The secret sauce of sales process

Many people think that a sales win is a mysterious mix of luck, gifted sales representatives, and timing — full of elements you have little control over. But that’s a fallacy (and a lazy one). Employing strategic methods and processes improves sales efficiency. A structured sales process is key to increasing your chances of winning. In this article, we are pleased to share with you some considerations about how sales processes (so often forgotten or underused) are of critical importance in selling.

This article is particularly relevant for Software as a Service companies evolving in a Business to Business environment. It was co-written with Jean-Marc Bellot, business partner with CustomerCentric Selling.

1/ It’s all about process

Before going any further, we should define what a process is. We hear the word “process” a lot in everyday business jargon, and without thinking, we use processes every day. One can define a process as consisting of two elements: a succession of steps to get a result, and the particular order of those steps. Let’s take an example: consider a plane travelling from A to B as a process. In fact, it is a sequence of steps to achieve one result: get to B. Steps include going to the airport of A, passing through security, getting on the plane, flying, and landing at B. You cannot remove any steps (who can fly without going through security?) and you cannot change the order (obviously, you cannot fly without going to an airport first). The result is achieved by taking steps in order = the process.

2/ When and why do you need a structured sales process ?

Now that we have defined what a process is, let’s dig into what we’re all here for: sales processes, a succession of steps, executed by a sales representative, to take a prospect from initial interest to closure. Structured sales process is crucial when it comes to scalability. Two things help determine this: whether you have in your team at least one sales representative and ten clients to set up a structured organization, and/or you have shareholders, to present them with reassuring structured methods designed to bring high winning rates.

Is this a match ? Perfect ! With an implemented sales process, you’ll be able to:

• Focus on the right deals with better qualification and reliable Go/NoGo qualifications,
• Examine deals with a common language: defining steps and processes will allow you to have a common understanding amongst the sales representatives, and a clearer view on how sales deals are moving forward during sales meetings,
• Forecast right with the help of a better and more documented pipeline to hit targets,
• Hire better: you’ll notice the positive influence of your sales processes on the hiring, onboarding, and training processes — new talents are more likely to go to a company where the onboarding and the sales processes are clearly defined,
• Structure your budget better,
• And most of all, drive your sales efficiency.

3/ Selling on value, not features

Let’s consider you’re a salesperson about to meet a prospect. It’s understandable to come to an introduction meeting and to talk about your product, you’re entitled to be proud of it and it definitely has great features. But when you think about it, it’s not the features that convince your prospect to buy, but the fact that the prospect believes his or her needs will be met by these features.

You create and sell a customer value, not features.

Let’s take an example. Just imagine that you have developed a technology to tag automatically images. If you sell on features, the pitch will look like “instead of tagging images manually, our technology allows an immediate and automatic tagging of the images of your products”. Good and accurate, but that pitch risks your prospect failing to see the link between your technology and his issues. Selling based on value, however, the sales pitch sounds more like this: “you’ll detect new trends on social networks faster and easier thanks to our automatic tagging technology”. Now the pitch is focused on the prospect’s need and on the value your product brings. Just imagine the difference in terms of deal size for the same technology between these 2 pitches !

This is why we advise focusing on the Customer Centric Selling method, a method that consists of making the customer or prospect see that your solution is the best way to reach their targets and tackle their issues.

We’re now getting to the sales process; a sales process focusing on value and customer needs.

4/ Understanding the Customer Centric Selling method

During a sales process, you will meet three levels of representatives:

1. The Support Functions (IT, Legal, Purchasing…) who will manage the implementation of your solution
2. The Beneficiary, who will perceive your value; will use your solution daily, but usually won’t manage the budget
3. The CxO function (CEO, CFO, CTO…), who manages the budget but doesn’t know the daily life of the Beneficiary

In your sales process, you have to navigate between those 3 levels, while following a certain number of steps — and, as we’ve discussed, in the right order.

a) The Before / After Effect

Selling on value means selling on the value perceived by your customers. This means that you need to understand your prospect’s needs before creating that value concept. By asking open questions, you’ll be able to formalize their needs and have a clearer view on how you could “create” the value, to finally make the prospects identify that value for his or her business. We advise you to have a Product Marketing Manager to do this job as a first step.

From that observation, you must make the prospects understand how your product will improve their lives and tackle their issues. To achieve this, the storytelling must be on point. You need a great story, explaining how your product will change your prospects’ lives. Doubtless they will check what competitors can offer, but you want them to do so with your story firmly in their mind. That is the Before / After effect: they must understand that with your product, something that was once painful (before) becomes easy (after).

b) Build a “Champion”

You should then “build” a Champion, i.e., a person capable of visualizing a solution biased towards the use of your products, and powerful enough to provide you access to the key people who are logically impacted by the solution at stake. In particular, the “Champion”, who is usually a beneficiary of your offering, should be able to give you access above the “power line”, to the C-suite (CEO, CFO, etc.) where you will be in a position to find out who the decision maker is. Building a “Champion” has become all the more critical that the ever-increasing number of stakeholders with a significant role in the buying decision process is exceeding 5, according to the CEB and is still rising.

