think it's both the customer journey as well as all the tasks, the internal tasks that you have to do, and kind of merge together and figure it out in a systematic way.

Absolutely. I think the best definition that I found of a sales process is it's a series of repeatable steps, right, that will then take somebody from a prospect to a customer, right? So it's those things that you can do over and over again. And I think the benefit behind this is, you know, if you have a salesperson or you are the salesperson, having repeatable steps takes any of the, I guess, thinking that you need to do about like, what should I do next? If you know that this is what it is, and you know, not every sales process is gonna fit every single situation, but it's gonna cover most of it, right?

And that's not to say that there's gonna be some slight variations, you know, like obviously sales process isn't robotic. Well, unless it's you know, online, but even then, you know, there's always going to be things that are slightly different, like people's objections that come up. Those are always going to be different, you know, people's personalities. And if it is a face-to-face sale, you know, you're going to present yourself a little differently and even speak differently to, you know, a grandmother as you are to a young mother, right? So it's like there's There's always going to be slight differences, but like you mentioned, it's, it's the majority of the time, and it's with pretty much every customer you can follow that. It just might have those slight variations.

Right. And I was working with one of our, our clients in the last couple of weeks, and, you know, they've been trying to develop what they— it's a sales pipeline, which is sales process, just the different stages. You know, they've been trying it for years and they could never really get one that they adopted fully. And it came down to is they couldn't figure out when people were either to exit or enter a different stage, right? So they were making it too complicated or it was too specific, right? And nobody fit those parameters, right? Right. So if you think of it, you know, the first time that anybody comes into a sales process is as a lead, right? Would you agree? Yeah, yeah, 100%. So, you know, a lead could be that they come and they subscribe to your newsletter or they download an ebook or they book a call or even traditionally they come into your store, right? They're a lead, that's how they come in. And that's the bare-bones entry part of it.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, when you look at while you're in the phase of determining what the internal tasks are, what you are doing as the business owner or your salesperson is doing, you know, when you look at the first step of the sales process leads, you can also look at it from before the lead is actually generated, right? So it's like, how are you generating generating the leads. That's right. That's the internal task, right? But it's, it's still all kind of centered around that first— that's right— first step in the process.

Yeah, your sales process doesn't really start until somebody has taken some kind of action to indicate interest in there. A lot easier to start a process automatically when it's online, and they're opting into something that way. And not all leads or prospects are going to buy, right? They're not going to be a fit. So, you know, my recommendation on the next step for that is, is lead qualified, like qualifying that lead, right? So, and that could be either through like a free consult or a, like an onboarding survey or something like this, or, you know, they, they take some desirable action that says, oh yeah, they have a business, they, you know, can do this, or whatever it is for your business is going to be different than everyone else.

Mm-hmm. Right, but you know, yeah, absolutely. And I mean, that's the phase where most simply you're finding out more information about this person. You're finding out if they meet your target audience and if the product and/or service you're offering makes sense for them.

Mm-hmm. Yeah, and our process has been like book a free 15-minute consult. It's our lead qualification process, right? We're not, we're not selling to them in there. It's not like, okay, we're going in this because we got to close the sale in that call. It's finding out, you know, can we help them? What are their challenges? What do they want? And sometimes people book those consults to try to sell us services. I've had that. But it's, it's always interesting to see businesses that go from lead to try to like close the sale, right? It's a huge leap to make. Yeah, right.

Yeah. And that's something that you need to consider as well, is the pace of the sales process. You don't want it to be so slow that they start to lose interest because nothing is happening. But you also don't want it to be so fast that they don't feel appreciated and they feel like you're just trying to rush them into a decision. So there's a very fine balance, and it also is going to depend on your industry and what you're trying to sell. If it's something that obviously is of higher value and is a bigger buying decision, you're gonna have to take a little bit more time, right? But if it's something like, you know, you're selling it in a retail location, that whole sales process can happen in less than 10 minutes.

Absolutely. And excuse me, but looking at that as the idea of a prospect coming in and opting into, to your, your funnel, and then they, they book a consult. So the tools are there to allow you to really control that whole process. So let's say you're finding that when people are getting on these consults with you, they don't really know much about who you are, what your value proposition is, and that kind of thing. You're spending time having to tell them about it. So what if it would be like a great time to spend like 5 days of nurture from the moment they book to when you get on that call, that you can do through tools like Keep and nurture them? So we can specifically say when somebody clicks a booking link, it'll only show them dates 5+ days from today, which gives you that window. So you know that window is there, or controlling it so that they don't book more than 2 weeks out, because that's the other thing is they're interested now and then they book 2 months down the road and things change, right? And you just— those type of things. So, um, each of these steps you can have automated tasks happening. So whether it's emails going out, texts, or a task for you to send out a card or a handwritten package or something like that to them, right? That's all part of the whole sales process.

