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Guest post by: Debra Pearlman Become an Author

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Creating a successful and sustainable sales process allows the organization to realize a higher ROI on the time spent analyzing and adjusting current practices. The sales process encompasses each and every step, action, communication and document that moves your prospect from the initial inquiry through the final shipment and implementation of your product or service. This includes verbiage utilized in both telephone and email scripting and marketing materials. Every contact a customer has with your organization must be focused on increasing customer loyalty and their image of you as a value add partner. Every employee within your organization, no matter the department, should understand and be empowered to make decisions that will result in a win-win solution.

Every contact your customers have with your organization should be looked upon as an opportunity to increase customer loyalty and thus revenues. Front line employees have the ability to make or break relationships simply by the words and tone used either face to face; over the phone; or in an email transmission.

Performing due diligence and investing time, energy and money into running your sales and customer service departments as lean and efficient as other departments offers an extremely high ROI both immediately and long into the future.

You can take the initial steps now. Begin by clearly defining the goals and mission of the organization. What was the impetus for starting your business? Where do you see your organization in 1 year? 5 years? 10 years? Without clearly defined goals, it will be virtually impossible to build a roadmap that will take your organization there. Without defined goals your employees will flounder with no motivation to take ownership or pride in their responsibilities. Unmotivated employees become disgruntled and they are your first line in terms of customer contact, disgruntled employees typically become problematic.

The best method for clarifying the ultimate goal and the steps necessary in achieving it, is to use visualization. If your sales and customer departments were operating at its peak potential, how is that picture described? Include every aspect from the verbiage used for incoming calls to the method in which the sales and customer service departments relate with the other departments within your organization. Do you see meetings and training sessions? Are there visits to customer sites by sales and customer service agents? Do your agents understand your industry and know your competitors?

Goal setting is the starting point. Once you have defined a clear vision of what you want your organization to look like, developing the steps and strategies to get your organization there will become simpler.

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