For everyone who knows me, I love processes. Having a clear plan and structure gives me the freedom to think creatively while driving my actions with a clear end in mind. My entire career in Sales has been in a playbook and process-oriented Enterprise Sales environment. As a result, I’ve often been asked if such an approach can be applied to other setups, such as hardware sales or startups. My honest opinion is yes, it can be done.
To demonstrate this, I’ve built a generic, generalized process that covers everything from research and outreach to the pre-sales process and post-sales stage of a customer relationship. Please leave a comment if you feel this can be further extended based on your experience.
Why High-Performance Organizations Should Implement a Sales Process
Before diving into the process itself, I’d like to share some insights on why a structured process is crucial for achieving peak performance in a sales organization. Sales is often treated as an art, with little information shared among salespeople and a heavy reliance on long-term relationship development. This approach presents several challenges for both the organization and the sales reps.
Downsides for the Rep:
- High Level of Ambiguity: Every sales cycle is different, requiring significant time and energy to determine the next logical steps.
- Missed Opportunities for Analysis: Without a consistent process, it’s difficult to analyze where customers drop out, preventing reps from learning and receiving coaching.
- Lack of Systematic Adjustments: Without the ability to systematically adjust the sales process, improving outcomes becomes challenging.
Downsides for the Organization:
- Inconsistent Processes: If everyone works differently, the sales process can’t be taught effectively, and internal communication doesn’t scale.
- Limited Insight: Without a unified process, tracking the progress of opportunities is challenging, which limits the ability to forecast revenue and plan investments (e.g., new hires, regional expansion, product investments).
- Inefficiencies: Prolonged sales cycles and inefficiencies lead to higher customer acquisition costs and lower rep productivity.
Now, let’s explore how customer-oriented sales processes can enhance customer satisfaction and deal velocity.
Ability to Analyze and Improve Sales Performance
With a clearly defined sales process, quality gates can be implemented, similar to an assembly line on a factory floor. Viewing sales from a product perspective, a closed deal or won project is the product the salesperson is required to deliver.
In this context, a sales rep needs to identify, qualify, and drive opportunities until the contract is closed. A sales process outlines what needs to happen at each step, when to move forward, and highlights company-specific pitfalls observed in previous deals to avoid repeating mistakes.
With such a clearly outlined structure, management can analyze the opportunity’s progress with the seller, jointly derive clear action plans, and provide coaching along the way. This structured approach removes subjectivity from discussions, helping to determine when specific resources can be pulled into the process, when funding can be released, or when executive meetings should be scheduled.
Ability to Qualify Individual Opportunities Objectively
A standardized sales process sets the same expectations for everyone, whether a junior seller or a senior account director. Everyone must meet certain execution standards, fostering a culture of meritocracy and preventing exceptions based on tenure.
This objectivity protects funds and reduces the risk of investing in low-probability sales cycles. It also helps sellers focus on high-probability opportunities, maximizing their potential earnings through commissions and concentrating on areas with higher customer value.
Common Language for the Whole Organization
Another benefit is the ability to streamline language across the entire company, not just within the sales department. When product, finance, legal, and other departments understand the sales process, they immediately know where an opportunity stands and what has happened so far. They can ask for relevant information according to the current stage, eliminating the need for lengthy conversations to understand expectations and previous actions.
This dramatically improves internal communication and results in better alignment and stronger relationships between different departments.
Generalized Enterprise Sales Process
My goal was to build a process that can be used in any environment. The concepts and stages are applicable for services, software licenses, or SaaS solutions. The timeframe can be adjusted based on deal volume and complexity, ranging from a single call to over ten meetings.
This process serves as a framework to ensure all relevant topics are qualified over time from a MEDDPICC perspective, maximizing the probability of success. Other qualification methodologies can be applied as well – personally I consider MEDDICC as efficient, comprehensive, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive.
Stages of the Enterprise Sales Process
A sales process begins before contacting the customer and extends beyond closing the contract. This might seem unexpected, but based on my experience, it is critical for achieving maximum sales productivity.
Consider the level of investment you can afford in post-sales customer relationships. For subscription-based licenses or SaaS services, retention and expansion are at least as valuable as acquiring new customers. The first revenue is typically much more expensive to secure than retaining and growing existing business, which significantly contributes to the bottom line.
