The Pitfalls Of A Poorly Thought Out Sales Process

No matter how great your product or service is, if you don't have a well-designed sales process in place, you're going to struggle to make sales.

Many business owners concentrate solely on developing a great product or service without considering how they'll sell it. This can have a negative impact on your business in several ways, from missed opportunities to exhausted sales teams.

In this article, we'll look at the problems a poorly designed sales process can cause and how to avoid them and increase your sales.

Why You Should Care About Your Sales Process?

When you put a lot of time and effort into developing your product or service, the sales process may seem like something you can leave until later. However, it's not just about making money now - it's also about being able to scale.

When you have an effective sales process in place, it will allow for more efficient selling that will scale with your business, boost conversions, and make it possible to provide an outstanding product or service at a lower cost

You'll need an effective sales process that is built to succeed if you want to gain more leads, increase your bottom line, and have satisfied clients.

The Problems With A Poorly Designed Sales Process.

When your sales team lacks direction from an effective process, they'll struggle to sell. This will have a negative impact on your business in several ways:

· Poor Sales Performance - If your sales team is struggling, the most immediately obvious impact is that you won't achieve what you could with a better designed process. You might not reach targets, miss opportunities, or lose customers due to poor service.

· A Lack Of Focus - Without an effective process, you'll struggle to properly understand your customers and their needs. This means you're unlikely to design the best product or service for them which will ultimately mean it won't be as popular.

· Unhappy Sales Team - Without a clear sales process, your sales team is likely to feel unproductive and demotivated. This will have a negative impact on their ability to sell and potentially culminate in them leaving your business, which could lead to further issues.

Good thing we’ve got a solution for all that!

How To Avoid These Problems?

To avoid the pitfalls caused by a poorly designed sales process, it's important that you focus on creating an efficient system for selling that scales with your business. This will help you identify your customers, provide an excellent service, and ultimately help you achieve your goals.

The more efficient your sales process is, the more likely you are to make the most of your sales funnel and drive revenue to your company

This brings us to the next question…

What Is A Sales Process?

A sales process is a series of steps through which you guide your prospect towards their decision to purchase your product or service. It's designed to convert someone who is curious about you and your brand, or someone who up until this point was unaware of or interested in your product or service, into a paying customer.

If you want to achieve more leads, boost conversions, and increase revenue, you need to create a scalable and well-designed sales process. Said in other words, the sales process must be robust enough to grow this the business, as the business grows

How Do You Find Out What Your Prospect Needs?

When you're creating your own sales process, your first step must be to understand the needs of your prospect and build something that meets those needs. This is sales 101 – find a problem that your ideal client has and present a solution that solves that problem. Specificity on who your ideal client is, and the exact problem your product / service solves, is critical in order to avoid squandering time on unprofitable leads.

By Following These 3 Steps, You Will Learn What Your Prospects Needs:

1. Create A Great Product That Fits Their NeedsCreating a great product is always important, but it's particularly so when you're selling. When someone wants to buy from you, they'll want to know that you have something of value to offer. Asking questions and understanding their needs can help you create a compelling product and help you avoid falling on the slippery slope of becoming a “slimy salesperson”.

2. Build An Effective Sales FunnelA sales funnel is essentially a step-by-step process that guides your prospect towards the decision to buy. It's made up of different stages including nurturing and developing leads, converting them, and making it easy for people to purchase from you.Designing a sales funnel is a useful way to keep your prospects on track and know which steps you should be following. For example, it could help you identify the best time to reach out to someone.

3. Learn To Connect With Your ProspectsIf people don't enjoy talking with you or engaging with what you have to say, they're unlikely to buy from you. This means that it's important for your sales reps to improve their communication skills.

Finding the best way to connect with your prospects is key to keeping them interested, but this can be done through marketing automation, nurturing prospects, and providing exceptional service.

How Do You Convert Your Prospects Into Customers?

After you've found out what your prospects needs, wants, and what has prevented them from getting exactly that, it's time to start converting. This is where you move from developing leads into nurturing them into paying customers.

Convert Your Prospects Into Paying Customers By Following These Steps:

· Create A Great Lead Capture Page - The best way to get someone to become a customer is to first get their contact details. This is done through a lead capture page which asks for your prospects' name, email address and other relevant information. There are a multitude of methods to capture those leads, be it though LinkedIn Sales Navigator, a free give away that captures emails, or a webinar that participants must register for.

· Nurture Your Leads - Once you have someone's contact details, it's important to keep them interested in your product or service. This is where you can send helpful content such as eBooks, webinars and guides which can help them solve their problem. Value – massive needed and sometimes unexpected value is critical to fully nurture your leads.

· Turn Your Prospects Into Customers - Once your prospects have found what they need and understand the benefits of buying from you, it's time to make a sale. This is where you can create a compelling offer that sells itself, create urgency by focusing on the current challenges the prospect is experiencing, teaching your prospective client exactly HOW to buy from you using a Buyers Formula, all the while or providing exceptional service and positing you and your product / service as the ultimate prize.

· Marketing Automation - Tools such as HubSpot, Marketo and Eloqua can help you automate your systems for nurturing prospects and turning them into customers. One of the benefits is that they'll help you keep track of what's working and learn more about your customers. This is important because people’s attention span has now decreased to only 8 seconds (same time you need to stay on that bull… ye HAW!), so increasing your frequency of exposure, over duration of exposure is critical to your sales success.

What’s Your Sales Process?

If you want to sell smarter and make a bigger impact on your business, you must either improve your existing process, or, if you don’t have one, design a unique sales process that is specific to you and your business. This will help you understand what works, and help you keep track of the value that your customers receive from working with you.

A well-designed sales process is critical to making a sale, and from the moment your leads first engage with you, all the way through until they're ready to buy from you, it's important that each step of their journey is taken carefully planned with the ultimate outcome for them to become your loyal customers.

If you don't have a systemized and thoughtfully designed sales process in place, it might be time to take a step back and evaluate what's going wrong in your sales strategy.