Take this test: List out all of the areas of your business where you have common process and common language. Does your sales department appear on that list? If it is not, don’t worry, most companies could not say ‘yes’ here. Try this next: At your next sales meeting, ask your team to jot down the steps in your organizations selling process…5-8 bullet points from initial meeting with a prospect, all the way to a ‘closed the deal and now we’re executing’. Are all the steps the same for each sales professional? I bet they are not, but what if they were?
If you look at those areas where common processes prevail (accounting, manufacturing, operations, software development, etc…) they all exist for the purpose of predictability. If we can control the process, we can predict the outcome and more importantly, we can learn when things don’t go as planned for whatever the reason. It’s really hard to learn when we are ‘winging it’, so why don’t we insist on this in sales? As managers we accept the following:
You: How did meeting go?
Sales Pro: It was a great conversation. We really connected. Plan on this one closing soon.
You: Awesome, keep it up!
Meanwhile, 2 months later….
You: I thought that one was going to close?
Sales Pro: Yeah, they don’t get it at all. Staying with their current vendor
You: I thought they were connected and really engaged?
Sales Pro: Apparently not, but don’t worry, I’m working on another one that’s even better
You: Great! Go get ‘em.
By following a defined process, we can better coach our people to be top performers by identifying where the process broke down and/or where their own behaviors/attitudes/techniques faltered. We can hold them to higher levels of accountability and self-development which produces results. So, find a process to follow that is defined, repeatable and one that allows for individuality. It doesn’t have to be Sandler, but of course, we do check all those boxes and then some.
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