Building a Consistent Sales Process

BUILDING A CONSISTENT SALES PROCESS TO DRIVE BETTER RESULTS

EBOOK

Written By:Stephan Hagelauer | @RichardsonSales

EBOOK | BUILDING A CONSISTENT SALES PROCESS TO DRIVE BETTER RESULTS

1. USING THE SALES PROCESS AS A BLUEPRINT FOR RAPID BEHAVIOR CHANGE

Establish a Common Language

There are two things that unite virtually every sales organization: 1) the desire to improve sales performance and 2) achieving results as quickly as possible. The first section of this eBook focuses on the importance of establishing a common language to be used within the sales process.

Common Language is Essential Change happens when a majority of people begin doing new things repeatedly. For sales organizations attempting to achieve a step change in performance, it all starts with the sales process. An effective and intuitive sales process will introduce a common language that sales professionals and their managers can use to discuss opportunities and their stage-by-stage progression through the pipeline.

Language is important. It’s not only what people say, or how they say it, but what they mean when they use certain words. When people share a common language, they become more unified. They “get” what the other is saying. They’re on the same page.

This doesn’t mean everyone has to speak English or Spanish or German. It means whatever their native tongue, sellers should speak the language of selling. At Richardson, we focus on terms like verifiable outcomes to mean leading indicators of success at each stage of the sales process. We use the same words consistently to create understanding across global organizations about the steps that every seller needs to take, the outcome that should be reached, and how sales managers should be coaching their teams to lead them to success.


When sales organizations use a common language, it enhances communication. When they link this common language to the sales process, they begin talking about selling activities in similar ways, with similar sequences. The nature of the conversation changes because instead of just talking about activities, they can talk about how the activity was conducted, exchange best practices, offer tips on how to do things better, and verify outcomes.

Consider this example. In the Discovery stage of the sales process, sellers undertake a number of activities to explore and assess an opportunity. The sales manager, instead of just asking whether these activities were done, can use a common language to dig deeper. “What kind of input did you get from the prospect when you used the Questioning Strategy Funnel?” “How did the prospect respond after receiving the validation letter that you sent; what feedback did you receive?”

When the sales process is designed in a way that clearly outlines the activities, customer dialogue models, tools, and verifiable outcomes for each stage, then conversations can be specific about progress achieved and milestones attained, leading to more confidence in sales forecasts.

Our clients confirm this happens within their organizations. They tell us that using a common language starts out changing the conversation between sellers and their managers — and this leads to behavior change that aligns with the sales process and desired verifiable outcomes. The language helps by setting clear expectations for sellers and also for managers who can better coach their teams throughout the sales process.

When sellers and their managers are aligned on how opportunities should be moving through the stages of the sales process, and they use the same language to identify progress and bottlenecks, the organization benefits in numerous ways. Sales performance improves because people are focusing on what matters most, and the sales cycle can shorten because there is less inefficiency and misunderstanding of expectations


2. THE IMPORTANCE OF CONSISTENCY PROVIDED BY THE SALES PROCESS Consistency across the Organization

The leading concern of sales executives is the lengthening of sales cycles, with deals getting stuck in the pipeline. According to research reported by the Aberdeen Group, in September 2015, 52% of sales executives reported this as a top concern. The Aberdeen report also found that best-in-class sales organizations reported a 16% shorter average sales cycle than under-performing companies.

More research, this time by Harvard Business Review, also in 2015, discovered that salesforces were “most effective in managing their sales pipelines if they had invested time in defining a credible, formalized sales process. In fact, there was an 18% difference in revenue growth between companies that defined a formal sales process and companies that didn’t.”

As you might expect, just having a sales process doesn’t guarantee success. The process itself must meet a number of qualifiers to be effective.

It must be aligned with the buying process of customers.

It must provide clear direction for sellers’ activities and outcomes at each stage.

It must become part of the conversation that sales managers have with their direct reports, coaching them to develop their skills and adopt desired behaviors.


With the Richardson sales methodology, the process is typically broken into such stages, such as: Qualification, Discovery, Proposal, Presentation, Solution Refinement, and Contract. Each stage is customized to specific client organizations and their customers’ buying processes. Activities are sequenced to deliver maximum value to buyers, with dialogue models, tools, and verifiable outcomes identified for each stage. The result is a consistent, repeatable, and effective process that sellers and sales managers can use to work opportunities in the pipeline as quickly and efficiently as possible.

