Is Your Customer’s Buying Experience Making It Easier for Your to Make Sales in the Future?
Or is it a smash and grab to net sales revenue today?
Buying from you should be a frictionless process for your prospects and customers.
If prospects and customers want to spend money with you, when your competitors are all around and choice is just a google search away, ….then it would make sense to deliver the prospect a positive and memorable buying experience,
Maybe even a buying experience that they rave about?
Yet so often the buyer is NOT at the heart of the sales process – which means only one thing – you might get them this time, but you won’t keep them.
And, you won’t have created a raving fan.
Now, that’s not to say that sales won’t be made…they will.
So, for all the sales you’ve made this week – ask yourself:
Have you used that opportunity to create a:
- Loyal customer
- Repeat customer
- Raving fan
- Referral source
You haven’t?
Then your future sales have been compromised, and the door has been left open to competitors.
Ask yourself…is that really what you want?
Is Your Sales Process Feeding a Expensive, Leaky Bucket?
But, if making it easier for your competitors to score a deal over you wasn’t bad enough…then let’s look at the costs associated with getting this wrong….
At the other end of the sales process – when the beans are counted and all the sums done, you’ll see a few facts pop up, namely:
- The cost to acquire a customer will be going up over time.
- Customer retention will be going down.
- You’ll be relying on an ever decreasing pot of returning customers
Congratulations – you now have an expensive and leaky bucket rather than a fully functioning sales process that delivers sales today AND tomorrow!
Plus, it means you’re running hard to stay still, margins are being eroded and your competitors can thrive at your expense.
Matching the Sales Process to the Buying Process
In all my work with under-performing sales teams, looking at sales process improvement, I can safely say that there are a handful of key failure points that cause a sales team who should be able to fly to nose dive…
Stuck firmly in the middle of that list is a sales process that is
- Non-standardised
- Lacking go/no-go sales qualification criteria
- Delivers zero value for the sales prospect during the sales process
- Had many needless friction points
- Resulted in a CRM that creaked under the weight of the rubbish in it!
Newsflash! These are all fixable!
For example….
Being Ghosted by the Buyer?
Nearly ALWAYS down to a bad sales process
Buying processes will all differ from organisation to organisation, but not from sales rep to sales rep in the SAME organisation.
Being ghosted typically means the sales rep has failed to fully dig into and understand critical elements of the sales process. Lack of attention to important aspects like:
- Decision making criteria
- Stakeholder mapping and engagement
- Timelines and milestone
Without this information it’s tough to:
- Make progress from one stage to the next
- Maintain control of the buyer engagement
- Build consensus on the best way to move forward with the buyer
Which means:
- Sales drag
- Deals lose momentum
- Sales reps waste their time typing to convert the wrong people
- Everyone looks busy but nothing is closing!
- The sales pipeline bulges and
- Sales forecasting becomes a joke
This is just one very common example
There are a dozen more issues your are facing in your sales function that are costing you revenue, margin and customer orders, that you have the ability to fix with a sales process improvement plan
Is Your Sales Process Making Your Rich? Your Sales Process Improvement Plan Will!
Or is it sending your money to your competitor, helping your competitor to thrive?
If I tell you that most leadership teams believe that the cost of running their sales process is huge and largely unquantifiable…would you believe me?
It’s true.
They look at the CRM, the sales team and the supporting function and see something of a ‘black-box’ where sometimes that magic works and sometimes it doesn’t…but expensive nonetheless
And these leadership teams, again largely in organisations with under-performing sales functions, are missing some critical points, namely understanding that:
- Sales forecasting will always be hit and miss until the sales process is drilled into the team fibre, culture and standard operating procedure
- The CRM will always be just ‘kit’ or ‘tech’ and not the massive asset that it should be in a sales based organisation
- Being able to predict sales outputs and trends way BEFORE they cause you any trouble will always be a pipe dream
- Maximising repeat customers, referrals and raving advocates will be a struggle
- Reducing customer acquisition costs will be an up-hill battle
- Managing the leaky bucket will waste more time than you can imagine
After You’ve Run Your Sales Process Improvement Plan, the Flip Side of Having a Great Sales Process?
