Do you know what your process looks like that drives sales? Are there certain actions and activities that yield meetings and sales? A lot of businesses do not know the answer to this question. Great businesses do. They know that there is a number for each of their sales staff to accomplish day in and out that will yield results that the company has set as their targets.
If you believe sales just happen I encourage you to finish reading this and in the end, see if you still feel the same. By the time we are done you will be defining your process. There is a process behind everything with very, very rare exceptions. So, let’s take a look at it from a real business perspective. Every proactive sale starts with a customer contact. A contact can be a phone call, in-person visit or an email for a few examples. Those then tend to lead to a meeting and that meeting may involve others, etc. For some businesses, the sale happens at this meeting and for others, there is a proposal step back at the office and then another meeting to present this plan to the customer again. At this meeting, the “yes” or the “no” take place on the deal.
If we track these events over time, say for 6 months, we can start to determine our sales effectiveness process or SEP. This is a term we use at The Growth Factory when we help you build out your metrics to show at each step in the process the number(s) needed to drive the next result. SEP workshops are incredibly beneficial for not only you as an owner or sales leader, but for your team to really see what behavior they must increase to keep the sales funnel producing. We start at your closed sales and work back. For example, it might look like this:
- Closed Sale to get here took…
- 4 proposal meetings with a customer to get here took…
- 20 prospect meetings to get those took…
- 100 initial contacts with a customer.
In this example, we can start to draw out some metrics. For every 100 initial contacts, we can create a closed sale. So, if our business needs 5 closed sales a week we need to make sure we are having 500 contacts taking place within that cycle timeline you determined. If you really look at your business I know you will see the same types of flow to your sales. Through a SEP session, you can learn the number of sales contacts that have to happen to yield your goals for the year. You will then know if you have the right staffing and tools available to make this happen as well. The first step is tracking your data through your own system or a CRM system. Take the time to do this if you have not and we will guarantee you your sales will grow if you increase the right behavior that is the start to your SEP (Sales Effectiveness Process).
Wishing you Growth and Great Selling
Tim