Sales process, the 7 steps and foundations of automation

A sales process is unique: it represents a company’s know-how in helping prospects find a solution to their problem. Setting up a clear process and operating procedures makes the work of sales teams easier.

Beyond the expertise of sales staff, “administrative” tasks creep into the sales process: various entries in the CRM, creation and iteration on the quotation, customer follow-ups, reporting, filing of documents… Once sales management has been defined, it’s easier toautomate tedious tasks, brick by brick,so that staff can concentrate on selling (according to this study, salespeople spend only 37% of their time selling).

What is a sales process?

A sales process is a sequence of steps, sometimes simultaneous, subject to conditions and multi-actor, enabling a prospect’s request to be processed through to a potential sale. A process gives sales people a framework for handling an opportunity. They are then guided in carrying out tasks and controls, thereby increasing the chances of success.

There are as many sales processes as there are companies. Indeed, a process is representative of an organization’s know-how and financial stakes. Below is just one example of a sales process.

These flowcharts show :

• Tasks. Gathering requirements, CRM entries, qualification, costing, validation, opportunity follow-up, follow-ups, negotiation…
• Players. Sales, Manager, Design engineer, Sales director, Accounting
• Terms and conditions

What are the 7 stages of sales?

Step 1 – Finding prospects

There are two main families of opportunity generation:

Voluntary solicitation of a prospect and capture of a purchase intention. What they have in common is that they require a thorough knowledge of your targets, their needs and possible offers.

Voluntary solicitation is a pro-active prospecting process focused on finding prospects within a target group. Once a prospect has been targeted, a sales representative will contact him or her via various channels: phone calls, emails, Linkedin, door-to-door… A prospect can come directly from existing contacts in a CRM or from outside.

Capturing prospects based on their intention to buy is not a passive act. On the contrary, building content (visuals, web pages, downloadable guides, appointment forms…) and communicating it (publication on social networks, digital or physical advertising, SEO…), will get prospects thinking about whether a solution could be made for them!

The importance of knowing your targets so you know which families and channels to activate

There are many possible channels and arguments for reaching a prospect. It’s always important to iterate to find the most relevant ones as you go along. Nevertheless, at the outset, it’s imperative to study the target to determine the best channels for acquiring a prospect.

Based on the company’s strategy and its offering, it needs to define its ICP (Ideal Customer Profile) or buyer persona.

Step 2 – Gathering prospect requirements and entering them into CRM

Discovery meeting with the prospect

Depending on its level of maturity, the sales process will lead to an initial meeting with the prospect. This meeting has different objectives:

• Start a relationship and help prospects to think things through
• Discover your business, its problems and needs
• Gather information to qualify the opportunity. For example: level of maturity on the problem, budget, timeframe, decision-makers, competitors…

Preparing the discovery meeting

Depending on the company, preparation time can vary according to the market, the competition, the time available, the average basket of an offer… Nevertheless, it’s always advisable not to discover your prospect at the last minute. Visiting the customer’s website and Linkedin page will enable you to mentally prepare specific use cases andenhance the sales experience.

As well as gathering information, it’s important to draw up an interview guide. This guide will list a set of questions to ask all prospects. The guide and its questions represent a company’s know-how. It can be designed in collaboration with the company’s other departments: research, production, finance, etc.

Entering information into a CRM

CRM is a company’s most important sales tool. It brings together all data relating to contacts, their company and the transactions triggered. There are all kinds, the best known being Salesforce, Hubspot, Pipedrive, Attio, Microsoft Dynamics, Zoho CRM…

Gathering information about the contact, the company and the opportunity are the first “administrative” tasks in the sales process. These tasks are often considered tedious by sales reps, who sometimes botch them. They are also a source of errors due to poor cutting and pasting or typing mistakes. This friction has an impact on data quality, and therefore on the ability to make the right decisions.

Step 3 – Qualifying the opportunity

Alone, collaboratively or including a validation circuit with the sales manager, the sales team will study whether an opportunity is worth the cost! The time required for costing, producing the offer, presenting it to the prospect and the many rounds of negotiation are not free.

During this study phase, the sales representative may also ask whether the prospect is in line with the target, whether his needs are clear, whether his budget is sufficient, and whether he is talking to a decision-maker. Each company can define its own qualification requirements. If there’s a sticking point, you’ll have to work it out with the customer again , or decide to refuse the request.

It is also possible to industrialize qualification by setting up a scoring system directly in the CRM. A potential transaction will then be evaluated according to different subjects, which will give points. Each opportunity exceeding a certain score will then be considered viable and feasible by the sales team.