What if I told you that an efficient sales process can:
- Increase a sales conversion rate from 1:25 to 1:3 in a matter of weeks?
- Treble your average order value? See How to Increase Price for more information and 3 case studies on how to increase price
- See Sales Pipeline reviews take 10 mins instead of hrs
- Reduce the uncertainty in sales forecasting, which now becomes painless, accurate and credible
- Remove the risk from growth, and planning for growth
- Sales performance improvement is faster
- Training is more potent and direct
- Optimising specific parts of the sales process can be done in a blink
- Build a goldmine from your CRM
Would you do something then?
Maybe you need more proof…Check out ‘Companies with a Formal Business Development Process Generate More Revenue’
So, read on to find out how you can get your business and sales team flying by adopting an efficient and effective sales process…and if needed, taking a look at how your sales process improvement efforts are impacting your sales results
Don’t Suffer or Waste Anymore Time | Build Your Sales Process Improvement Plan
If any of this resonates with you and your sales function then maybe now is the time to take action?
More directly, if you’re seeing any of the following then it might be time to book a call to talk through how you can revenue some of these trends and build your own sales process improvement plan…
- More sales troughs than peaks
- Low conversion rates
- Overstuffed and stagnant sales pipeline
- Inconsistent results across the team
- Diminishing returns of efforts from sales activities
- Lack of control over sales results
- Struggling to win more than you loose
- Growth of competitors
Let’s face it – the habits that got you into this situation, won’t rescue you.
If you want a different outcome you need a different set of habits, focus, intention and action.
At Morton Kyle, we offer a range of sales process improvement solutions, working with your team to understand the health of your sales function based on its revenue and margin potential, identifying and quantifying sales leaks, and building a fix.
Summary: Build Your Sales Process Improvement Plan – Should it be at the top of your to-do list?
No paying enough attention to your sales process will be costing your business revenue, margin budget and competitor growth….every single day.
So, it deserves your attention.
I’ve seen sales conversion rates go form 1:25 to 1:3 in the matter of weeks using the the methods we use in the Morton Kyle Sales Insights Audit
Your Sales Insights Audit has the potential to double the output of your sales team without doubling the size (and costs) of your sales team.
Efficiency is a state of mind.
Busy is also a state of mind.
It matters a lot which one your sales team have, because you have to ask: what’s that costing the business?
Your Sales Insight Audit will give you everything you need to know to maximise the effectiveness of your sales process – giving you an improvement plan and the means to bring about the critical fixes. Plus, because of the richness and depth of the data, you’ll get to bring your team along with you, fostering accountability, responsibility and commitment to change.
If you’ve any questions regarding your sales process improvement plan, how you’d like to tackle some of the leaks in your sales process, or to further discuss how a Sales Insights Audit can help drive your sales growth then please call Carol – 0779 002 1885 to get in contact.
Our sales process improvement plan and associated methods, sales process framework and sales improvement framework with your Sales Insight Audit feedback are the start of your journey into the next growth period in your business – start your journey today, take control of your sales growth
With so much information available about how to improve sales, the best sales methods, the changing needs of buyers, what sales process to use… it’s often tough to know where to start if you want better sales results.
That’s why we create CLARITY from CONFUSION!
With our holistic approach to improving B2B sales performance, my clients can see an immediate uplift in sales outputs because we only focus on the elements of your sales function that are dragging your sales results down.
There is nothing hit and miss with our sales improvement interventions – whether that’s sales coaching, sales training or sales strategy.
What does that mean for you? Faster progress, less effort, fewer changes, less friction, smoother transition from the old to the new.
Don’t get bogged down in out the box sales solutions and ‘hit and run’ sales training – you’re closer than you think to getting the sales results you want, you don’t need to start from scratch.
So, what’s your sales challenge?
Let’s chat!