Monday, September 19, 2011

Headed Home


Vacation is over, it is time to head back home and back to work. Got me thinking about your sales process, isn't it time you brought it “back home”? By back home I mean back to basics.

In my years of interaction with sales people, rarely have I seen the sales process fail because the basics were done correctly. I have seen many deals fail because the basics were glossed over to do exotic things. Flying across the country to do an onsite custom demo? Great. Haven’t done a proper discovery and needs analysis? FAIL.

It is called a sales PROCESS for a reason. Is yours documented? All processes in your business should be documented, including your sales process. Step two? Follow that process.

If you are following an established successful process, you will close more business.
Get back to basics and expand.

2 comments:

  1. Right on Steve!

    I've found the larger the product line you carry less mature the sales process is. This problem usually compounds itself as people reach for more products to try and get sales the failed on due to the kind of basic sales problems you describe.

    A mature business process can be scary for people as they get started. The opposite is scary for people as they mature.

    BK

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  2. Brian, So true. In addition the larger the product line the less the sales staff know about the products so they tend to cheat more. If your are not sure what the product can do, why worry about what the prospect needs? :-)

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