Designing The Right Sales Process

Looking at this chart, this is how a sales process should look: aligned with the customer's buying process.  Every customer buying activity is mirrored at the appropriate time by a selling activity.  The value expected by the customer at each step of their buying process is provided at that time by the selling process.  With such an aligned sales process, you can measure and manage the sales function effectively.  Now, throughputs and fallouts from one step in the sales process to the next reflect what is happening in the customer's buying process, and predictions made about future sales events have a relationship to some real event in the customer's process. 

How do you construct such a selling process?  Two simple steps follow:

1. Map your customer's buying process.
2. Created a selling process that mirrors and adds value to your customer's buying process as it's expected, as it's needed.

You've just designed your sales process.  Now you can stop selling and start creating customers.

Source: Michael Gooze, President, Customer Manufacturing Group, Inc.