Does your sales department really need a sales process? Why/why not?

1. Process allows for measurement
2. Measurement allows for management
3. Management allows for improvement
4. Improvement allows for increased sales
5. Increased sales supports profitability

Great question - and this is my favorite topic, too! Sales processes are like strategic plans. If you don't think you have one already, you're wrong - you have one by default. And it's usually messy, inefficient, unpopular, out of date, based on activities only, honored or ignored depending on the person and the day of the week (or phase of the moon). That's the situation far too often, especially among sales leaders who are negative about the idea of having a sales process.

I like Barbara's answer, because it includes the core benefits of any formal business process,especially the notion that measurement leads to management and improvement. And thanks for the brevity, Barbara!

I also like Brian's answer, because his PRO's demonstrate the value of formal business processes, and his CON's demonstrate what happens when the people closest to the problem (the sales force) have a 'process' imposed on them that tney did not design, or at least contribute to designing, or one that is force-fit into the organization through the purchase of a software application. Lots of times senior management attempts to automate processes that are ill-defined or broken, and there's not a lot of clarity about how to morph the vendor's ideas into the daily reality of your company's sales-force activities and objectives.

The benefits of formal process management have been accepted for decades in businesses of all types for many decades, and the last holdout is the sales organization. Since there is ample proof that well-designed and well-monitored business processes yield significant benefits in cost, profitability, time to market, and even customer satisfaction, it doesn't make sense to leave Sales standing on the shore, waving its hanky as the boat disappears over the horizon.

Guess you can tell my vote. I'm convinced that sales organizations benefit from sales processes - as long as they're well designed and universally deployed.

If you don’t have a sales process that’s mapped to the customer’s buying process, you will struggle to succeed.

Let’s look first at the steps a buyer takes as they embark on a buying process.

1. Identify Need (What’s the business problem they want to solve?)
2. Visualize Solutions (How is the problem addressed?)
3. Evaluate Alternatives (What’s the best option for us?)
4. Negotiate Terms (The details of the deal)
5. Purchase, and
6. Re-Evaluate (How is it working for us?)

If these are the steps that the buyer goes through, doesn’t it make sense that your sales process should align to the buying process? Let’s map a sales process to the customer’s buying process:

1. Qualify: Is there really a funded opportunity that we can win?
2. Requirements: What is the business need of the customer?
3. Evidence: How do we prove that we can competitively meet the business need?
4. Acquisition: Not just about price, but more importantly about the terms of the relationship.
5. Verbal Order & Contract: Crossing the finishing line.
6. Manage: Building a customer for life.

In all of the analysis we have done of deals lost, one of the common factors for the loss has been a lack of understanding of the customer’s buying process. There is lots of evidence to suggest that, unless you understand the customer’s plans, their real business needs, and can develop their needs to show your distinct competitive advantage and real business value, success is unlikely. It’s much easier to design your selling plan, if you know the customer’s buying plan.

If you want you can get a sales process for free at http://dealmakergenius.com

Good question.

HERE ARE 5 PROS TO "Sales Process":

(1) Provides visibility to the "stage" of the sales cycle for each potential sale

(2) The "Process" can provide nudges and a framework for sales people to rely on to help them do their job better (not having to reinvent the wheel every time).

(3) Over time, clues to when and where deals have been won lost can provide insight to where the sales process can be improved

(4) Details within a sales process can provide "clues" to where and how sales cycles might be shortened. In addition, many of the repeated steps can potentially be automated.

(5) Tracking a sales process has the potential to make more quantified and realistic sales forecasts (which have plenty of downstream and back office ramifications)

HERE ARE 5 CONS TO "Sales Process":

(1) Sales people generally hate it as they receive no value from it

(2) Almost no sales cycle is exactly the same

(3) Most sales process(es) in the real world are not linear, but rather iterative, inexact, and complicated

(4) Forcing a sales process on a buyer can alienate them

(5) Most companies forget that the whole conversation should be about the customer. The systemization of success shouldn't be about following the sales process in a vacuum. It should be about aligning the sales process with the customer's buying process, and being able to do that in a dynamic fashion (Adaptive Case Management in theory could help to provide a solution to this)

Structure, guidelines, and governance provide a framework from which successful sales people and companies can optimize performance.

Unfortunately, most sales processes go the way of being ignored or tolerated because they ignore the human element of business altogether, and only add a marginally perceived value to one party in the value chain (mgmt, but not the sales person and not the customer).

The ideal sales process would be one that centers in on encouraging, enabling, and empowering the sales team to delight their customers and prospects, and be as successful as possible, while holding them accountable to their agreement with their employer.

Focus on this balance and you'll be ahead of the vast majority of organizations out there.

This, of course begins reaching deep into the caverns of corporate culture, but that's a conversation for another day.

I don't mean to post this as an answer, but only as a response to Dave Stein's great answer. So please consider this a reply:

Great response Dave (not that it surprises me at all). To your point 3, I would add, sales people will use the process if they see that it helps make them more productive and effective--in short if they win more in less time.

