Make Sales Predictable by Making It a Process

There are a handful of universal constants that determine the success of any organization. They include things like visionary leadership, product-market fit, competitive differentiation, and great people.

Sales, however, is ultimately what determines an organization's success.

Sales is the alpha and the omega; the beginning or the end of a business. Even the best organizations with the greatest people and first-class solutions will struggle to compete and grow without a sound sales strategy, a sales process that everyone understands and follows, and the sales tools that ensure that sales operate at peak efficiency.

When all three — strategy, process, and operations — are developed and managed as a whole, sales become a much more predictable part of any business.

What is a Sales Process?

It's a series of defined, repeatable steps which consistently leads to a favorable conclusion.

Simple, right? What the process actually looks like ought to be driven by how your customers make buying decisions and how you're organized to make that as simple and straightforward as possible.

Here's what it's not.

It's NOT the number of phone calls, voicemails, or emails your salespeople generate. Those are activities. Yes, they're important, but resist the temptation to make the mistake of thinking about those activities as your sales process.

Why Have a Sales Process?

Why not just prospect like crazy and "play the numbers game?" Well, because you'll work longer and harder and probably realize less success than if you have a well thought out strategy and then a sales process that turns that strategy into action and intelligence.

In my experience, a good sales process guides everyone's action, decisions, awareness, and understanding of elements critical for success.

A good sales process:

• Defines the means to achieve sales success
• Aids in diagnosing, correcting, and enhancing sales skills
• Is how to quantify the progress toward success at an opportunity level
• Is the only way to confidently predict revenue at an opportunity level
• Provides a common language and set of activities for talking about and forecasting sales

Without a sales process, you can't really know where you stand with a prospect and their buying decision, and that means you can't really manage your sales funnel. And without a well-managed funnel, you're left with salespeople saying, "Don't worry, I have this one," or "We're at like 75 to 80 percent on this deal," without any clarity on what it takes for an opportunity to be at 80%. (HINT: It has nothing to do with how many voicemails and emails they received.)

A sales process — a real sales process — is really the only means by which you make your top line more predictable.