Your company probably has a system or a process for running every other aspect of its daily operations. Businesses operate according to processes in order to save time, reduce mistakes and maximize effectiveness. The sales department shouldn’t be any different. To save time, reduce mistakes and maximize effectiveness, you and your salespeople should use a process as well.

From a sales manager’s perspective, the best reason for utilizing a unified sales process is that it gives you a common framework around which to coach and develop your salespeople. In other words, it is your playbook. Imagine trying to coach a football team without a playbook. What would you tell your players in the huddle before a play? Would you simply tell the lineman to “Just go hit somebody!” and your running backs to “Try and avoid getting tackled?” Don’t you think they already know that much? Is that kind of instruction really going to help the team score consistently? Probably not.

Yet, sad to say, that is about as much direction as some business owners and sales managers give their salespeople. In essence, they are saying, “just go sell something.” Sometimes the salesperson will get lucky, but more often than not they struggle and fail. A football coach without a playbook wouldn’t last a season. Frankly, a sales manager without a playbook is no different.

An effective, unified sales process increases your salespeople’s odds of reaching a favorable outcome on the deals in their pipelines and generally prevents salespeople from wasting their valuable time on opportunities that are unlikely to close, especially when sales cycles are long. Without a doubt, a powerful sales process with clearly defined steps provides more consistent, predictable and profitable results.

These are the symptoms of companies that lack an effective sales process:

• Inappropriately timed proposals
• Inappropriately timed follow-up
• Targeting procurement too early in the sales cycle
• Conducting demos and/or presentations too early in the process instead of asking enough questions
• Making too many assumptions and not enough probing
• Not identifying the actual budget earlier in the sales process
• Too many put-offs, stalls and excuses being accepted
• Lack of commitments from prospects
• Inappropriately timed presentations
• Sales cycles taking much longer than necessary
• Not reaching the actual decision-makers

While some sales managers are initially threatened by the idea of being compelled to follow a sales process, in the end, most sales managers come to love it. They are threatened because, like their salespeople, the thought of being held accountable to following a sales process is frightening. However, they come to love it when they realize how much more effective their salespeople become and how much more effective they are as sales managers. Instead of simply standing on the sidelines and screaming at their players to sell more they have the ability to teach and grow the salespeople on their team.

What would you think of a surgeon who told you after your procedure that he didn’t follow a process for the operation; that he just improvised? How would you feel? The first thing I would do is check to see if he fixed the right organ, joint or limb. Then I would probably lie awake at night wondering if there were going to be complications. If I ever needed additional surgery, you can be certain I would find another surgeon.

Wouldn’t you feel that way about any professional? After all, accountants have systems for completing tax returns. Lawyers have systems for creating contracts and documenting business deals. Financial planners have systems for developing investment strategies and financial plans. I wouldn’t be comfortable using the services of any professional that doesn’t use some kind of system in their professional work.

Systems not only save time for the busy professional, they ensure a consistent level of quality for the client. If respected professionals have a system for what they do, why should it be any different for a professional salesperson or business owner?

If you hope to have any success in sales or business, you need a consistent process for selling that ensures that you do the right things in the right way every time you are in front of a prospect. A selling system is an overall strategy and set of techniques designed to ensure that you handle every buyer-seller interaction in as close to the optimum manner as possible.

Here are the top ten benefits of using a system for selling:

1. It saves time.
2. You make fewer mistakes.
3. You can readily recognize and correct the mistakes you do make.
4. You can learn from your mistakes.
5. You can work at avoiding these mistakes.
6. You can replicate the things you do right.
7. You always know where you stand in the process, and have a greater ability to correct course if you get off track.
8. It increases your level of competence and confidence.
9. You increase your ability to stay focused and on track during the appointment.
10. It gives you and your colleagues, a common language with which to share ideas, analyze past sales calls, and strategize upcoming appointments.

Frankly, I don’t know how sales manager can do their jobs effectively without one. Without a sales process, you are at the prospect’s mercy. Without a process, whatever sales your salespeople close will be random collision of the prospect’s pain and blind luck. Without a process, they won’t know how to allocate their time and energy. Without a process, your sales force simply won’t be effective in today’s time-starved, highly competitive business climate.

According to sales expert Dave Kurlan, founder of Objective Management Group, there are ten factors that impact salespeople’s ability to overachieve. Here are factors one through five:

1. Goals – In terms of setting goals, we are talking about “raise the bar, stretch out of the comfort zone, more than the typical 15% increase in sales” type goals. You must raise expectations in order to celebrate superior performance. In addition, when setting goals, there are two things to remember: (1) a forecast and the plan that supports that forecast come from the goals; not the other way around; and (2) goals should be derived, not from the company, but from the individual’s income requirements, based on the bills that accompany life’s obligations and desires.

2. Incentives – This includes the compensation plan, sales contests, commissions, awards and prizes. Incentives bridge the gap between the corporate objectives and the personal goals we just discussed. If an individual has established personal goals but the company’s compensation plan isn’t designed to reward superior achievement, the incentive to perform cannot be maintained. If a company has a rock-solid compensation plan but the salesperson’s personal goals don’t excite them, the personal incentive to perform will be lost. Remember, most of us work for selfish motives. In other words, our personal motives take priority over a company’s objectives. The job of management is to help align a person’s personal goals with the company’s objectives.

3. Motivation – Motivation results from the combination of Goals and Incentives. In essence, it is the salesperson’s desire and commitment to do whatever it takes, every day, to reach their goals. When they don’t do whatever it takes to achieve their goals, it’s your job to motivate them by knowing what each salesperson’s goals are and reminding them what they need to do to achieve them. When talking about their goals in this context, I’m not talking about income requirements or gross sales volume. That doesn’t have the emotional impact to motivate someone. I’m talking planes, boats and cars, big houses, vacation homes, golf trips, world travel, home theaters, fantasy camps, exclusive events, etc.

4. Pipeline Management – The key to managing a sales pipeline effectively is working with critical ratios. The critical ratios you want to work with are: (1) Monthly sales goal, (2) Closing ratio, (3) Average sale and (4) Length of the selling cycle. Let’s say that a salesperson has a six month selling cycle, a $100,000 monthly goal, a $20,000 average sale and a 25% closing percentage. Effectively managing the pipeline requires that your salesperson places 20 new opportunities in his pipeline each month. How did I arrive at this? With an average sale of $20,000 it will take five $20,000 sales to achieve the monthly goal. With a 25% closing ratio, it will require four times of the number of opportunities worth of total of $400,000 (25% of $100,000) entering the pipeline 6 months in advance of the monthly goal to achieve that goal. If the goal is for July, then the opportunities must enter the pipeline in February. The number to focus on is the number of new opportunities entering the pipeline. Get that to work and the outcomes are all but guaranteed.

5. Accountability – This is huge factor in overachievement. You must hold each salesperson accountable to something measurable (like the number of conversations required to set the number of appointments needed to identify those 20 new opportunities) every day. Even more importantly, you must have consequences for failure to meet those requirements and consistently follow through whenever necessary. Develop the nerve for full accountability and you’re nearly there!

Next week, I’ll discuss factors six through ten.