The Sales Process Every Business Should Have

[Promise Eselojor]

In every business, there must be an effective sales process in place. Business is all about systems and automation. You must have a proven sales process or system of doing business with your prospect. A business with no proven way to sell doesn’t have a proven way to scale.

In this post am going to share with you a proven sales process every business should have and how you can use it to improve sales in your business. We are also going to look at the buyer’s perspective of the sales process, how they perceive each steps of the sales process.

1. Prospecting or Lead Generation: This is the first step of the sales process. This step involves getting leads through paid traffic, social media, content marketing, email marketing, banner ads etc. From the buyer’s perspective you are creating AWARENESS i.e. the main purpose of lead generation or prospecting is to get some attention in the marketplace; to tell everyone, you exist.


2. Qualifying The Leads: Here you qualify the leads based on:

Needs: Do they have the need for your product?
Time: How quick do they want their problem solved? Do they want it solved now or a month later?
Money: Do they have the financial capability to purchase your product?
Decision Maker: Do they have the authority to make a decision about the purchase of your product?

From the buyer’s perspective, it is a form of ENGAGEMENT. You are engaging with the prospect to find out a little bit more information about them.

3. Demonstrating Value: How can you demonstrate value? You could demonstrate value through webinars, live events, seminars, workshops and so on.

All you want to do is to give them a glimpse of just how you’re going to do business with them; How you’re going to help solve their problem. From the buyer’s perspective, you are creating INTEREST.

You’re trying to get your prospects interested in your offer; to get them to put up their hands and say, “I like this, I want to know more…” After which you provide a call to action and direct them to buy or book a call with one of your closers.

4. Negotiate And Close: Now that the prospect has been properly qualified, pre-motivated and pre-interested, you want to bring them to a financial conclusion about your offer. Here, you provide the terms of business, financing, logistics, length of service etc. This is where the monetary transaction occurs. You may choose to collect the payment from your website or whichever payment method you use.

From the buyer’s perspective, you’re getting a form of financial COMMITMENT. In which case, they are ready and have committed to buying your product or service.

5. Delivery and Fulfillment: After getting the financial commitment from them, it’s time to deliver what you promised in the beginning. This is where you actually go on to solve their problems in the manner you have proposed to them from the start.

From the buyer’s perspective, you are giving them an EXPERIENCE of your product or service. You are providing them a form of transformation in their lives by using your product. This stage is the most important stage of the sales process because this is where you get referrals and this is how you get to repeat business and get recurring revenue.

Now that you have known the steps of the sales process, how can you apply them to your business to increase sales?

I want you to take a look at your business and look at what you’re currently doing and the problems you are facing in your sales process.

Maybe you aren’t getting enough leads. This means your lead generation system is not effective enough and you need to work on improving it to provide more leads.

If you are getting enough leads but you’re finding it very hard to convert them to paying customers, it means you need to work on qualifying your leads, demonstrating value and how you negotiate and close.

Or maybe you’re getting steps 1 to 4 correctly but when it comes to delivering what you promised, you are not delivering as expected. It means you need to work on delivering and fulfillment. You need to work on how you can provide a transformational experience for your prospect.

Whatever problem you’re currently facing in sales, use the process to identify the areas that needs to be worked on and handle it as soon as possible. You’ll find that by doing this you will automatically double, triple or even quadruple your sales and profit in your business.