How Prophet CRM helps effectively manage sales process
This is the second in a series of articles intended to help sales executives effectively manage their sales process and team using Prophet CRM
By Warren Stokes
Vice President, Sales, Avidian Technologies
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. What I am going to propose is that “Sales” is all three – proceCreatess, activity and outcome!
“A process is a series of activities intended to produce a desired outcome”
For this conversation let’s agree that the definition of a “process” is series of activities intended to create a certain outcome. So for example, a sales process is a series of activities intended to produce revenue. It could be that in your company the outcome may not be sales revenue; it may be signing up members, or raising money for a fund, or any number of outcomes.
It is useful think of a process as a linear timeline. On the left is the beginning of the process – on the right is the end of the process. In the middle there are points along the way which are milestones.
The activities that make up the process are represented by what we will 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 is just not documented. Ask a sales person what their process is and they will describe something. In fact if you ask ten sales people and you may get eleven answers!
Once you have noted what usually takes place ask yourself – what can I do to streamline the process? 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 are not quoting the right product or service! How could you if you have not fully determined what that is?
If you subscribe to a particular sales school or philosophy you can build those characteristics right into your sales process. It does not matter whether it is Solution Selling, Spin Selling, Miller Heiman or Sandler Sales.
Automating Follow-Up
Once you have mapped out your sales stages and have documented the activity that will occur at each stage, you are ready for some real fun; automating the follow-up!
One simple approach to automating follow-up is to simply create an Outlook task or appointment at a future date with some note to call the prospect for example. This rarely is adequate though because of the cumulative volume of those single events becomes terribly hard to manage.
The answer to this is in creating a follow-up Activity Series. The power of an automated Activity Series is that can follow your sales process…..
This can be done in Prophet Software one of two ways.
If you are looking to create a time-based follow up series with a contact you can use the Sales Assistant function. With this you define a series of follow-up activities for a particular contact.
Another, more robust approach is to use Prophet Workflow Automation. Workflow leverages Outlook functions such as email, task and appointments and creates a unique follow up Activity Series for each stage a prospect or project is in.
For example in our stages above, we can program a Workflow series of 3 emails, 2 reminders and an appointment for Stage 2, and a different series for Stage 3.
This is all done through the creation of templates, each being an email template, task template or appointment template. These templates are then assigned “properties” that is to say, the number of delay days before they are automatically activated and the stage (if workflow) that the Activity Series is related to.
A typical Workflow Series would consist of a combination of Emails, Tasks and Appointments. These are created in such a way as to ensure that every project or business opportunity has the correct type and timing of follow up or activity.
You can design a sales process that includes a specific number of touches at each stage and a total number of touches throughout the sales cycle. Powerful!
Ultimately the automation of activities throughout the sales stages will help ensure a consistent and repeatable sales process.
Following some of the best practices in sales process design:
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
Define the Touches desired in the sales cycle
- Number of touches at each stage
- Type of touch; phone call, email, meeting etc
- Frequency of touches; daily, weekly monthly
- Total touches during the sales cycle
Involve the Business Process Owners
- • Document your existing process first, Get Buy-In from the intended user base (Sales team, customer service staff etc.)
Agree on What You want Track
- Leading Indicators such as quotes sent, proposals generated, dials, appointments.
- Total Pipeline by Value, by Stage, by Est. Close Date, by Account Rep
I trust that with this information and Prophet, the easy to use CRM built into Outlook you will be off to the races!
About the Author….Warren Stokes is currently the Vice President of Sales at Avidian Technologies, a company that provides easy to use CRM built into Microsoft Outlook. Stokes has over 25 years of experience in sales and management and holds two patents with another patent pending in sales process automation. He has implemented CRM applications in four companies in the software and high tech manufacturing segments. Stokes can be reached at warrens@avidian.com