Need to Close More Sales - Is it the Sales Force or the Sales Process that Needs Help

In our B to B sales consulting practice our clients are invariably looking for assistance in increasing sales productivity and sales revenues. Often in the initial interview, in response to a question regarding what they perceive to be the problem we hear comments like Our sales reps need to become better at closing the deal or Our salespeople need to be more adept at managing overall business relationships and less focused on individual sales. The perceived problems almost always lead the client to the belief that some type of skill development through a sales training program is the answer.

Is sales training the solution? Not always. Certainly a well design and delivered sales training program can be a major contributor to sales improvement. However, before you treat the symptom, I recommend that you review all aspects of your current selling practices with the objective of highlighting areas within the sales process that offer potential for improvement. In our practice, we use a diagnostic tool that we developed based on our experience and research into both the selling process and the selling skills of successful salespeople. There are two objectives to this review first to determine whether you have a consistent sales process in place. Second, to better understand where that process can be improved to contribute to increased sales success.

So before you begin an evaluation, you must clarify what you sales process really consists of and understand how your product or service can contribute to a long sales cycle and a more complex buyer decision process. Here are some key points which will help with analyzing your selling process.

Lets start by looking at your average sales cycle measured in days, weeks or months. This cycle starts with the first prospect contact and ends when the sale is closed. You should view this from a different perspective how your product or service can contribute to increasing or decreasing that sales cycle and the buyer decision process. To help you, we review two criteria that will increase the cycle. First how extensively within the customer organization your product will most likely be found. Is it specific to just one department, is it found throughout a business unit or is it all pervasive found enterprise wide? For example, a seller of computing hardware could potentially place their products into every department in a large customer organization while that same customer would only purchase billing system software for use by the accounts receivable department. The more extensive the product is within the customer organization, the more likely that multiple individuals will be involved in some aspect of the decision and that the decision process will become more protracted.

Second what is the true investment cost that the customer will incur if they decide to buy? Investment cost is the actual cost of the product coupled with required resources to turn the switch on those resources might be financial resources, human resources or both. The higher the investment cost the more complex and long will be the decision process.

As an example, before purchasing enterprise management software, the buyer must conduct a through cost benefit analysis which would include a detailed projection of implementation cost that might entail significant hours of effort by their internal IT support staff.

Now the reality is that you the seller have little opportunity to reduce the sales cycle. However, understanding how your product and total investment cost will impact the buying process is valuable because it can help you to better conduct a customer needs analysis that identifies all key decision makers early on. This will help you by making you more effective in your ability to advance the sale. Also by raising awareness of how the sales cycle is affected we can better focus on how to conduct the prospect needs analysis and qualification of ability to buy which are the final steps in the evaluation process.

Now we take what we learned about selling cycles and evaluate it in relation to three fundamental steps found in every sales process:

1. Understand prospect needs is there a clear need for what you offer and if so, is there any sense of urgency to make the purchase decision?

2. Qualify the ability to buy (authorize the dollar expenditure) and qualify the decision making ability of individuals you are selling to.

3. Close the sale by presenting a sound business justification to the right decision makers.

To summarize, looking at what you have uncovered about the sales cycle the higher the investment cost or level of product presence within the customer enterprise, -the more critical become the needs analysis and qualification process and the greater the potential for improvement which will result in increased sales, revenue and margin. For the seller, it is critical to conduct a needs analysis that clarifies the priority of the potential buy and to link this priority to return on investment (ROI). So potential ROI projections must be included in the needs analysis this will often involve discussions with perspective users, financial buyers and other beneficiary parties within the prospect organization. The qualification process can be managed concurrently with the needs analysis process. By conducting a through needs analysis, engaging all key decision makers early in the process and presenting a well documented ROI for the prospect more sales will close. Once you have a solid understanding of your sales process, you can focus on identifying those critical selling skills that are relevant to your selling process skills such as solutions selling, relationship building and negotiation. Now you can maximize the benefit of a well designed skill specific training program that compliments the critical stages of your selling process.

Sales Training
Formulating sales policies is the key task in sales training. Sales policies cover a wide range of areas including which products should find a place in the product line; whether some of the existing products should be dropped; whether any new produc...

2007 Sales Training Tips From the Real World
It is widely known in MBA circles that a highly trained sales force is up to five times as effect is as a sales force which is not properly trained. Sometimes the sales profession is given a bad name, but in reality a highly trained and sales profess...

Sales Meetings - What Time Should You Schedule Your Sales Meeting To Achieve The Best Productivity
Everybody salespeople, sales managers, sales consultants - have their own theories on how to manage a sales force. It seems that sales is becoming a science. This includes theories on sales meetings. What time of day is best to schedule a sales meet...

Sales Training Tip #11; Prospect Interest and Sales Process
It is important for teach each and every sales trainer and sales training manager of any company with a large sales force to make sure that each and every salesperson that is on the team so they can recognize when a prospect is interested in what it ...

Sales Training Programmes
Sales training programs help determine the size of the sales force. The size of the sales force has to be fixed at the optimum level. A number of interrelated considerations are involved like the level of sales expected and the number of sales people...

Real Estate Sales Training
In real estate sales training, sales forecasting is very important. Sales forecasting is the task of projecting the future sales of a firm. The sales forecast indicates how much of a product is likely to be sold during a specified future period in a ...

Effective Sales Training Begins By Defining Your Desired Results
Are you unhappy with your sales training? Possibly, you are not getting the results that you want because you failed to define those before you began? Read why this should be your first step if you desire effective sales training that delivers a pos...

Sales Training Consultants
Sales training consultants play a pivotal role in determining the personal selling objectives of a firm. The first task in sales management is to determine the place of the selling personal in the marketing mix of the firm and to set the personal sel...

Sales Closing Techniques No Longer Work
Closing sales no longer requires sales closing techniques. Do any of the following sound familiar?1. The attitude close 2. The alternate choice close 3. The voice inflection close 4. The fear of loss close 5. The alternate of choice closeThese ar...

The Renegade Salesperson Can Ruin Your Company
All companies need sales people and those who are good in sales indeed have their pick of the best companies to work for. But beware if you run a company with a large sales force because salespeople are generally very independent folks and often step...

This entry was posted on Friday, May 30th, 2008 at 3:52 am and is filed under Sales Training . You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.