Stage 4 – Costing, quotation construction and first estimate

Costing or sizing the offer

Depending on the customer’s needs, the salesperson, sometimes assisted by the technical or design teams, will size the time and/or components required to meet the prospect’s requirements. To do this, some companies use costing software, CRM-integrated functions or simply Excel spreadsheets.

Designing a proposal

Particularly in the competitive bidding phase, or when the decision is taken collectively by the prospect, it’s important to formalize your offer in a proposal. This proposal is proof of your seriousness and expertise. It’s also a powerful communication tool if it’s passed from decision-maker to decision-maker on the customer’s side.

In general, a proposal can be broken down into several parts:

• Formalizing context and needs
• Your convictions, your solution, your company
• Details of your approach and dedicated teams
• Presentation of costing and budget

And the administrative tasks of creating a quote, transforming it into a PDF and updating the CRM.

The second “administrative” task in a sales process: creating a quote. It can be broken down into several tasks:

• Import of costing elements from costing software or Excel spreadsheet. Often via manual copy-paste (which can be a source of errors), csv. xls exports.
• Import customer information by copy and paste or manual entry
• Control and iteration
• Converting to pdf, naming and storing in a storage space

When a salesperson makes an estimate once in a while, that’s fine! On the other hand, when they produce several quotations a day, it’s a real waste of time.

Step 5 – Presentation of the offer

One of the golden rules of the sales process is never to send a prospect an offer without first presenting it! If a customer tells you there’s no need, it’s because you’ve already established a relationship of trust with them, it’s because it’s standard in your market, or most of the time it’s an indicator that the prospect isn’t really interested in your offer.

During the presentation of the offer, make sure you interact with all the members of the meeting, leave time for discussion, clarify any shortcomings (and if necessary iterate).

Step 6 – Negotiation

If the offer is relevant to the prospect, then he may start a negotiation phase on the price or the various terms of the offer. Try to be as active as possible, following the rule that a concession must necessarily involve a gain. For example, if the prospect wants to reduce the price, negotiate to increase the down-payment percentage or reduce the payment terms; you can also reduce the scope so as not to impact your margin.

Step 7 – Conclusion of the sales process and transition to other billing and production processes

To complete the sales process, your company will have to carry out various multi-actor tasks:

• contractualization
• order production launch (including design phase, operations planning, supply management, etc.)
• issue an invoice
• receipt of first deposit payment

Why is it important to set up a sales process?

How to build a simple sales process?

Phase 1 – Take stock of your sales process as a team

Setting up a sales process is a collaborative effort, because the aim is for it to be followed by everyone. So organize individual or group discussion sessions to collect everyone’s concerns andidentify problems. If you’re short of time, don’t hesitate to use an anonymous online questionnaire.

You can’t just ask a sales rep for his problems and have him deliver them to you. You have to follow a certain method.

It may also be interesting toinclude exchanges with former prospects on this topic to help you improve customer value.

This mini-audit will enable you to identify findings and potential areas for improvement.

In addition, don’t hesitate to model current operations in the form of diagrams and maps to facilitate collective understanding. To find out more about process modeling, we ‘ve also written an article.

Step 2 – Once you’ve identified your strengths and weaknesses, build the target, without worrying about finding solutions to your problems.

Based on your challenges, your strategic objectives, your operational issues and your customers’ needs, build the ideal sales process. It’s important not to draw up solutions to your operational problems just yet– that will come in the next phases.

Don’t hesitate to model this target sales process on a flow chart and communicate it to your sales team and the other players involved in the process.

Step 3 – Prioritize the problems you want to solve

The inventory has probably revealed several sub-optimizations or frictions. Dealing with all these issues simultaneously can be complicated. In that case, we suggest youtake it one problem at a time.

In order to organize them and determine priorities, we recommend that youassess the financial, customer, operational and human impact of each problem. To do this, we recommend using a spreadsheet with four columns for each problem: Impact / Category / Impact description / Score from 0 to 5.

Example of a problem entering purchase orders in several software programs.

You’ll then have the order in which to implement solutions. This will not prevent you from starting to set up your sales process and gradually replacing them as they are resolved.

Step 4 – Document and digitalize your sales process

There are different ways to manage your process:

• Informal process (not documented by the company)
• Documented process, i.e. a paper document or pdf format
• Digitalized management. Beyond the document, all stages are supported by dedicated software that makes the process tangible/operational for employees. Thanks to a combination of forms, validation and approval circuits, notifications…
• Digitalized and partially automated procurement. Employees are freed from repetitive and time-consuming tasks such as multiple data entry, information retrieval… And software, CRM, phoning software… are interconnected.

Now you know all about sales processes. Now it’s your turn! See you soon for more content!