Jul 11, 20217:31 PM - edited Aug 12, 202110:22 AM
Inbound Professor
How many stages are in your sales process?
Sales processes vary a lot from industry to industry and even team to team. Do you have a long sales cycle with lots of steps, or is your sales process simple and transactional? Maybe it's somewhere in between. Share the number of steps in your process below. (No need to share any company secrets--just the number will do!)
Sales processes can indeed vary widely, ranging from simple to complex with multiple steps. In the company where I work for, our sale cycle may involve such steps as:
Identifing potential customers and gather information about their needs and determining whether the prospect is a good fit for our product. Showcase how our product addresses the customer's needs. Providing a detailed proposal, including pricing and terms by understanding the customer's specific requirements and challenges. Drafting and signing the necessary documents to formalize the arrangement. At the end, ensuring a smooth transition and assisting the customer in getting started with our product. Maintaining communication with the customer post-sale to address any issues and explore opportunities for upselling or additional services.
My sales cycle process involves identofying a potential client through marketing or refferals, assessing the leads gathered in order to determine is they fit the ideal profile, reaching out to them and establishing contact. A conversation with the potential customer follows as I seek to understand their needs. I often make a presentation to highlight the features and benefits of the product I am marketing and make a poroposal to the client. Addressing potential obstacle sor feedback form the client is an important part of the orocess before negotiating and closing the deal. Follow up is also essential in order to retain the client or customer.
The first thing i do is gathering information about the potential client including their hobbies, then his needs and taste, taste is very importat to me, so i can choose which method I'm going to follow to approach them
Our Sales cycle varied depending on how we received the lead whether it was a prospect reaching out via live chat or someone who booked an introductory Consultation Call with a seasoned Sales Representative. We never fully named the different stages in the cycle, which I'm excited to build a playbook strategy moving forward! Instead, we tried to capture the following - learn about the prospect, identify their challenges and pain points, solve their challenge explaining the value of our product, move forward with a visual demonstration, and then follow up to close.
We have a 9 step sales process that starts with the creation of an opportunity and ends with the opportunity in closed won. At that point another opportunity is created for potential renewal. Judging by others' responses, this might be a lot, but reps on my team often fly through these stages if the buyer is ready to get started.
My most recent project was one where I was involved in setting up a cold outreach service. It is quite a straightforward service with only about 5 steps in the sales cycle.
What differentiates this approach is that during our second call with a prospect, we collect their intended target market & actually run a lead scraping data test that we share with the prospect before we finalize the onboarding. Furthermore, we have also captured our post-sales process & exactly how long each step should take.
Our sales process consists of multiple stages in our sales funnel, including prospecting, negotiating, confirmation, participation, and retention. However, I'm currently seeking guidance on refining my sales approach. While our sales playbook and tools like Hotspot are effective, I'm interested in working with an expert or someone who can assist me in enhancing our initial sales approach.
Lead, Qualified, Pitching, Negotiation, Commitment and then Closed Won. We have struggled with exit criteria in the past, particularly in how it is defined from the forecasting and company's perspective, however we might need to look at it from the client's perspective more.
