The key to success in sales is creating a repeatable process that you and your reps are able to consistently perform each and every day.
So, how do you go out and build this magic process?
I like to think about it as very similar to going out and baking a cake. There are specific phases involved. There was a great post by my colleague, Dominique Levin on LinkedIn, where she talked about the three different stages that companies go through to in order to ultimately achieve their go-to-market fit. In other words, three phases to develop a repeatable, rapidly scaling sales process.
So, today I’m going to talk about those three phases, but put my own spin on them. You won’t wind up with a cake recipe but you should get a strong idea of how to ‘bake’ a repeatable sales process.
Phase 1: Founder lead sales
The first phase is looking at founder-led sales. These typically have the CEOs and the founders of the business going out there to find opportunities to speak with customers, charm them and talk them through the sales process.
This is very similar to pulling all the ingredients out of the pantry to start the baking process. The CEOs and company founders are putting all the elements out there onto the table, and then mixing them together, just to start moving in the right direction.
Let’s say, for example, that they might be sitting there testing which sort of marketing channels are the most effective to be able to generate the most leads. Do the customers prefer to be speaking on the phone, or do they prefer being met onsite? Is it better speaking to someone higher, sort of in the mid-tier of an organization as opposed to either an executive or an end-user?
These are all the elements of testing that are required which have a similar sort of creative alchemy to when you’re just mixing all the ingredients together at the start of the baking process.
Phase 2: Professional sales reps
Moving onto phase two, we need to look at the professional sales process. Typically, this occurs after the founder-led process, because the founders shouldn’t actually be hiring sales reps until they’ve actually identified and secured 10-30 customers themselves.
So, the professional sales process usually looks similar to the founder-led process that came before it because it involves speaking with groups of customers with a similar sort of message – aka, one that’s been proven thus far to work.
At this stage, the cake’s approximately half-baked. Right? It’s had it’s ingredients put together, a bit of mixing and testing has occurred, and now it’s been in the oven for a short while.
You’ve got a strong feeling that it’s going to turn out well, but you really don’t know for sure and that’s why you need to keep a careful eye on it.
This is where you really rely on your sales reps to be able to go and refine the temperature in the oven, to ensure that it stays the perfect temperature. Too much heat, and you’ll burn the whole thing to shit. Too little heat, and it’ll be obvious to everyone that your product is underprepared and undercooked.
You may be thinking, Andy, this is a very, very tenuous connection, but bear with me.
What we’re really looking for in Phase 2 is for the reps to still have some degree of creativity and flexibility. They need to be able to adapt the messaging to be able to grow and expand on the great work that the founders did in Phase 1 so that then they can start producing these cakes, or these customers, on a regular basis.
Once you’ve got two or three sales reps who’ve been able to do that repeatedly, okay, then on to Phase 3.
Phase 3: Scaling growth
This final phase, as you may already have guessed, is all about being able to start baking your cakes at scale. Ah, I can hear you thinking, this analogy is finally starting to make sense!
At this stage, you’ve had more than a modicum of success from the founders which you then parlay to the professional sales reps who helped to create a fully-baked sales process and achieving repeatable, predictable results.
A fully-baked playbook, as I talked about in a recent post, comprises five core elements around an organized, customer-centric process with tools that act as a force multiplier, content which is your outbound call, skills that are cultivated online, and an organizational structure that is agile and can open to change.
How do you know the cake is baked?
Baking is chemistry, not philosophy. If you cheat the process you are not going to be able to achieve the desired result. So it is with your sales process, you need to take a scientific approach to and be maniacal about how you are measuring and tracking your progress. The improvement of your sales metrics will be the key to help you understand how to grow your business.
If you are interested in learning more about when is the right time to scale, check out this report on the Science of Growth.
Happy Selling!
Andy
Learn the art of selling from Andy at StartCon!
