For most startups, growing and scaling are usually one of the highest business priorities on the roster. However, while growth is often a positive indication of the direction a business is headed, it's not always necessarily a sign of success. Only when the growth is explainable and repeatable is a business truly able to scale beyond what's expected and reach new heights.
In order to achieve this repeatable growth, businesses must take a hard look at their sales process. A sales process is the set of steps that sales reps follow to turn prospects into clients. This process involves moving potential customers down the sales funnel from the prospecting stage to closing the deal, and all the stages in between.
Because of ever-changing market conditions, sales processes must be kept up to date rather than set and forgotten. This way, the efficiency of a sales process can help move the sales cycle forward and help your sales reps close more deals.
If you're wondering why it's worth improving sales processes in the first place, here are just a few of the many reasons it's beneficial:
- Helps to identify leaks or gaps in the sales pipeline — By taking the time to pursue sales process optimization, sales and marketing teams can determine the stages where sales reps might be losing customers. From there, they can work to improve certain protocols to ensure those gaps are filled.
- Brings a personal touch to sales — There's nothing customers want to see more than personalization when it comes to the buyer's journey. Sales process optimization can serve as a good reminder that it's not always about the product or service you're offering, but the heart behind it all.
- Higher conversion rates — When your sales team fully understands and becomes familiar with the sales process, they are better positioned to move prospects from one stage to the next. This is because they are aware of what works best, and how to improve certain steps to make the process better next time.
- Makes the best use of time — There's nothing more frustrating than spending large amounts of time dedicated to a deal that will never close. By optimizing your sales process, you can make sure your startup doesn't lose valuable time to prospects who are not the best fit for your offering.
Research shows that a solid sales structure is the key differentiator that contributes to a high converting sales process. By choosing to optimize sales processes, companies can create better customer relationships, address pain points, and identify more qualifying leads.
While there are always challenges that businesses must face when it comes to optimizing their sales process, startups have even more unique obstacles to cross. These include lack of awareness and social proof amongst audience groups, underdeveloped sales materials, and longer sales cycles.
Given these challenges, every startup has the opportunity to improve their sales process to be aligned with their goals. Here are 5 simple tips for startups on how to improve the sales process.
1. Establish the customer journey based on your ideal buyer persona.
In sales, the buyer persona is what should shape the customer journey that your business outlines. This is because businesses should view the customer journey through the lens of the customer. Basing the customer journey on the challenges, pain points, and benefits your buyer persona faces will help you construct a map tailored to your customer's needs.
Not only that, but honing in on your buyer persona will help your sales reps weed out prospects who are not the best market-fit for your startup and help them identify stronger targets in the future. Even further, building out the customer journey based on customer profiles can help your sales teams incorporate more personalization and empathy into the overall sales process.
2. Determine the KPIs that matter and track them regularly.
While there are many metrics involved in the world of sales and marketing, only some are relevant when it comes to improving your sales process. The KPIs you set will give you insight into how your sales process is performing at each step. Sales managers should provide regular feedback on the progress being made with these metrics and prioritize the ones that bolster sales performance.
Prioritizing the right KPIs is especially crucial at a startup given the lack of experience and years of sales data to base these metrics off of. It's important to remember that without clear goals that are set from the start, it will be difficult to track progress or draw meaning from any metrics you might come across.
3. Make sure sales and marketing teams are aligned.
Sales and marketing teams provide similar functions and are often mistaken to be interchangeable. Many times, the two teams can be found pitted against each other, resulting in lost leads or deals. However, by aligning sales and marketing teams on the same strategy, the two can actually work together to enhance current processes and strengthen the lead generation pipeline. In addition, the collaboration between marketing and sales can also help to determine clearer goals, define stronger leads, and establish consistent KPIs.
4. Leverage automation.
Within the sales process, there are too many repetitive tasks, such as sending emails, making phone calls, entering data, following-up with and researching leads, and more. Taking care of all of these tasks can become exhausting and make your sales reps feel burnt out, thus slowing down your overall sales cycle. Your sales reps already have so much to think about — The last thing you want to do is make it more difficult for them to focus their efforts towards closing deals.
5. Assess your current sales process.
Sometimes the answer you're looking for can be right in front of you. Take a good look at the processes that are working, the ones that aren't, and the ones that could use room for improvement. Ask yourself how you can help make certain stages of the sales funnel easier for both your sales reps and the leads you're prospecting. From there, you can tailor the overall sales process to cater to the needs you identify throughout the examination process.
For startups, many business processes may be far from traditional and require extra creativity, attention, and constant tweaking in order to get things right. However, this allows for a good level of experimentation that will get you started on a strong foundation. Doing so early on will help your startup be set up for success to grow and scale in explainable and repeatable patterns.