Are you sure you have a Sales Process?

Do you have a selling and qualification process? Before you are too quick to say that you have, let me share with you a typical example of an international sales team that was asked that question ahead of some training with us

Not one of the fifteen agreed with anyone else in the team what that process was. One of them shared with us the official company-mandated process. No one else mentioned it. 

Most of them mentioned “BANT”. For the un-initiated that means Budget, Authority, Needs, Timeline. This isn’t a process. It’s a shopping list of the things to find out. The more sophisticated mentioned MEDDIC. That’s a longer shopping list of things to find out. It starts with Metrics and ends with Champion. That’s not even a logical order to find things out, so it can’t be a process.

I challenge you to do the same exercise with your team. Will the team be able to tell you the process for sales and qualification? If they are able to do so, it ideally has two distinct elements. There will be a series of stages (we call them “gates”) that the prospect has to go through until they are properly qualified (and ideally become a client). Separately there will be a methodology to go with it. 

That might look confusing. Allow me to give you a quick example to clarify what I mean. The sales process might start with a prospecting call leading to an initial brief meeting or diagnostic questionnaire followed by a discovery meeting followed by a presentation meeting or proposal followed by the required paperwork to set up your new client. Your process could well be far more involved than that, or perhaps simpler. But I’m sure you get the idea. 

The methodology however, would be something like create Bonding & Rapport, agree an Up Front Contract, get the prospect to identify their Pain, tell you their Investment willingness and their Decision cycle before you get commitment so you can Present and help them with the next steps in a Post-sell conversation.  Where you slot the methodology into your process will depend very much on what you find works for your particular offering.  

You might object to this, saying my methodology is just another shopping list like BANT. But it’s not; it has a logical order. You can’t jump a step or two. One inexorably follows another. It’s a path to both sides being qualified for each other. It’s a method to use within your sales process.

It’s all very well going on about a consistent process and method, but so long as the business comes in, why does it much matter? If each team member has their own flair and style and it all works, why try to impose something that means they have to change and follow some inflexible process?

The trouble with that is, when you start asking your individual team member what is happening with each case they are working on, the answers get so vague and wishy-washy. They can fool you, and themselves, into thinking an opportunity is more likely than it is simply because you have no yard-stick to compare it against. You are left believing whatever they tell you because you have no way of checking that they have done everything right. There is no common language and so you can’t ask standard questions to each of them and expect standard answers back. Or even have the same answers each time from the same individual. You can’t hold them accountable properly and, worse, you can’t coach them. After all, their timings and levels of information-gathering will entirely be what they have designed for themselves. And that design is likely to be somewhat fluid, changing slightly with each opportunity. This is a recipe for confusion. You can’t be sure of how likely the deal is and can’t make any sensible forecast as a result. If you have salespeople reporting to you, there just has to be a recognised, consistent process. They can have all their own flair and personality within that process and using the prescribed methodology, but they have to be adhered to. Nothing else makes business sense.

So what is your selling and qualification process? If you are not sure all your team can clearly state the process or your methodology that powers it, let’s have a conversation to see if we can help. That could range from helping you clarify your sales gates to helping you enforce that process, using our methodology. If you are based in Surrey, Sussex, Hampshire, Berkshire or Kent, I’ll take you through my qualification process.