Are you aware of the sales process? If not, this blog will guide you to create a sales process, and increase both your sales and revenue.
What is a sales process?
The sales process is a series of steps occurring one after another to transform the leads into customers. Sales funnel and sales process often go together. All your salespeople are familiar with your process, and they use it to convert prospects into paying customers.
Who makes the sales process?
It is the job of the sales manager to lay down the stages of the sales process. Some people might make a fuss about following the guidelines. Therefore, you must convince everyone about the importance of a sales process, and that it works. Your manager must create a sales process and use opportunities to generate revenue.
How can you create a sales process?
Many variables are affecting a sale. The unique requirements of each customer, their attitude, their budget. Everything matters. It is a stepwise process. An effective sales process involves the following steps,
Generate leads
As I said, the definition of the sales process involves the conversion of leads into customers. This means that you need leads, to begin the process. How can you generate leads? There are many ways to do that. You can generate possible leads through marketing campaigns. There are two ways of marketing; inbound and outbound marketing. You can consider whichever suits you the best. Both are tried and tested methods to generate leads.
You can make people sign up for your newsletter, like your page, give them eBooks. It’s either this or you can pick your loyal customers, and target them individually. You can learn more about it through lead generation online training courses. Anyways, you have successfully generated your leads. What next?
Filter the leads
Let’s suppose you have got several leads now. Will you waste your time and efforts on everyone? It will be unwise to do so. Therefore, we must filter our leads, and only pursue those which have the most chance to be our customer.
What are the criteria to filter the leads? If you can figure out some key points, you can decide on this. For example,
- What is the interest of your customers?
- How much is their budget?
- Are they willing to buy?
- What are they using instead of your product?
You can guess the seriousness level of your customers through these questions, and decide if they are worth your time.
Consider customer requirements
Now, you have only those leads who are genuinely interested in buying from you. Your job is to ask about their needs and think about how your product can solve them. You can do this by asking the right questions and telling how your product is the exact solution for their problems.
Present your product
After hearing the requirements, you have to present them with the solution, that is, your product. This is a bit of a time-consuming step, and you have to convince your customers that your product is the best, economical, and beneficial purchase they will ever make. For this, you must have complete information about your product.
Respond to objections
The customers don’t always agree nicely. They may object to your words or may present other queries. It is your job to put them at ease and respond to their problems. It is an important sales process step because sometimes, the customer may not agree with you and decide not to buy it.
Ask for customer approval
Ask your customer if they have any further queries or concerns. If not, ask if you can close the deal. Proceed with the customer’s approval. Let the customer access the product thoroughly. They like to do that. Pack the product and hand it over to the customer. Try to provide good customer service.
Follow up
Be nice, and ask if they need anything else. Maybe they do, and you can make more sales.
You can apply these steps for every sale you make. If the lead comes to you itself, you can start from step three. Always be respectful towards the customer, and be humble. Salespersons who stick to this process generally make more sales than those who don’t. The choice is yours.