Reviewing B2B Sales Process? Get the foundations right and make sure core activities and enablers are in place with this handy guide.

If you are currently reviewing your B2B sales process, it’s vital to ensure that you have established the right foundations, and that both core activities and enablers are in place before making any changes. In this handy guide, I look at the basis of B2B sales process flow, its characteristics and the applications of CRM technology.

What does a typical B2B lead generation and management process flow look like?

To start, I want to highlight what a typical B2B lead generation and management process flow looks like; the infographic below shows this structure, starting at the marketing stage and resulting in orders, upsales, resales, etc.

Here are the key characteristics that are evident in this process.

• Campaigns with a lead generating objective are judged on their performance in generating volume and value of leads and subsequent conversion rates. e.g.
• What is the ROI (business won vs. cost)?
• Should we do a campaign like this again?
• What will we do differently next time?
• Leads are owned at each stage in the sales process; named people are responsible and accountable for outcomes — outcomes really matter!
• Named people have targets. e.g. number, value and quality of leads generated / number and value of accepted leads / number and value of opportunities / number and value of sales / ROI
• There are clear stages in the process
• Leads are qualified, accepted (and prioritised) or declined. For example: “These leads haven’t / have been accepted”, “these leads are priority one”, “these leads have a 50%+ chance of conversion to sales”, “these are now opportunities”, “these are quoted”, etc.
• There is a collaborative and performance oriented sales culture For example: there are team and individual goals, behaviour and activity best practice are promoted; there are specific sales plans for identified segments and specific key accounts

Enabling CRM Technology in a mature B2B lead generation and management process flow

Now look at what happens when you introduce CRM technology as a supporting factor in a lead generation and management process flow.

Unlike the earlier example, a process with CRM technology enabled offers supporting features to better collect, collate, understand and use data. Here are the additional characteristics typically offered from CRM technology:

• CRM technology provides a corporate memory to aid decision making and activity planning. e.g.: what leads have we seen before / what happened? Who do we know (contacts) and what is our history of engagement and success with them? How should we prioritise our effort?
• CRM technology supports workflow. e.g.: flags new leads to owners, demands acceptance, ranks by agreed criteria (such as value and propensity), highlights required and overdue actions
• CRM technology is a source of data for various MI inc. YTD performance metrics; the size of sales pipeline/forecast; campaign and individual sales executive performance
• CRM technology helps managers manage sales campaigns and sales performance by providing data / MI. e.g.: which leads and opportunities are stuck / behind? How are we progressing towards targets? Who is behind / ahead? Where do I need to devote effort?

Putting core activities and enablers in place

In this piece I’ve highlighted the foundations of a mature B2B sales processes. You can see the sort of things you need to be doing and measuring and the value CRM technology can bring.

Putting these foundations in place is a critical responsibility of sales management. Depemding on the protocols of the organisation it maybe a process that demands a project or might be something that can be managed within the team. And depending on the culture and maturity of the sales operation it might be something that will be most effective if built collaboratively from the bottom up or more directionally from the top down.

For more information and support on how we can help you be successful in your sales process development contact me at matthew@matthewecclesassociates.com