The world is constantly evolving, and in such a changing marketplace, growth-focused companies are struggling to adapt to new strategies to keep pace with growth.
Youcan't win in such a changing market with outdated and obsolete marketing and sales strategies, consumers don't respond in the same way they used to, and advertising is no longer as effective as it was in other decades.
This is why it is very important that you take into account every step of your sales process in order to get better results and get more out of your marketing strategies.
The sales process
The sales process is made up of a set of steps that a company must carry out from the moment it tries to capture the attention of a potential customer until an effective sale of the company's product or service is achieved because the customer has been accompanied throughout the process and has completed his or her purchase.
When we launch a product or service on the market, we must have previously analysed our customers in order to know their needs and anticipate them, but for this we must understand the stages of the sales process.
But you must bear in mind that the same sales steps that work for one company do not necessarily work for yours. Depending on the needs of your business, you must adapt, add or remove steps until you find the perfect method for you. If you personalise the sales process by adapting it to your requirements, closing sales will be much easier.
And this is the first problem a company faces when customising its sales process. It is important to know how our business works and how we want to redirect it in order to better understand our customers and offer them our products and services in a more optimal way.
This is just one example, but there are some other cases to take into account in order to achieve a successful sales process.
The main failures
Identifying and correcting in time the mistakes made by our sales executives will help to improve and obtain better sales results in the company. It is also important that your entire sales team is able to understand the customer's buying journey, so that they can customise the sales process to the context of the buyers.
Some of the most common mistakes are:
- Not having a protocol for receiving calls or an assigned person or any kind of customer contact processes, which is when most of the commercial opportunities are lost and end up with the competition.
- Failure to properly document the steps taken at each stage of the commercial activity, which will help us to follow up more effectively with each prospect in the future, handle objections better, develop a more robust proposal and be much more accurate.
- Selling features instead of benefits, i.e. not explaining to the customer what they will be able to do with the product. Consumers do not buy from you because of the features, but because of the benefits to them and that is what salespeople need to tell them in order to attract the consumer.
- Failure to identify the needs of the prospect. A generic pitch is not going to be adapted to your real consumer segment. If your competitors understand the needs of your customers better, they will be able to finalise the sale.
- Not taking into account the importance of after-sales. The sales process does not end when a new customer is closed, from that moment on a world of opportunities begins with each satisfied customer. Remember that it is much easier to retain and sell more to an existing customer than to look for new customers. It is vital to keep in touch with customers and thus build customer loyalty to achieve a much stronger customer network.
- Not having a correct time management. Planning the management of daily tasks is one of the priorities. It is important to know how to prioritise those tasks and opportunities that are most important because otherwise the focus is lost.
- Failure to properly manage or obtain a prospect's contact details.
- Harassing the prospect looking for a response. Well-executed commercial follow-up lets the other party know that we are attentive, ready and interested in their business. But when we overdo it, the effect can be the opposite.
Once you have established the primary, support and management processes, you can combine the best of business processes and information systems to automate these processes and a host of other ways to improve your operations to lower costs and increase profits.
It is important to understand that business processes can never be static and unchanging. They must adapt, improve and scale according to your current goals. With deliberate implementation of business processes and constraints, you can take your business to the next level.