At this point, you should have participated in no more than 2 to 3 meetings — and without any demonstration or business proposition. That point is important: making a demonstration too early will make it more difficult to get people to dream about how your solution can solve their issues.

Below are some tips on two critical points that you will face during this step :

How to refuse a demonstration or a business proposition?

Making a demonstration is risky: it can shift the customer focus to features, not value. That is why it should not be done too early. However, you must not look impolite, rude or suspicious when you refuse a demonstration, even though the prospect has asked for one. For example, a screenshot of your solution, accompanied by storytelling, will make the focus stay on value and will maintain the dream in the prospect’s mind without giving away too much.

Also, you need to show the actual value only once everything has been validated by the Support Functions (Purchasing, IT…) — so no business propositions, no combination of demo, references & POC. A prospect knows your time is also important.

Do you need to write a follow-up e-mail? And when do you need to send it?

Definitely! A well timed follow-up e-mail demonstrates organization, and emphasizes your interest in the prospects’ needs. Do not wait too long before sending it, it will send the wrong message and make you look unorganized.

You need to write a 3 steps e-mail. First, remind your prospect the issues he or she is facing. Then, frame your solution as tackling those issues. Finally, do a sense check and validate with the prospect that you are not forgetting something important, using a formulation such as “Am I missing anything?”

c) Share control with the “Decision Maker”

Once access to power has been granted to you, that is where you will negotiate a sequence of logical steps with your client leading towards closure. This is the moment when you will put in sequence the various activities buyers need to go through to carry out a thorough evaluation of your company and your offering. Proof, resolution of implementation concerns, validation of the business case and of legal terms take place during this phase. Because all these activities involve different players in the buyer’s organization, that’s where you will need to find out someone who is powerful enough to marshal and coordinate the selected individuals and resources within a timebound framework. And because this person belongs to the C-suite, she is obsessed with value.

The ability to base buying decisions on value (more than on budget availability) and the power to lead a well orchestrated execution of the evaluation plan are the two traits you are looking for to identify your “Decision Maker”. This person is keen to make the process move fast. Her perception of value is the compelling event you need to expedite the evaluation process towards a “happy ending”. Indeed, from the Decision Maker’s perspective, the sooner the evaluation process can be completed, the better off her ability to get the benefits quickly.

5/ Implementing your sales process

To set up a clear sales process, you need to follow these key steps:

1. In your CRM, first implement the steps and the methodology. Everything should be traceable in the CRM.
2. Invest in training for sales & management — training is the best investment you can make in your company and it will make your team feel valued.
3. Ask each sales representative to document their opportunities in the CRM, according to the step they are on.
4. Invest in coaching for sales after training, to understand issues and help them progress.
5. Align everyone in your company who interacts with customers on the same methodology. Marketing, Customer Success, Sales — they all should keep on track with the Sales Process.
6. Use a common language between your teams. For example, for Sales Representative 1, the step “Meet the Champion” should be the exact same step as for Sales Representative 2.
7. Check that the methodology is consistently applied by all. No methodology, no benefits.

Once set up, this sales process becomes part of a bigger “Global Customer Care” process, including lead generation, upsell, marketing and customer success. When your sales process works well, you can start improving or thinking about your other processes. These are good subjects for other articles we could write, so stay tuned for our next articles!

In conclusion, what needs to be reached is a sales process, formalized & customer oriented, used by everyone in the company (including management) and oriented towards future forecasts and results. Usually it takes around a year to implement an efficient and forecast-oriented sales process in the company.

Still not convinced about getting a sales process? CSO Insights conducted a report entitled Optimizing Sales Performance for the High Tech Market, Three Strategies for Success. They studied some technology firms and analyzed their sales performance, under the prism of 4 types of processes:

• The Dynamic Process: a defined selling model, an adoption through all customers focused departments and with changes that can be made proactively if needed.
• The Formal Process: a defined selling model, with salespeople expected to use it.
• The Informal Process: a process is recommended, but not mandatory.
• The Random Process: each sales representative sells how he or she wants.

The results are eloquent. Comparatively to a Random Process, a Dynamic Process increases your win rate by 15%, makes your loss rate diminish by 6% and also helps having a better “No Decision Rate” (from 29.6% with a Random Process to 20.5% with a Dynamic One). More wins, less losses, better qualifications of deals with a process. Moreover, implementing a process is free.

At the end of the day, by implementing a sales process, you have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

Credit to SerenaCapital for this great article.