for sales leaders,business development

Optimization of the sales process

Michał Skurowski

4 April 2019

In previous articles, I explained what a sales process is and how to create one. This time, I will suggest how to check the effectiveness of the implemented solutions, and how to use the knowledge about the operation of the sales process.

Is one process enough?

Usually, there are several sales processes at a company. The situation is different when, for example, someone comes to us themselves and invites us to a tender, and different when we find the customer of our dreams and try to get their interest. We may also create different processes when the competences of the people involved in them, or the offered products, are so varied that we sell them in a different way.

Optimization of the process

What cannot be measured, cannot be improved. Once you have built the right sales process and implemented tools for monitoring it, you will finally be able to optimize it. There are many ways to do this. Here are three of them:

1. A/B testing. Two groups of salespeople, who sell the same products, operate according to different processes. After some time, we analyze their effectiveness and choose the process that generated more revenue;

2. Analysis of activities. This method is based on observing how often activities in the sales process are carried out, and what impact this has on winning or losing the deal. It is also crucial to understand at what stage of sales most customers quit, and how we can tighten up our sales funnel;

3. Coaching. The most classic method is simply in-depth interviews with salespeople about how well the given process works for them. It is important to organize regular meetings where managers directly ask for ideas for streamlining the process.

What next?

Creation of the first sales process or improvement of the current one is not very difficult and brings measurable benefits. I encourage you to experiment and initiate discussions inside the company about the process. I hope that this will help you avoid the mistakes I made in my early days of doing business. It does not matter whether you work at a small company or a large corporation, the rules are exactly the same.

If you are looking for a sales process monitoring tool, check out the Livespace CRM possibilities.

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