What is the best sales process?

Let me show you a bit of how I do this and what I deem important to making good numbers. As a big caveat, this article is very very subjective; when I write I’m writing only on the basis of my experience selling value added services that have a long business relationship and an even longer life cycle.

There are three parts to a sale: The Lead, The Pitch, The Close

A. The Lead

A lot of people seem to think that getting a lead or generating a lead is the least important thing in closing a sale. “Just get a business directory and list them all out and go for them one by one”. Classic fail. Let me make this clear; THE LEAD GENERATION PROCESS IS THE MOST IMPORTANT PART OF SALES. You should put the most time and effort in getting qualified potential clients in your sight.

When you do lead generation, it’s not just about selecting a group of clients; it’s about finding clients that are right for your business, right for you, right for your support team. If you don’t have the willingness to really dig deep and think about what client to consider getting for yourself and the team, forget about getting the big big deals or building a strong pipeline for the next quarter.

What I really discourage and this will be the main theme of this article is “DON’T OUTSOURCE YOUR WORK”. If you want to become a person who knows your industry well and be able to talk to your client hand over foot, don’t ever outsource the lead generation process.

The process itself not only educates a person on what players/companies are in your managed industry but also who the top companies are and possibly why they are the top clients of the future. If you are looking for base industry knowledge, lead generation is the best training and learning session you will get.

B. The Pitch

The pitch consists of three sub-parts; the call, the meet, the proposal. If you did your due diligence on your lead generation process, you should have good reason to call them and talk to them about the opportunity of working with one another.

In the call, don’t be aggressive, don’t pitch budget or talk numbers. Be casual but conservative in the way you speak to them but paint them a picture of what you’re offering. This call is to create social rapport, not a business one. The moment you start to talk about numbers, you are on the losing side and it is you who must try to explain all the technical + financial aspects of your product or service while the client steadily gets tired of listening to you.

Have you ever been willing to listen to an insurance or credit card sales person talk about the high high interest rate you’ll rack up or the credit card that will discount 2 dollars off a movie for more than 10 minutes? I rest my case.
Your first and utmost priority should be a meet if geographically possible or a follow-up call. If you got that, you are already halfway there.

In the meet or follow-up call portion, your objective is to build business rapport. Start to slowly roll out figures, benefits and the relevance of your product. As long as you are honest and are able to emphasize the strong points of the product, you’ve done your job.

The analogy I like to make is selling a Lotus Elise and a Toyota Camry. The two cars are essentially the same except the brand name and system tuning. Not clear enough?

If you can’t emphasize the great parts of your product in the most desirable light possible, sales in not suited for you.

Now think back to the phone conversation you had on “the call”. Could you imagine tripping over yourself trying to get the client involved in a jumble of technical jargon and numbers? The thought brings chills down my spine.