Investing in post-sales processes also allows these activities to be outsourced to new teams. This enables the sales organization to focus more on new business acquisition, leading to higher productivity.
Research Phase
The research phase revolves around understanding your customers. It involves identifying the industries they operate in, analyzing macroeconomic trends impacting their organization, and studying the business strategies they’re employing to navigate the current business climate.
Additionally, it’s crucial to identify potential sales campaigns based on this environment. During this phase, you should determine what you and your organization can do to deliver better service with clear, measurable, and durable business benefits. These benefits should be demonstrable, typically achieved faster and at a lower cost.
Furthermore, it’s essential to gain a clear understanding of whose problem you’re solving and link it to the benefits already discovered.
Prospecting Phase
Once the key strategic objectives of the target customers, along with their related value propositions and target personas, are clearly defined, it’s time to craft a message that addresses these points. This message should include relevant references, clear KPIs, and ideally mutual social connections to establish trust and relevance.
It’s crucial for people to realize that you’ve taken the time to understand their situation, invested in creating something valuable for them, and if possible, include common connections with relevant individuals, to build trust.
Contrary to common belief, cold calls, cold messages, or email outreach are not meant to sell. Similarly, initial meetings are not for selling; rather, they’re intended to build a connection, deepen understanding of the customer’s situation, and lay the foundation for proposing an engagement. This natural progression leads to a purchasing decision based on clearly identified and proven value to the customer. Let’s explore how to achieve this.
Discovery – Validating Hypotheses
In the initial phase of the sales process, it’s crucial to validate the initial hypothesis. Is the customer in the situation you initially expected? Is there pain that you can solve, thereby justifying your product or services?
To develop this understanding, I recommend following a structured discovery approach. It doesn’t matter whether this approach is based on SPIN Selling, Command of the Message, or any similar framework. What’s important is to gain a clear understanding of what the organization does, why it’s important to their strategic goals and business, what challenges they’re facing currently, and how these challenges are impacting their business. Additionally, understanding what the future state would look like and how it contributes to the organization’s overall success is crucial.
Once this understanding is established, you have the right to ask for commitment from the customer and propose a structured engagement with the intention of reaching a commercial agreement if you can prove your value. Now, let’s explore how to build such a case for change.
Building a Case for Change
Personally, I approach building a case in four stages: customer commitment, clearly defined requirements for success, proof of value, and a business justification based on impacted KPIs.
Alignment with Customer on Engagement & Goals
After deeply understanding the customer, it’s crucial to align with someone who owns the problem in the customer organization. This ensures that the identified challenges are indeed critical for them. In this meeting, it needs to be confirmed that the responsible person is committed to resolving the situation, preferably with a clear timeline, and is open to engaging in a structured process with the intention to conclude a commercial transaction if successful.
If this commitment is established, it serves as a foundation for revisiting initial agreements, revitalizing stalled projects, or facilitating connections with higher management within the customer organization, leveraging the communication and agreements established during this phase.
Joint Requirements & Definition of Success
After reaching an agreement on a clear engagement process, the next step involves establishing a detailed, shared understanding of the customer’s requirements hindering their success in the specific area they’re struggling with. This typically entails convening all relevant stakeholders for discussions, which may span from a single meeting to multiple sessions, depending on the complexity of the subject. In some cases, discussions may last 30-60 minutes, while in others, extended sessions of 4 hours or more may be necessary to delve into all related components thoroughly.
The objective is to establish mutually agreed-upon requirements that all stakeholders endorse, enabling the customer to achieve their project’s primary objectives. These requirements serve as the foundation for illustrating how your approach surpasses competitors and articulating the unique value your solution brings to this particular area. This differentiation is crucial for later stages, emphasizing the related business value these features offer.
Business Case
Based on these requirements, you can begin to outline a business case with the customer, demonstrating the impact of the defined capabilities on their processes and financial performance. If the cost of your service or product is lower than the savings generated or if the timeframe for a positive return on investment aligns with the customer’s expectations, it’s a promising scenario.
However, if this isn’t the case, it’s also valuable information. Recognizing this early allows you to exit the sales process swiftly, validate your learnings, and identify new, more suitable opportunities.
Validation of Capabilities
After clarity on requirements has been established and positive business value confirmed by the customer, it may be necessary to validate these capabilities. This is particularly relevant for net new customers where reference calls aren’t sufficient, or for new use-cases for your organization.