The second biggest concern of sales leaders, as identified by Aberdeen Group research, was that “sellers can’t differentiate themselves/us from competitors,” which at 37% signifies a major problem. Again, consistency is part of the solution, both in process (what needs to be done) and in skills (how things are done).

Sales leaders want to be confident in their teams’ ability to be credible and valuable partners to their customers. They need a consistent way to determine what happens in the field and whether sellers have the skills to clearly articulate value.

The sales process can provide that consistency, allowing sales managers to quickly diagnose where the problems are and recommend changes in behavior to make sure that their people are doing and saying the right things at the right times. The outcome should be a greater consistency of selling behaviors across the organization and will have a positive impact on the sales cycle, accelerating results.


3. IMPROVE SALES FORECASTING WITH A CONSISTENT SALES PROCESS

For sales forecasts to be meaningful, they must be credible and accurate. Yet, on average, “24% of all ‘sure-thing’ sales deals — current customer relationship management (CRM) opportunities deemed 80% or more likely to close in the current month — eventually slip out of the real-time forecast into subsequent selling windows … or actually don’t ever close at all.” This sobering statistic comes from research reported by the Aberdeen Group in June 2015.

The time to discover unexpected deal slippage or loss is certainly not at the end of the forecasting period, be it quarterly or monthly. It is important to pinpoint problems as quickly as possible to allow for course corrections. This takes a dynamic sales process that incorporates a considered series of stages, activities, verifiable outcomes, and high-impact coaching questions. The process should be flexible and scalable, with room in the execution for good judgement by sales professionals.

Companies with a dynamic sales process significantly outperform their peers in quota attainment and plan attainment. According to Harvard Business Review research in 2015, there is an 18% difference in revenue growth between

companies that have defined a sales process and companies that haven’t. Critical to success is the time spent by managers to coach their reps. Managers, who coach their reps on their pipelines for three hours per rep per month, achieve 11% higher revenue.

In order to improve sales forecasting accuracy, having a sales process is not enough. Your sales managers must use it to coach their sales teams and improve the quality of the dialogue by focusing on moving deals through the pipeline and not on forecasting.


Too often, we have seen sales organizations stumble because they fail to recognize the importance of their sales managers as force multipliers and do not empower or enable them to become coaches. This leads to little change in behavior and incremental impact on business results. That’s why verifiable outcomes are identified as unambiguous leading indicators of movement through the sales cycle. This allows sales managers to track and coach to these outcomes, either spotting red flags or building confidence in forecasts.

An additional benefit of this approach is the influence that verifiable outcomes have in screening and assessing opportunities. Just knowing what the expected outcomes will be provides the guidance to be more rigorous in terms of qualifying or discarding leads. The forecast becomes more reliable because iffy opportunities that could never materialize disappear, leaving only those with true potential.

Having a dynamic and well-crafted sales process forces an honest look at opportunities, changing the nature of conversations between sales professionals and their managers. “I’m not pursuing this prospect because he/she is not ready to buy and hasn’t allocated any budget.”

“There isn’t an immediate need in the prospect’s organizations, and we cannot differentiate ourselves from competitors.”

A sales process that encourages such honest appraisals leads to better communication, greater consistency, and shorter, or at least contained, sales cycles. Leading companies with such sales processes have experienced significant change in terms of cycle reduction, the ability of their sales professionals to articulate value, and increased sales forecasting accuracy. We know this from what our clients tell us and from the research, including our own surveys and those of the Aberdeen Group and the Harvard Business Review.

The positive impact of using the sales process as a blueprint for rapid behavior change is real and measurable.


4. YOU HAVE A SALES PROCESS. NOW USE IT.

If your organization has an established sales process, congratulations. According to “Companies with a Formal Sales Process Generate More Revenue,” published in the January 2015 issue of Harvard Business Review, such B2B companies generally saw an 18% boost in revenues by using their planned processes.

The two keys here are 1) to have a credible process and 2) to use it. The best way to make sure sales reps are using the process – and using it effectively – is through coaching conversations between sales managers and their teams.

As the HBR article also reported, companies that spent at least three hours per month managing each sales rep’s pipeline performance saw 11% greater revenue than those spending less time.Further, how those three hours were spent was equally important. “The primary focus of a pipeline meeting should be to help reps develop a game plan to move deals forward, not just scrubbing CRM data and forecasting revenue,” say authors Jason Jordan and Robert Kelly.

