Business profitability Did you know that an obvious requirement for companies and startups to be successful is to be able to implement a predictable, scalable and sustainable sales process ?
However, it is alarming that many companies in the segment share common problems, such as lack of customer follow-up, lack of information, poor lead segmentation, low profitability, etc. And the worst part: they are not even aware of it.
Does this sound familiar to you?
A sign that your sales department may be going through this situation.
The good news is that most of these issues b2b support is not just b2c on a first name basis: what changes when your client is a business can be resolved when you have the right technology and professional resources. Your sales and marketing team can go a long way when these challenges are detected and corrected early.
In the following lines, we will talk about what the sales process is, why its absence harms companies and how to implement this procedure in your business to increase profitability. Enjoy reading!
What is the sales process in a company?
A sales process is a set of recurring steps a salesperson takes to take a potential buyer from the initial stage of product or service awareness to closing the sale.
Typically, a sales process has 7 steps: Prospecting, Lead business profitability Qualification, Demonstration, Proposal, Negotiation, Closing and After-sales.
sales process
Between Prospecting and After-Sales Service, there are several phases of the process that we will analyze in detail later. Before we discuss them, however, there is something I would like to share with you…
How the absence of a sales process harms your business
There is a long-standing market trend that has per month for enterprise features extended to the Brazilian startup segment: the lack of sales processes. According to the Sales Panorama 2022 report , only 31% of sales professionals interviewed have a well-structured, predictable, scalable and sustainable sales process.
The problem is that, without well-defined procedures, the manager is unable to know what is causing harm to the company, much less identify which processes need to be improved. Thus, with his hands tied, he is unable to propose effective solutions that lead the operation to high performance.
Want an example?
Every sales manager needs to train their team, right? But search engine optimization united states america how can you do this without identifying bottlenecks? Or how can you identify problems without having a well-defined sales routine? And how can you optimize this routine without having access to indicators? The answer is simple: it is impossible. At the very least, we are talking about many hours of work for a poorly assertive result, which is not sustainable because it prioritizes “guesswork” over predictability.
It is the so-called “ vicious cycle of ineffective operation ”, which works as follows:
sales process
how does the vicious cycle of ineffective operation work?
As counterintuitive as it may seem, it’s a pretty simple business profitability line of reasoning, just look.
As mentioned above, we know that team training is the responsibility of every sales manager. The point is that, to do this, it is necessary to identify which skills need to be developed; whether in the sales processes or in the tools used, the manager needs to find out at which stage of the sales process the bottleneck is forming and why.
Let’s suppose that the company has many negotiations on the table, but a low number of sales. In this case, the focus of the training should be on closing the process. The problem is that, without having indicators that allow this broad view of the processes, the manager, faced with this situation, may implement mistaken strategies.
The team can be instructed
for example, to train prospecting. It turns out that increasing the number of customers. Continuously is important. But it is not sustainable if the company does not have well-defined sales processes. Therefore, if the problem is in the closing stage, investing time and energy in. Prospecting training is definitely not the best solution for the organization.
It may seem obvious, but many managers, when asked about the team’s biggest problem, don’t know how to identify, much less prioritize, bottlenecks. Given this, the important thing is to understand that the secret to meeting sales targets with predictability, increasing profitability, is to have established processes and qualified people to put them into practice.
By following a defined path
it becomes easier to understand the efficiency. And effectiveness of the process, the possible obstacles in each. Instance for implementing business profitability. Improvements and the performance of each. Employee in relation to the tasks assigned to them. Without a formal process, there is no way to access these indicators and the company will continue in the vicious cycle of ineffective operation.