HOW TO CRAFT YOUR SALES PROCESS

Saphyte Team

2 min read

Updated: February 15th, 2021

Sales processes are essential in the growth and survival of a business. When done right, these processes will give you an edge over your competitors — they will define customer experience, customer satisfaction, and will determine future repeat purchases.

Processes also allow your sales teams to find room to boost conversions, close more deals, and provide customers with positive experiences. However, building a solid and effective sales process can be tough because no two businesses, sales teams or audiences are quite the same.

There are commonalities however, among businesses, and some sales processes have been proven to work in many situations. But before discussing these sales processes, here are the important elements of a sales process that you should know:

Prospecting

Prospecting is the process of sourcing new leads. It is an essential part of the sales process and comprises mostly of a sales rep’s day-to-day or weekly workflow process.

Prospecting mostly involves online research on sites like LinkedIn or Quora. This might take place at networking, conferences, or industry events. You can also prospect through referrals from current clients or colleagues who might be interested in purchasing your product or service.

Connect and qualify

Connecting usually refers to your reps starting a conversation with your leads to gather vital customer information. In this process, your reps will go through a discovery process, either via email or phone and will ask important questions about the lead. 

The second part is qualifying new leads. After the discovery part, your reps will now decide whether the lead is a good-fit for your business, and whether the lead will likely move forward in the sales journey.

Research

Next up comes research. During this step, reps learn more about each of the qualified prospects. This allows them to offer a more tailor-made and personalized customer experience — thus improving the likelihood of closing a deal.

The key ingredient of this stage is understanding your prospect’s individual challenges and needs, and establishing how your product or service can be of help.

Present

This step is typically done when your salesperson runs an official presentation or demonstration about your product or service to your prospect.

This step can be time-consuming, so it characteristically comes at the deeper part of the sales process and is reserved for more serious prospects—  which is why the connecting and qualifying steps of your sales process is so critical.

You don’t want your sales reps to waste any of their valuable time, effort and resources if it’s apparently avoidable. Here, your presentation should be tailored to meet the exact unique case and pain points of your prospects.

Handle objections

It’s a common occurrence for prospects to have objections to your presentation and proposal — which is why this is an important phase in your sales process.

Your sales team should be prepared to handle any and all customer objections. When you listen to your prospect’s objections and questions, it can help your reps better modify your product or service to fit their needs. Whether the problems pertain to cost, onboarding, or any other parts of the contract, you should always be prepared at all times to convert objections into opportunities to explain why your product or service can be of value.

Close

This phase of the sales process refers to the late-stage activities— when a certain deal approaches its closing— and is, admittedly, every sales rep’s favorite phase.

This phase has a wide variation from business to business and may include things like delivering a quote, negotiation, or achieving the buy-in of key decision-makers.

Communicate and continue to sell

Although closing deals is the definitive goal in sales, your journey with your customers doesn’t end there. This is where your after-sales activities come in. Activities like transitioning customers to onboarding and customer support.

Execute your Plans with the Right Tool

Crafting a sales process is one thing, executing the phases of your whole process is another. That is why a CRM tool like Saphyte is there to help you out.

Saphyte is a cloud-based CRM that helps businesses and organizations streamline their corporate activities and integrate them into a single platform. This CRM tool is built with sales and marketing tools that can help you advance your business’s productivity and efficiency.

Manage your customer data, conduct marketing tactics and strategies, identify opportunities for the long haul, and foster long-term customer relationships for your business. Start crafting your sales process with the right tool today. Book a free demo with us or start your free trial today.