At Richardson, we call this “pipeline coaching.” This term is part of the common language we advocate for sales teams in order to keep everyone on the same page. Simply put, pipeline coaching involves a conversation between sales manager and rep that focuses on deals in the works.

High-impact coaching questions help managers confirm that their reps have the level of skills and knowledge needed to achieve verifiable outcomes at every stage in the sales process. In the qualification stage, for example, verifiable outcomes might include confirmation from the prospect that an issue or problem exists and needs to be addressed.


The sales manager’s high-impact coaching questions might be along these lines:

What are the business issues and compelling needs or pain points the prospect is trying to address?

Who cares about these business issues, and why?

What do they expect to achieve by addressing these issues?

Why can’t they achieve this today?

Who confirmed that this need exists, and where does it fall in terms of priority?

If the verifiable outcomes involve feedback from the prospect about possible solutions, then the sales manager’s questions might be as follows:

Which solution is the best fit for this prospect?

What did the decision maker say?

How will the recommended solution meet this prospect’s business needs now and in the future, according to the decision maker?

What is our unique value proposition?

Does the prospect agree with it?

What benefit do they see in the unique value proposition?

Why did the prospect say a competitor might be a better fit?

More than just price; what about capabilities, responsiveness, level of trust?

Who else will be involved in evaluating the solution?

Have you met each of them? Describe their perception of us, in their words.


Such high-impact coaching questions also help the manager identify behaviors that the sales rep either needs to change or has being changing, along with the rate of adoption of desired behaviors.

Another way for sales managers to verify skills and knowledge levels is through direct observation of their reps. This can be through a ride along or participation in a sales call. The caution here is that most sales managers used to be super sellers, and they find it difficult to step back and let their reps do their jobs. One statistic says says that sales managers step in to run the call 95% of the time.

Sales managers need to develop their skills in observing their reps while curbing their tendencies to step in. They need to pay close attention to what is being said and the behaviors displayed, and then coach accordingly. If, instead, they interrupt their rep and take over, they do themselves and their reps a disservice. Instead of helping their people improve their skills and move deals forward, they teach reliance on the sales manager.

To get the most out of the sales process, sales managers need to commit at least three hours per month per rep to ask high-impact questions, review the details of deals, and verify outcomes at each stage. These coaching sessions need to be documented and tracked in order for the sales manager to know which sale rep is at what stage in the pipeline and the commitments they make to adopting new behaviors. This is how sales managers use a formal sales process to lead change and achieve their revenue goals.


5. TAKING YOUR SALES PROCESS TO THE NEXT LEVEL — HINT: THINK CRM INTEGRATION

How CRM Integration Can Be Used for Training and Improving Your Organization’s Sales Process

Sales managers are the front line in promoting adoption of the sales process with their reps. They achieve this through consistent and ongoing coaching sessions that focus on moving deals through the pipeline. When utilized correctly the sales process can be a powerful tool to facilitate rapid behavior change within your organization. Taking your sales process to the next level can open a new world of opportunities, just like Super Mario getting the power-up mushroom in the popular platform video game series. The secret is sales CRM integration in the sales process.

Integrating Your Sales CRM in the Sales Process Sales CRM Integration into your company’s sales process sounds simple enough, but the reality is that most companies treat their CRM as a data repository.

Sales reps are required to input and update information about their calls, and sales managers access the data to make forecasts – and to adjust those forecasts, when necessary.

In reality, the level of adoption of the CRM is limited because the tool itself offers limited value to sales reps. Typically, they use it to discuss their activities

with their sales manager, schedule appointments, and set reminders. Some companies try to do more with their CRM, adding marketing content at different stages of the sales process to align with the progression of the deal. There might be a benefit analysis to share with the prospect, a white paper on an industry issue, or a blank contract to provide initial terms.


Your Sales CRM is a Training Tool That Can Help You Improve Your Team’s Sales Process

What we recommend at Richardson is to fully integrate the sales process with your organization’s CRM platform in order to raise adoption levels and usage of both the CRM and the sales process itself. When joined together, the CRM becomes the platform for coaching conversations because the activities for each stage of the sales process are defined and sequenced. You can also use the CRM to measure the success of training sessions, outcomes can be verified and discussed. There can be links to conversation models for particular activities. The sales manager can have access to high-impact coaching questions, and the CRM can capture the results of coaching sessions, noting commitments made.

