• The stage of the opportunities in the sales process
• Next steps to move the opportunities through the pipeline
• Likelihood of winning the business based
• Future sales revenue of all the opportunities in the pipeline

There are typically three challenges associated with the use of CRMs and pipeline management:

1. Validity – The true accuracy (validity) of the predictive nature of the CRM depends on ensuring that a milestone-centric sales process has been mapped and integrated into the CRM being used.

2. Credibility – Even if the right sales process is mapped and documented, there is still the element of GIGO—Garbage In, Garbage Out. If the sales team is entering opportunities into the pipeline just to appease management, without ensuring that the opportunities meet the criteria for each step in the sales process, companies will still face predictive problems with their pipeline. Furthermore, sales team engagement with using the CRM can often be a struggle.

3. Lack of helpful business intelligence – Entering data and obtaining raw numbers is one thing, but building the CRM for reporting that informs sales leaders on how salespeople are performing against their Sales Success Formula is another. Without comparative data, managers are merely monitoring activity without identifying whether there are problems in the process.

What a company should seek for sales process improvements are sales stage critical numbers and ratios, enabling sales managers to clearly and more accurately identify choke points in the sales process for each individual. Additionally, the data can and should inform managers and the organization if training and coaching are required to improve the sales team's effectiveness and results.

To make substantial sales process improvements, every company must invest in sales enablement tools, systems, and technology. However, data alone will not drive improvement. Solving these issues requires the following five steps:

1. Build a milestone-centric sales process that is part of the CRM and adhered to by the organization.

2. Create Sales Success Formulas for each salesperson based on their historical performance and agreed-upon sales goals. These formulas identify all the steps of the stage-based sales process and the sales team’s success in converting from one step to the next.

3. Monitor and update sales effort and execution data so that coaches can "catch issues early" for lead preservation and sales process improvements.

4. Use the data to develop intentional coaching strategies that help salespeople address specific challenges in either effort or execution.

5. Utilize metrics to measure success individually and collectively:

   • Percentage of salespeople hitting effort targets (outreach)
   • Percentage of salespeople improving conversion ratios at each step of the sales process
   • Average sale increases
   • Shifting the 80/20 rule to a 70/30 or 60/40 distribution
   • Improved validity and credibility of pipeline predictions
   • CRM adoption rates approaching or reaching 100%

Further validation: 87% of elite salespeople (the top 7%) follow a consistent and effective sales process, compared to only 20% of weak salespeople. To implement sales process improvements, start with these five steps.

On average, salespeople possess only 15% of the attributes required to sell consultatively. 

In this blog, we discuss the characteristics of a consultative salesperson and the impact having and following a strict sales process can have on increasing sales.

Consultative Sales Process

I have always enjoyed the Farmers Insurance commercials. You know the ones, right? They always end with the tagline “we know a thing or two because we have seen a thing or two.” And guess what? At Anthony Cole Training Group, we have indeed learned a few things about a consultative selling approach over the last 28 years.

To be more specific, what we have seen are dramatic increases in sales productivity when companies are willing to give full attention to two things:

1. Building, executing and inspecting a staged sales approach
2. Teaching a consultative sales process

A sales process is important because a) most firms don’t have one and b) it is really hard to hold salespeople accountable in the absence of a stage-based and milestone-centric sales approach. If each salesperson is simply doing his or her own thing it becomes nearly impossible for sales management to coach salespeople. And of course, that interferes with a sales leader’s ability to answer two main questions:

Why is your sales team failing?

What are you going to do about it?

Our Consulting Sales Process

So here is what we know: companies that don’t have a well-defined sales process who decide to implement one can expect a 15% increase in sales production. Even if they disagree with all of our other observations, if they will agree with our methodology around the sales process, they will see on average a 15% increase in the sales results of their team. That is how powerful a sales process can be. But we also know this: according to Objective Management Group, the average score from looking at data on over 2,000,000 salespeople tells us only about 45% of all salespeople follow a sales process.

And here is what else we know about those nearly 2,000,000 salespeople: the same data from Objective Management Group shows that on average salespeople possess only 15% of the attributes required to sell consultatively…which we define as being great at asking lots of questions…that are robust questions…challenging questions…and being great listeners. These are the kinds of salespeople who become trusted advisors to their clients and even more importantly, to their prospects. Their prospects wind up paying more attention to them than they do to their current provider. Our consultative sales training is built around coaching the specific traits necessary to become a trusted advisor.

Here is another thing we know. You can easily and inexpensively find out how your sales team measures upon not only the sales process and the consultative sales process but on 18 other key sales skills as well. If you would like more information, we would love to hear from you.

Do you need to find out if your salespeople have a consultative
sales process?

 In this article, we discuss the theory that a prospect might want what you are selling, if you (as the salesperson) are willing to walk away from the table first.  It may sound counterintuitive but one of the keys for more effective selling is going for the ‘no’ early in the sales process. 

I learned this concept years ago especially when I was vulnerable to ‘Think it Overs’ (TIO). I would get ‘think it overs’ at several stages in the sales process and maybe you get them as well:

• On the initial phone call when you’re trying to get an appointment – “Let me think it over, give me a call next week.”
• At the end of your initial meeting – “This sounds really good and something I should consider. Let me think it over and I’ll get back to you in the next couple of days.”
• When you finish your presentation and you ask for the sale – “You made a very compelling presentation and we are impressed with your depth of knowledge and your very creative solutions to our problems. Let us meet as a group and go over this one more time and crunch some numbers.  Let’s plan on talking next week.”

