Why a Simple Sales Process Works Every Time

Editor's Note: Enjoy this special encore post, which was one of our readers' favorites in 2020. It originally published on March 18, 2020. 

A sales process doesn’t work unless you work it. Easier said than done, especially in these challenging times.

The amount of time that salespeople spend actually selling has been decreasing consistently since I started selling 25 years ago. Research validates this, showing that salespeople are not as productive as they could be. LinkedIn’s State of Sales report found that salespeople spend only 37.67% of their time selling. One of the primary drivers of this troubling statistic is the amount of non-selling, administrative tasks that must be done to update CRM systems, fill out expense reports, and sit in internal meetings.

A sales professional’s job is to close deals, to crush quota, and to sell. With only so many hours in the day, how can we maximize our time selling and be more productive?

It’s Time to Change Your Sales Model

To get started, we need to acknowledge that the sales model has changed and moved further into the digital arena. Even in complex B2B sales environments where a buyer is not going to point and click to place an order, buyers are conducting more of their purchase journey online by researching and shortlisting companies before engaging with a sales representative. Chief Sales Officers (CSOs) need to redesign their current sales structure to support clients’ new buying process. To sell the way buyers want to buy, it’s essential to make it easy for prospective clients to get information online and to connect to a salesperson when needed.

Discover the Crux of Buyers Issues

Even though buyers will search for solutions on their own, our research shows that 87% of buyers want to understand the relevance of your product/service. Help them do so by being exceptional in your discovery process. Engage in personal interaction (in person when possible, or virtual when that’s prohibitive) early in the process with plenty of tailored content. SiriusDecisions reports that it takes up to 17 pieces of content for a rep to woo a buyer. Our research also found that we need to engage buyers at the various points in their buying cycle. And by engage, I don’t mean pitch, I don’t mean dump data, I mean meet the buyer where they are by asking enticing, relevant questions.

My experience is that 75% of the time salespeople ask questions that just scratch the surface of the buyer’s issue and that are primarily based on situation and circumstance. Instead, sales professionals must go beyond generic questions and ask for detailed and specific information to create an opportunity and differentiate their offering in the prospect’s mind. The power of value-based selling is to go deep into the customer’s perspective to fully qualify the opportunity, and then create a need for your product or service.

Keep Selling Simple to Increase Sales Productivity

CSOs should focus on finding ways to reduce complexity to provide impatient buyers with a seamless and frictionless experience online and offline. Keep it simple by using a sales methodology that all customer-facing employees can easily understand and use consistently. Two key elements of that methodology include an effective prospecting cadence and avoiding unwinnable opportunities.

Employ a Sales Prospecting Cadence

Sales cadences are a strategy business development leaders can use to ensure their plan is implemented and executed smoothly. A sales cadence is a sequence of strategically choreographed sales activities that a rep follows to connect with prospects. It requires scheduling non-negotiable blocks of time for social media interactions, email exchanges, and phone calls. Sales cadences are a helpful part of the sales process as they give sales reps a systematic framework to follow. When you keep things simple your team is more likely to implement the plan and fill the revenue pipeline with qualified prospects.

With a sales cadence, our clients report their teams have secured more meetings in two one-hour call blocks than they have in the past two months! Sales managers can measure the right levers that lead to more productive reps. For more valuable prospecting habits, check out my LinkedIn Sales blog from last month titled, “Prime your Revenue Engine with a Prospecting Cadence.”

Avoid Unwinnable Opportunities

The single biggest productivity drain is spending time chasing unwinnable opportunities because they are unqualified. High-performing reps continuously qualify all their opportunities. They are rigorous and understand that qualification is a process and not an event.

Too many sales reps think of qualification as progression through their own sales process, checking off activities and milestones to advance a deal. Unfortunately, that is incomplete. To best qualify opportunities, the process has to reflect the buyer’s process.

Qualification is best when we understand and are completely knowledgeable on the five questions buyers ask when making a purchase:

1. Should I buy this?
2. Is it worth the investment?
3. Have I involved the right people to authorize the purchase?
4. What must happen for me to be convinced? and
5. When will I execute this purchase decision?

So, how can we maximize our time selling and be more productive?

Today’s buyers can get much further down the decision-making path before they ever need to speak with a sales rep. For sales to be successful in these relationships, we need to engage in personal interaction when the buyer is ready and continue that interaction throughout the purchase journey. Salespeople should show what they know, provide personalized content, and ask discovery questions to add value beyond the information provided on their company’s website and to differentiate themselves.

The reality is that many sales teams are required to use a process with too many steps that takes too much time. To ensure salespeople, and all customer-facing team members, follow a sales process, deliver a simple, practical sales process that can be easily followed.

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