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12 Questions About Your Sales Process

Guest post by: David Carter

Article Overview: A sales process is defined as a customized, formal process including the sequence of steps, to-do's, milestones and goals that must be achieved during your sales cycle. And your sales cycle is one of four cycles in your business that impacts cash flow (the other cycles: make/prepare to deliver, deliver, billing and collections).

12 Questions About Your Sales Process

Ask companies today if they follow an established formal sales process. Their answer? Very few can say yes! Statistics show that 91% of the more than 500,000 salespeople assessed by Objective Management Group (a sales development company) to date did not have/follow a structured sales process. Do you have one?

A sales process is defined as a customized, formal process including the sequence of steps, to-do's, milestones and goals thatmust be achieved during your sales cycle. And your sales cycle is one of four cycles in your business that impacts cash flow (the other cycles: make/prepare to deliver, deliver, billing and collections).

Your sales cycle can be improved (and therefore increase cash flow) with one or all of these strategies:

1. Shorten the cycle
2. Eliminate mistakes
3. Change your business model

So here are some questions created by Dave Kurlan, founder of OMG, for you to answer about your sales force and your sales process. Use them to assess which strategies above you can use in your company.

- Is there a sales process?
- Has it been customized (to your company and market)?
- Has it been formalized and structured?
- Has it been optimized?
- Is it legacy?
- Does everyone follow it?
- Does everyone speak the language of your process?
- Is it referenced as a context for coaching sessions?
- Can your salespeople identify where they are by simply naming a step?
- Is it integrated into your CRM software?
- Is it integrated with your pipeline?
- Is the pipeline routinely reviewed and re-staged according to the criteria for each step of the process?


If you can't answer yes to all of those questions, you aren't yet in a position to shorten your sales cycle and accelerate your revenue growth.

_____________________________________________________________________________

Sourced from posting by Dave Kurlan a highly regarded sales development expert.

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Article Tags: Dave Kurlan, sales cycle, sales process



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