Sound familiar?

Of course it does and these ‘think it overs’ are what is keeping you from being more effective in your sales process. That’s nice to know or consider but the question becomes, “What do I do about it?” (click here to listen to a 3-minute audio clip on eliminating TIO)

What is important to understand about getting ‘think it overs’ is the mindset of your potential buyer. Your potential buyer will tell you that they need to think it over because:

• They really don’t intend on making any changes but you impressed them with some information that they want to take to their current provider and see if they can do what you can do.
• They have a need for approval and instead of telling you they are not interested they want to let you down easy. Telling you they want to think it over gives you hope and get’s them off of the hook until the next time you talk.

To fix the problem, eliminate ‘think it over’ as an option. Let your prospect know that when you finish the next meeting, next conversation, the final presentation, they will have everything they need to make a decision. You can tell them that you will be prepared to answer all of their questions and when you are finished, they will be in a position to make a decision- yes or no. Then simply ask what objections they have to that process.

This one key will help you close more business, more quickly at higher margins.

For more tips on how to uncover a prospects real reason for wanting to 'TIO' watch our Sales Guy Unplugged video on the "Question Behind the Question".

Like what you read? Click the link below to subscribe to The Sales Management Expert blog here:

There are a certain number of rules that must be followed when it comes to prospecting in sales. 

These include, but are not limited to, making the commitment to get out of the cold calling business, identifying who you will ask for introductions and referrals each week, ensuring exactly how you will evaluate your success, and creating a pre-call plan for every single call and/or face-to-face meeting.

Some people say that rules were made to be broken. You might want to think twice about breaking some of these rules for prospecting.

The most successful salespeople I know are always challenging the ideas and methods of those that have succeeded before them, but they don’t challenge the notion of the importance of making prospecting their A priority every week. They know that no matter how successful they are, if they don’t continue to add new relationships, that eventually, their business will decline. 

Here are some rules to help you prospect and prosper:

1. Play in your sandbox. Make sure you have a profile of who you need to be in front of. Call on the people and businesses where you have expertise, and can leverage that, along with your experience.

2. If you are dependent on making cold calls, make the commitment to get out of the cold calling business. You will schedule appointments and make sales cold calling but the acquisition cost per sale is much higher than with referrals and introductions. Not to mention the sales process is generally longer.

3. Look at your schedule each week and identify who you will ask for introductions and referrals. It could be face to face meetings, networking events or a meeting with a center of influence. Have a process for asking that makes it easy for people to help you. Bring your list of top 10 prospects to every meeting and ask them who they know on the list that would take a call from you? Better yet, make use of LinkedIn and look through their connections for people and businesses that look like your target prospect.

4. How will you evaluate your success? Make sure to set objectives whether it is with a success formula or a commitment to specific behaviors and then TRACK IT!

5. Have a telephone approach that when calling for appointments helps you sound like someone they want to speak with. What is your unique selling approach? What problems do you fix and why do people meet with you? It must be compelling.

6. Do a pre-call plan for every call, on the phone or face to face, to help you stay on track. Know what questions you will ask, what questions you need answered and the tough questions they will ask along with how you will respond.

7. Don’t quit, be persistent! Rejection is part of the process. It’s not falling down it’s staying down that defeats us all.

One of the keys for more effective selling is going for the ‘no’ early in the sales process. I learned this concept years ago especially when I was vulnerable to ‘think it overs’ (TIO). I would get ‘think it overs’ at several stages in the sales process and maybe you get them as well:

• On the initial phone call when you’re trying to get an appointment – “Let me think it over, give me a call next week.”
• At the end of your initial meeting – “This sounds really good and something I should consider. Let me think it over and I’ll get back to you in the next couple of days.”
• When you finish your presentation and you ask for the sale. “You made a very compelling presentation and we are impressed with your depth of knowledge and your very creative solutions to our problems. Let us meet as a group and go over this one more time and crunch some numbers.  Let’s plan on talking next week.”

Sound familiar?

Of course it does and these ‘think it overs’ are what is keeping you from being more effective in your sales process. That’s nice to know or consider but the question becomes, “What do I do about it?” (click here to listen to a 3-minute audio clip on eliminating TIO)

As I learned early on is to get ‘no’ as soon as you can. What is important to understand about getting ‘think it overs’ is the mindset of your potential buyer. Your potential buyer will tell you that they need to think it over because:

• They really don’t intend on making any changes but you impressed them with some information that they want to take to their current provider and see if they can do what you can do.
• They have a need for approval and instead of telling you they are not interested they want to let you down easy. Telling you they want to think it over gives you hope and get’s them off of the hook until the next time you talk.

To fix the problem, eliminate ‘think it over’ as an option. Let your prospect know that when you finish the next meeting, next conversation, the final presentation, they will have everything they need to make a decision. You can tell them that you will be prepared to answer all of their questions and when you are finished, they will be in a position to make a decision- yes or no. Then simply ask what objections they have to that process.

This one key will help you close more business, more quickly at higher margins.

For more tips on how to uncover a prospects real reason for wanting to ‘TIO’ watch our Sales Guy Unplugged video on the “Question Behind the Question”.