Yeah, absolutely. And I mean, something you have to think about too, because while you can create your ideal sales process, you have to also make it realistic and scalable on top of that, because the last thing you want is a sales process that's too involved and takes too much of your time as a business owner, and then you can't take on more clients or you're feeling overwhelmed or you're working around the clock. So like you mentioned, tools like Keep where you can implement automation, that's really important. And also if you have other employees, like what can you delegate? What do you think is really important that you accomplish versus what your team can accomplish?

Absolutely. You know, if you have a spot where you're doing something in-house, so, you know, like a thank you card for booking or coming into the store or booking a, you know, a free demo, whatever it is, if you start to get busy and these tasks are building up, you're either going to send them out too late or it's going to be past the point and you really kind of lost that momentum, right?

Exactly. And I think something that's really important as well Your sales process is never written in stone. It can always change, you know, when new technology comes in, when you get more employees, when you start to scale. It's always changing, and so there's no obligation to stick to the first one that you come up with. There's no pressure to have the first one be perfect. But with that being said, obviously you want it, the first one that you implement, or the strategy that you're taking, to make sense and still be quality. And the other thing is just making sure that you have a way to measure whether or not your sales process is working to the extent that you want it to in each phase. You know, so that's actually determining before you implement this sales process or before you start referring to it, you have to have it noted what your measures of success are.

Yeah.

And making adaptations where necessary too, if you've perhaps made a stage where you don't know exactly how to measure that, finding ways around that and being able to, to come up with those metrics.

And one, one tip that is extremely important is if you have some kind of nurture in place, like let's say somebody opts into a webinar or a lead magnet, you just nurture them with content. To try to get them to take that step to qualify. When they take that step, you need to stop all that other automation. Right. And the reason for that is as they're in the sales process from, from doing the consult to you quoting to them making the decision, you don't want an email coming out that's going to be like distracting them. Right. Sending them into like another, but like upcoming webinar or prerecorded thing. And then they just kind of just go in this loop. You basically just want to stay quiet and have that conversation. And if they close, then they go into your like new client welcome and all that kind of stuff. If they don't, they can go back into another nurture again, right? So that's one of the things that I see sometimes people don't consider, that is stopping your nurturing stuff when people are in that sales process.

Yeah, and that's one of those small things that has a big impact, right? Because if you think about it and you continue receiving emails from a company that you already have something set up with, it just leaves a sour taste in your mouth. You know, like it just, it doesn't look very professional. It doesn't really seem very caring on the, on the business end. So again, it's those little details that matter.

Absolutely. So what would you say would be the first thing that somebody should do if they don't have a sales process?

I think very first is if they have a customer journey, perfect, base it off that. So look at your customer journey and identify each stage. If you don't have a customer journey, start with your customer journey. So what do you want? What's the— what do you want the journey to be for every customer if it was, and we say this to all clients, if there were no limitations? So you don't have to make this realistic, you just have to make it exactly what you want, and then we can try and implement that to your best ability, right? But starting with that and then being able to identify the stages clearly, and then writing down your internal tasks for each phase. And that might be how you're generating leads in that lead stage. It might be how you're introducing products and services. What, what does that mean that you have to do? Nurture, you know, what, what does that look like? What are the internal tasks for that? And then going from there.

You know, and also keeping in mind at what point can the prospect kind of delay the process. So for example, you send a quote or your proposal, and if they don't respond back in, let's say, 4 days, 5 days, whatever you think is an acceptable time for them to like ingest and get through that, you need to have follow-up in place. Because then what you're going to do is you're going to get through a sales process, you're going to send all these quotes, if you don't have the task to follow up you're just going to forget about them because you're trying to just keep repeating this going and going, right? So you can either have emails go out and then tasks for you to call. So, you know, there's that. It's, it's making sure that where are any of the leaks in that funnel, um, and how can you plug them to bring people back on track. So, um, it is a process. It is something that when you get it in place, you'll be like, why didn't I have this? Yeah. Um, But start simple, start small. And then as you go and you're like, okay, well, I think, I think I could have an extra step in here, then add that one extra step, right? Or hey, this funnel works great, the sales process for this product or service, but the service that I have doesn't. So I can make a separate one for that, right? That might have a different step in it.

Yeah, that's another important thing is if you're selling all kinds of different products and services even, or multiple different services, that it's okay to have multiple sales processes, right? Because each— it's going to be a different pipeline.

So yeah, there are companies that really get into the whole sales side and they build out separate sales processes for different avatars, right? So if you're selling to a man versus a woman, different people, how you have to, to overcome objections on certain things or ages, right? It's down to if you're dealing with seniors versus somebody who's in their 20s, right? The 20s are going to make decisions really quick. You know, the people who are seniors want that relationship building, right? They need that more, that trust factor, more touch points and things like that. So think of your process and write it down and start to figure out how you're going to develop that sales process. That's my tips for that.