Is your sales process focused on the activities of your salespeople? Time for a tweak. Focus on the activities and actions of your prospect. Identify those that indicate they want to buy.
Look at the steps in your sales process. You may have an activities checklist for your salesperson for each step of the process. This is a good practice to be clear what is expected of the salesperson before advancing the opportunity. Particularly if there are other resources or costs incurred by the team. (Other than the cost of the salesperson’s time).
To take your sales process up a notch, look carefully at your process to identify the specific actions the prospect takes that indicate the opportunity moving towards a close. This customer-centric evaluation will lead less focus on the salesperson’s activities, and more focus on the prospect’s actions that indicate the opportunity is going to advance……. or not.
Below is a simple example of the parallel view of your internal sales process and possible prospect actions that may indicate the opportunity is moving through your deal flow. Some of the prospect actions may be simple. They also might change over time as you gather more data on closed and lost deals. Over time, you should identify Key Success Factors for each step. These factors are based on actions by the prospect. The actions would be present in most/all successful deals. The actions would be absent in lost deals.
| Sales Process Step | Prospect Action (Key Success Factor) |
| 1: Prospecting | Prospect interested, willing to make an appointment. Problem indicators revealed. |
| 2: First Meeting/Diagnosis | Prospect puts skin in the game as a follow up step; commits stakeholder’s time for interviews, provides information, data, or access to their business |
| 3: Design | Prospect helps to quantify the impact your solution will have on the business. Identifies the critical success factors to implementing the solution. Identifies deal breakers. |
| 4: Propose | Customer reviews contract, proposal, and provides formal feedback (Redlines). |
| 5: Implement | Prospect signs contract |
Your process may be different, and there may be steps after close. Identify each step in your process and the actions the prospect takes for each step that keeps the deal moving towards close. Continue to evaluate closed deals and lost deals to home in on the Key Success Factors in the prospects actions that lead to winning deals.
Introducing this level of discipline will help eliminate the biases and feelings of your optimistic sales team members and allow them to evaluate their deals on the merits, the demonstrable actions of the prospect.
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“If you want to be successful, you just have to succeed.”
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Brewster is the founder of SmallPoint Consulting. Areas of focus include; Sales Strategy and Training. Sales Presentations and Negotiation design, Company Strategy and Execution… read more
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