When investing in a proof of value or proof of concept, it’s essential to involve all levels of authority required to sign off on the deal. They should be aware of the commercial commitment contingent upon successful validation, as well as the defined requirements and test criteria. In MEDDICC terms, this ensures clarity on the Decision Process and Economic Buyer access.
Once alignment is established, it’s crucial to develop a well-defined and documented test plan directly linked to the defined requirements, emphasizing the targeted business value. This ensures a clear connection between what the customer wants and why it’s important in quantifiable terms, what is needed to achieve it (particularly focusing on what differentiates your product or services), and what must be proven to convince the customer that you can deliver on your promises.
Contracting
If the steps outlined above have been successfully completed, your offering should naturally transition from an initial push to a pull. There should be a sense of excitement about achieving great things together. Once this stage is reached, closing the deal becomes a mere formality that needs to be navigated correctly.
Decision Process & Paper Process
If all decision-makers and stakeholders have genuinely been involved in defining the requirements and proof of value, the decision process should be clear. Nevertheless, it’s always prudent to revalidate within the context of the paperwork process to ensure there are no instances within your customer’s organization that can impede the transaction.
After validation, it’s crucial to walk through every step of the paperwork process required for the transaction with your customer. Allow the customer to guide you through each step, and if there’s any aspect that isn’t clear, don’t hesitate to ask questions until it’s completely understood without any room for interpretation. Document this process meticulously, assigning clear responsibilities and timelines.
Go-Live Plan
A best practice is to consolidate all steps, timelines, and necessary actions following the closure of the transaction into a go-live plan. This is crucial because it’s not just about closing the deal, but genuinely assisting your customer in achieving their desired goals. By doing so, you enhance long-term customer retention and foster a healthy business relationship.
Moreover, this enables the post-sales organization to leverage these plans and execute necessary actions to meet the defined targets, ultimately ensuring long-term customer satisfaction
Post Sales
Congratulations! You’ve achieved your goal state in the sales process, whether it’s receiving a signed order, a customer click, or any other milestone. This is a remarkable achievement and deserves celebration!
Now, it’s time to fulfill your promises and ensure the customer receives what they are looking for. This includes not only delivering the product or service but also the results they are hoping to achieve.
Project Implementation & Customer Success
Depending on your organization, you may have a dedicated post-sales, customer success, or project management function that collaborates with your customer. Regardless of the setup, since you were the one who initiated the sale, it’s crucial to ensure that everything is set up accordingly.
In the long run, your goal should always be to extend and deepen the customer relationship.
When transitioning to another team, a clear handover process should be defined. This process should include critical data points to reduce the overhead for the customer, such as explaining their goals and the project multiple times, and to minimize the time to value. Additionally, it should be clear who owns each part of the post-sales or implementation process.
As always in life, communication is key, and particularly at this point, it’s more important than ever. Ensuring nothing gets lost.
Contract Renewal & Upsell
Once the customer achieves the set goals, there should be processes in place to document the results and identify any new demands or upcoming projects that are relevant for your organization. If there are, a clear handover process should be implemented whereby post-sales teams communicate these opportunities to the sales organization to initiate a new discovery and scoping process. This process should follow the flow of the initial sales cycle, although certain steps may become less relevant depending on your business. It’s important to decide how to appropriately cover this motion.
However, what’s crucial is to not take these additional capacity opportunities for granted. They deserve the same attention as other deals. This means prioritizing customer satisfaction and value, rather than rushing or delaying things, and working with a customer-centric approach.
How is this a generic sales process?
It’s fascinating how similar sales processes can be across different industries and settings. Whether it’s selling healthcare products, engaging customers in a bazaar, or showcasing artistic talents on the street, the core principles of sales remain consistent: identifying the customer persona, building rapport, understanding needs, presenting options, offering proof of success, and ultimately closing the deal.
While the sophistication and time investment may vary, the fundamental steps from trust-building to closing are universal. Recognizing these similarities can offer valuable insights into refining your own sales approach and adapting to different contexts.
If you’re eager to delve deeper into these concepts or seeking opportunities to enhance your sales and leadership skills, I’m here to help. Whether it’s discussing your current situation, offering guidance, or connecting you with potential career opportunities, feel free to reach out. I’m always enthusiastic about supporting growth and development in sales and leadership.