Too often the process has been designed to facilitate management reporting or some other reason. That's just bad design. The sales process should facilitate the sales person't effectiveness. It should be based on the best experiences of the top performers in the organization and tested against experience and win loss data.

Above all, as you state so well, it must be aligne with the customer buying process--or even better, enable the sales person to create great value by facilitating the customer buying process.

Great stuff, as usual, Dave.

The question is whether the entire sales staff should have the same sales process. Anyone who sells has to have some sort of process they go through to fill their pipeline and grow their business. That process differs by person. We're all different. How we relate to people, research, communicate, and sell is different per person. So, my reasons for having a process include:
1. You need to identify who you are targeting
2. You need to determine HOW to target and prospect to them. Where are they? What matters to them?
3. You need to be able to measure your success. If you don't have a process how will you know if you are close or far from your goal? How will you know what to do next?
4. All goals include a process - it's the roadmap you create to get there.
5. You need to be able to identify what works and what doesn't so that when you are ready to target a new market or segment, you know what to do.

I find that the people who struggle most with sales are the ones who have no process. They may have a goal but they haven't determine how they are going to get there; the steps they're going to take. Make it easy on yourself and take some time to develop YOUR process.

This is a great question with exceptional answers for any sales manager or executive leader that is unsure of which way to go. Ellen touched on a point I'd like to highlight.

Whatever method you're using, even if it's a fly-by-the seat-of-the-pants method; that's you're default process.
Selling without a mapped process is like flying blind without instruments. This is the choice of the worst kind, because no one knows what's working, what isn't, when to fish, or when to cut bait.

The aversion to following a sales process is caused by the belief that selling is an organic experience that the process impedes. Selling is organic. We humans are organic too and are reliant on DNA that defines our structure and life processes, but it does not control our decisions or reduce our creativity.

Crafting a loose enough, comfortably feeling sales process that allows for organic activity and creativity is essential. Buy-in is the necessary ingredient. We need to "sell" our process as a solution to achieving personal and career goals in a way that motivates.

Pros
1 The vast majority (90% +) of a sales force must learn the intangible laws of sales, and a process is a good way to avoid behaviours that neglict these constants. Only a small minority of people (

This is clearly the highest quality set of responses I have read on LinkedIn and I thank the contributors for sharing their wisdom.

There is an unrelenting crusade by knowledge experts like me that promote the concept of utilizing ‘analytics’ as the key differentiator to assess and optimize sustained revenue performance. As for how sales process plays into this logic; if you have poorly defined financial (pipeline) and sales process mapping methods, you have no uniform standard for running analytics against the data and information collected. This means one must deal with the age old problem of trying to make sense of the ‘Garbage In – Garbage Out’ metaphor. In our current economic environment I submit a lack of defined 'processes' is a key leading indicator of industry average and laggard organizations.

Organizations that seek to be best-in-class simply cannot achieve their revenue goals, let alone sustain them, without closely managing their defined sales processes. Thus my tag line; “You can’t act on what you can’t measure.” As a sidebar note; people want to substitute the word don’t measure for can’t measure. Why, I’m not sure except it seems to read better? Here is the problem – using the word don’t ‘assumes’ that you can and we all know the definition of assume. Thanks for listening.

To add another piece of the pie into the above excellent comments, don't forget that there is a behind-the-scenes decision process that actually takes up 90% of the buyer's decision, and the sales model doesn't address this. Our entire sales process is needs assessment/solution placement, and managing the fallout when the buyer doesn't do what we think they should be doing. Or we don't like the results we have to deal with.

There is a set of 13 steps that buyers must go through off-line to get the right people on board, the right agreements, find the right people to be on the Buying Decision Team, get buy-in from whomever will touch the final solution, and get all of the systems and change management issues identified so when a new solution enters there will be minimal fall out.

Because we have to sit and wait (and wait) for buyers to do all of the above, we end up pushing in strange and creative ways - even with the marketing automation process which merely manages the same issues sales manages and ignores the buy-in process.

Once we begin our sales from the beginning of the decision path, we won't get objections, have to do proposals, and can easily differentiate. Not to mention halve the sales cycle.

The time it takes buyers to come up with their own answers is the length of the sales cycle. We can either sit and wait for them as we have, or learn a new skill set and help them bring together their Buying Decision Team. It's not 'sales' but it works with sales and manages the front end. They have to do it anyway - we might as well be a part of it and get onto their Team. Unfortunately, the sales model just doesn't go that far.

Very well said by all. My two cents, if there is no sales process within the sales departemt expect no growth and fire the sales manager. How can you expect to grow a sales organization without a detailed and managed to sales process.

To fully deply and utilize any sales automation tools such as CRM packages like SalesForce.com or InfusionSoft.com or more generic packages like GoldMine, etc. there has to be a process to automate.