With the sales process integrated into the CRM platform, sales reps gain greater value from the tool. They can see where they are in the process and what they have to do next. They can access training and marketing materials within one platform, so they don’t have to search for resources. Everything is available within the CRM. Conversations between sales manager and rep can focus on moving deals forward instead of adjusting forecasts to reflect current circumstances.

The organizations making the most progress in this area are those where the responsibility for CRM strategy resides with sales support functions, like Sales Operations. When the IT department is the product owner, the CRM is less likely to reflect a customer-centric vision that best supports and enables sales reps to be more efficient and effective in their work. The IT department is better at security and policy and technology, while Sales Operations has a more comprehensive understanding of collaboration among the salesforce, Marketing, and Learning & Development.

When closely aligned with the sales process, the CRM becomes a valuable and valued tool for taking results to the next level. In Super Mario terms, it’s like getting extra lives to go further in the game.


6. USING THE SALES PROCESS TO MEASURE SUCCESS: THREE SALES KPIS EVERYONE SHOULD FOLLOW

Sales KPIs Everyone Should Follow

Sales KPI measurements are an important part of your organizations sales process. Sales is a measurement-based business. Metrics are tracked for quota attainment, sales by product line, sales by segment, sales by territory, new business versus renewals, forecast versus actual results, number of sales calls, etc.

Lagging indicators of success, like revenues, are cumulative. They describe commitments and deals that have occurred. They mark the status of an opportunity at the end of the sales process.Leading indicators of success are incremental. They are based on actual customer behavior and reactions to what the sales rep does or says. They predict future customer commitment and provide insights into the status of an opportunity during the sales process.

Sales Process and Sales KPIs

So what key performance indicators – Sales KPIs – are most important to track? Following are three sales KPIs everyone should follow, you might be able to capture some of these metrics in your team’s CRM. They are a blend of lagging and leading indicators because both are necessary for transparency into the progression and ultimate outcome of opportunities.


Focusing on these three KPIs will tell you whether you’re going to be successful – and whether, at the end of the day, you have in fact been successful.

1. Forecast accuracy is an important leading indicator. The more forecast accuracy improves, the more confident you can be about the performance of your organization. If you are in the 50% range and trending higher, you are doing the right things. If you are at 60% or 65% and improving, that is even better. If you are at 80% to 85% accuracy or higher, you are among the top-performing organizations. Wherever you are, as long as the accuracy rate improves, you can be sure you’re on the right track.

2. Sales cycle is typically a lagging indicator that provides good information for maintaining or improving efficiency. It is important to know before, during, and after the sale where bottlenecks occur and where days can be eliminated from the cycle. Just as important as reducing the sales cycle is making sure there is no increase in the number of days. When sales managers can identify where opportunities tend to get stuck within the sales process, this sales KPI can become a leading indicator as well. If opportunities used

to get stuck but now continue to progress, reducing days of the sales cycle, then you know you are doing the right thing. And if opportunities are dropping out faster in the early stages of qualification, that is a good thing, because it means the overall process is more efficient.

3. Quota attainment is the final sales KPI – a lagging one – that should be followed. This metric is measured for every individual, but the equally important data to note is overall achievement. Tracking the group average is not about making your top performers perform better, it is about extending their level of excellence to the rest of your sales organization. Instead of focusing on, say, the 20% of your high achievers who drive 80% of your revenue, you can make more of an impact by focusing on the larger portion of your salesforce and elevating their game.

These three sales KPIs will give you a clear view into how well your sales organization and your sales process are working. If you improve forecast accuracy, control your sales cycle, and keep average sales rep quota attainment on the rise, you’ll see the difference where it really counts – in revenue growth.


Contact the Richardson Team at 215.940.9255 Visit us on the web at www.richardson.com

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ABOUT RICHARDSONRichardson is a global sales training and performance improvement company. We collaborate with sales organizations to achieve greater levels of success by changing the behavior of its salespeople and sales managers. Our approach is highly collaborative, with a focus on enabling the right sales activity and effective customer dialogues. To help you achieve your goals, we partner with you to develop customized training programs and a culture of continuous learning to help drive improved organization performance.

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Building a Consistent Sales Process

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