As I began to write this article it occurred to me that many people think of sales as an activity, rather than a process. Perhaps some see sales only as an outcome. I propose that sales is in actuality all three: a process, activity and outcome.

Sales as a Process

It’s useful to think of a process as a linear timeline. On the left is the beginning of the process and on the right is the end of the process. In the middle there are points along the way which are milestones. These milestones make up what I call sales stages. Each stage may have activities associated with it that are sub-processes. Think of these as the things that typically occur at each stage.

When you begin to lay out your sales process, first look at what is already taking place. Simply take note of those activities that are occurring during your engagement with prospects and clients and list them in a sequence.

Most individuals and companies have developed at least an ad hoc process. That is to say they have a process, it’s just not documented. Ask a sales person what their process is and they will almost inevitably describe something. In fact, if you ask ten sales people, you’ll probably get ten different answers!

Once you have noted what usually takes place at each stage, ask yourself, “What can I do to streamline this process?” and “Are we doing things in the optimal sequence?” For example, if you are quoting your clients or prospects before you have fully qualified them, you are not only wasting a lot of time, but you’re possibly not even quoting the right product or service! After all, how could you if you haven’t fully determined what their need is?

If you subscribe to a particular sales school or philosophy, you can build those characteristics right into your sales process. It doesn’t matter whether it is Solution Selling, Spin Selling, Miller Heiman or Sandler Sales. At the heart of all sales approached is a process.

Following are some of the best practices I recommend for designing your sales process:

• Create a sales process document
  • Choose either a basic list format or flow chart format with the goal of creating a detailed business process document.
• Define what data you want to capture
  • Contact information, project/opportunity data, key activity data, etc.
• Define the touches desired in the sales cycle
  • Decide on the number of touches at each stage.
  • Decide the type of touch: phone call, e-mail, in-person meeting, etc.
  • Decide on the frequency of touches: daily, weekly, monthly.
  • Decide on the total touches during the entire sales cycle needed.
• Decide on the total touches during the entire sales cycle needed.
  • Document your existing process first and get buy-in from the intended user base (i.e., the sales team, customer service staff, etc.).
• Agree on what you want track
  • Select leading Indicators such as quotes sent, proposals generated, dials made, appointments, etc.
  • Look at the total pipeline by value, by stage, by estimated close date, by account rep, etc.

Sales Force Automation
Once you’ve mapped out your sales stages and have documented the activities that will occur at each stage, you may notice there are a number of them that occur rather routinely, primarily follow up-related activities. This is where sales force automation can play a major role in ensuring a consistent and repeatable sales process, which in turn equates to closing more sales.

One simple approach to automating follow-up is to simply create a calendar task or appointment, such as in Microsoft Outlook, for a future date with some associated note to reach out to the prospect. This alone, however, is rarely ever adequate because of the cumulative volume of those single events becomes incredibly hard to manage and very time consuming.

Thus, enter sales force automation (SFA) tools. SFA utilities are essentially just what the name implies: a tool which automates some, if not most, of the individual sales activities, especially in terms of follow-up.

In today’s environment, sales force automation functions are typically rolled into larger customer relationship management (CRM) systems. Such systems are usually comprised of a suite of software designed to streamline all sales activities and provide greater visibility into and reporting of the sales pipeline.

When sales force automation features are combined with the more comprehensive feature sets of full CRM software suites, maintaining a consistent and repeatable sales process is simple to do, since the day-to-day management of the routine sales activities involved can be carried out with the click of a button.

Warren Stokes is the vice president of sales at Avidian Technologies, a software company specializing in creating both cloud-based and on-premise software solutions for users of Microsoft Outlook and Exchange, including the Prophet line of CRM solutions. Stokes has over 25 years experience in sales and management and holds two patents with one additional pending in sales process automation. He has extensive CRM implementation experience in the software and high-tech manufacturing segments. For more information, please visit http://www.avidian.com.