Sales Process

Executive summary

Sales Process

Many organizations are product driven and/or rely on the individual skills of their salespeople to drive results. Many are relationship oriented rather than process oriented. Still, more of them lack the proper pre-sell planning skills necessary to align with customer goals and objectives. Far too often salespeople may be strong presenters but are not trained to ask the right questions in a sales call. This approach usually results in a misaligned solution for the customer and leads to attrition. It can also lead to less than optimal product mix that undermines profits or inconsistent practices in discounting which also undermines margins.

Empirical evidence consistently suggests that firms can significantly increase their top and bottom line results by adopting a customer-focused value-based sales process where the team sells as one organization using a common approach and common language.

Here is some of that empirical evidence. Using this proven approach a sales team from a major information provider reached double digit sales and profit growth selling integrated information service solutions. A major entertainment brand achieved a+30% revenue lift in solution sales revenue and +$750k increase in competitive takeaways per year. A company-wide consultative selling program centered on the key sales instrument, the Letter of Understanding, produced +10% incremental sales despite severe economic downturn in 2008-2009 during the worst downturn in advertising history. This approach has repeatedly enabled clients to shorten their sales cycles, shift their strategies to better focus on key customers, and build sales enablement tools that allow leaders to better manage their teams.

The service starts by meeting with your management to understand your current approach and then building the right sales strategy across brand and product lines to further improve current strengths and minimize vulnerabilities to competition. This work will lead to the key customer information that the salesperson will document in a customer needs assessment which will then drive the proposal. The end result will be that sales teams will use a consistent, uniform process that ensures top line growth, improved customer retention, improved cross-selling, and a healthier bottom line. A cultural transformation takes place wherein salespeople begin to share success stories and customers begin to view their salespeople as knowledgeable consultants.

---

Service Methodology

This service encompasses all related marketing and sales effectiveness initiatives, whether modifying or totally transforming current processes. The first step in the service is to first audit both your management and sales team to establish a baseline in marketing and sales effectiveness. This can take days, weeks, or even a month depending on the size of the team. The next step is to focus on the development of standardized processes for marketing and sales leaders to build a “game plan” or sales and marketing strategy. Together we will develop “who to sell” and “how to sell information (sales guides) within all business units. Generally, a sales guide can be built for a given brand within 2-3 full business days with the goal of identifying a salient value proposition or USP for each business. The interviewing portion comprises 2-3 hours of this process. In addition to sales guide development, Mr. Hynes will work with you to develop both online and instructor-led training programs (1-2 days) that instruct salespeople how to facilitate a customer conversation that will earn the trust and confidence of the customer, uncover and document customer needs through the Letter of Understanding and make it easier for salespeople to develop customer-centered solutions in proposals.

We will then have your sales team pass through two levels of certification. Level 1 will be an online exam