The sales strategy is defined as a documented plan for positioning and selling your product or service to qualified buyers. Sales strategies are meant to provide clear objectives and guidance to you and your team.

A sales funnel is the marketing term for the journey potential customers go through on the way to purchase and becoming a customer or future team member. The sales funnel is how your contacts and customers interact with your sales process.

Sales Process

A sales process is a set of repeatable steps that your sales team takes to convert a prospect into a customer. Having a standardized sales process adds structure and accountability to your sales activities, leading to a higher win rate and shorter sales cycles.

Knowing what needs to be done at each stage of the sale gives you an advantage over those who wing it every time. Clearly defined steps and milestones that guide sellers from prospecting to presenting to offering the sale prevents deals from slipping away.

A standardized sales process makes training team members fast, simple, and almost foolproof, by showing team members what they need to do in various sales situations. New team members can quickly get up to speed and be successful once they learn the basic steps in your sales process.

Successful sales teams continuously refine their sales processes based on measurable data and constant feedback. For example, understanding where most of your deals are getting stuck or slipping away can help you identify the root cause of those stalled deals and take steps to address the issue.

Having a formalized sales process ensures that your team focuses its efforts on the activities that generate the most revenue. Without a process in place, deals are simply won or lost, and it’s hard to know which specific actions are working or failing.

A repeatable sales process gives sales teams much more consistency in winning deals. Having a more accurate sense of your win rate allows you to dependably forecast how many sales you’ll close from a given number of leads, and helps you and team members set targets and goals.

With a well oiled sales process in place, your sales team will become more effective at identifying the prospects who are more likely to purchase and filter out the low-potential leads to shorten the sales cycle and reduce the effort wasted on opportunities where there is a low likelihood of closing.

Using the common steps and standardized sales processes simplifies team communication allowing for any key changes in the process to be quickly implemented and duplicated throughout your team.

When you have no sales process it is challenging measure anything outside of wins and losses. A standardized sales process provides more data points to measure, allowing for focused analysis of key metrics and sales targets allowing you to understand the specific actions that are taken to make the sale and the impact of those actions.

Your sales process to reflect how your target customers move through the buying process, and making sure each step generates trust and offers value creates a positive customer experience before the prospect every becomes a customer or team member.

The eight stages below are an excellent basis to start from and can be tailored to meet your needs. Depending on your analysis of what you and your team are already doing, some processes may be shorter, and others may need some variation based upon the strengths of the team member.

Before you can make a sale, you need someone to actually sell to, and this is where prospecting, or lead generation, comes in.

This stage involves creating a list of potential leads and researching to find out who they are, and if they'd likely be interested in hearing from you.

If you've already got a solid foundation of customers, it's a good idea to spend some time creating customer profiles to help you visualize your ideal customer demographics. This will help you and your team segment your audience and help them tailor the tone of the messages and types of conversation they are having with different audiences.

Every call or social interaction is the start of a new relationship with someone who could become a client. This connection phase is your only opportunity to make an excellent first impression, which is absolutely crucial if you want the chance to pitch how good the product and opportunity really are.

To make a fantastic first impression it's crucial that you're as relevant and affable as you possibly can be. Use all the information you discovered during the prospecting stage to your advantage to build a rapport.

The goal here is to convince this lead that you're the one who can provide them with value or a solution to a pain point.

During your first conversion you must ask qualifying questions as you need to be pitching to someone who has the authority to make a decision and access to financial resources .

It's important to ask about any pain points or issues that you might be able solve after you’ve correctly assessed their needs.

Qualifying the lead assess whether there is a fit between the you and them without wasting your time and that of the prospect. Once you've decided that this prospect is worth your time, you can then go back and personalize your pitch to their needs.

Setting up a demonstration gives you the opportunity to really display the value of the product. Whether you're setting up an in-person physical product demo, recorded video demonstration, webinar or personal call on zoom, your research and prep are key to delivering an inspiring demo that wins the hearts and minds of your prospects.
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The more you're able to personalize your demo to fit the immediate needs, budgets, and pain points of your prospects, the better position you'll put yourself in to really highlight the value of what you're putting in front of them.

Place the product and the opportunity as the answer to the problems that face your prospect and help them to understand what they are missing out on.

Once you have delivered your killer sales pitch, the prospect is still likely to have questions and concerns that you'll need to overcome before they're willing to make a purchase. Having listening to the concerns expressed to you, you'll have the opportunity to appreciate the prospects position and then adjust your sales pitch accordingly.

During this stage it is up to you to identify and address the questions and concerns that you'll receive once your demo is over. You should reiterate the costs of missing out on your product while addressing questions on the product, pricing, opportunity, commissions, and any other items the prospect may need clarifying.

Once you've addressed any major sales objections, you're on the home stretch and closer to making a deal.

This stage involves negotiation of the finer points, getting approval from the decision maker then processing of documentation and payment.

This process can sometimes be lengthy and frustrating since this is the prospect's last opportunity to back out if they see fit.

The role does not stop once the deal has been closed. Maintaining your relationship with your customer helps to create a sense of continuity and builds on the trust and value that the customer has already received from you.

On-boarding can include helping to install the product or any last questions that arise after using the product and in the case of new team members training them on how to become productive and successful members of the team.

This stage ensures that your prospect has all of the knowledge they need to get the maximum amount of value from their products and the opportunity.

The last stage of the sales process is the follow up. The following up with your prospects, customers and team members is vital for a success in both winning the deal but also to nurture long term customers and team members.

Working with your customers and team members after the sale is made involves supporting them by asking questions and ensuring that they are still happy with the solution that you've provided for them. Be sure to stay in touch, keep communication lines clear, and look for opportunities to convert them into team members.

Your first step in developing an effective sales process is to look at the proven steps you and your team are currently taking with your contacts and use this as a starting point for improvement.

Look at your previous sales and think about the strength's and weaknesses in the techniques that you are using. See if there are repeat behaviors such as are prospects falling out of the sales funnel at a specific point? are you consistently following up on opportunities? what is the length of the sales process from beginning to end on average?

Ask yourself or your team member the following questions:

Based upon the answers to the questions above you can now breakdown the buyer journey into eight clearly-defined stages and identify what action must be taken before a prospect can move to the next stage.

Now that you understand what is a sales strategy and what are your sales processes you are ready for our next article on how to build your sales strategy with EWS.