Sales Mistake No 10: Absence of a replicatable sales process

When we began this series of the Top Ten Sales Mistakes, we were careful to point out that we were not addressing mistakes in any order of seriousness. Depending on the precise business situation that they present in, any one of them can cause havoc to an organisation’s sales performance. That said, I was tempted to call this week’s mistake the “worst” of the lot. And I’m still tempted to.

Curious? Mistake No 10 is the “Absence of a replicatable sales process”.

I am frequently challenged on this, paraphrased as: “Charles, everyone is different, you can’t proscribe a process for sales, it’s too complicated, our sales guys know how to get buyers to say yes”.

Like it or not, successfully completing a sale is a process that follows a number of stages. Whether you follow an Attention, Interest, Decision, Action (AIDA) model, or a Situational, Problem, Implication, Needs Payoff model (SPIN), Solution Selling, Product Pushing, or even ABC “always be closing”, there is a process to follow. If you’re in any doubt about this, think back to the last time a seller started to pitch to you, before understanding what your needs were, or tried to “close” you before they had answered your objections.

Different categories of product are better suited to different types of sales process. Try selling a multi-location telecoms system to a Comms Director using the same process used to sell a mobile phone (I’ve seen it tried…). The suitability of a sales process will vary with the degree of buyers’ risk, level of complexity, range of comparators, asymmetry of information.

Your businesses can benefit from having a replicatable sales process because:

• You can increase your sales conversion rate (SCR) by developing the most appropriate process for your product or service
• You can bring new recruits up to speed more quickly because you have a replicatable process for them to learn
• Talking to your sellers about the sales process helps them to improve their SCR by identifying the precise points of the process that they need to develop their skill in
• It keeps your sellers in control of the selling interaction

*You can have a better understanding of the value that resides within your sales pipeline, once you know the steps within your pipeline

If your sellers can’t easily explain to you their own step-by-step process, the chances are, they are not selling at all, they’re just talking.

Put frankly, if you can’t identify your sales process, how can you successfully improve it? Which probably goes to the root of my dislike of this particular mistake, since improving sales performance is what we are all about…