Sales Process How To

Assuming you have defined your offering (product or service or both) and your audience well, the key to getting sales is following your process. Here is an example process of how you can move leads through the sales funnel.

1. Suspect - Identify Potentials Suspect

This tool and sales process is for high value, low volume sales where you probably only have a handful or maybe dozens of opportunities at any given time.
So you can handpick the companies you think would be a good fit and go about getting their contact details. If you have inbound opportunities then that's superb, those are suspects for sure! But many of our customers have basically only outbound opportunities (where they reached out) so if that's the case for you, you are in good company.

2. Prospect - Successful OutreachProspect

Reach out to the suspects / potentials to see if they are willing to have a conversation. If yes, they become prospects, if they aren't interested, no worries, there will be other suspects to focus on.
Qualification happens on both sides, they evaluate your service, you evaluate them as a potential client. Sometimes it's better for you to say "We're not what you are looking for / need." and you need to avoid time sinks! You ain't got time for that!

3. Interest - Conversation Advances Interest

If they are a qualified lead and you have had an initial conversation they typically will need to discuss this with someone on their side, or you ask them a few (less is more) key questions that you need to know. Or you send them a NDA (Non Disclosure Agreement) which is a good way to check how serious / interested that lead is plus it shows professionalism and builds trust.
People work with people who they enjoy working with and being honest and reliable are two basic needs that you need to fulfill.
Also: What you need to be able to send them a proposal? What information do you need to be able to do that? Those questions you need to answer at this stage so that you can move on to the next.

4. Decision - Squeaky Bum TimeDecision

Your lead has received your proposal and they are deciding if they want it or not. They may come back with a counter offer or some tweaks to your proposal. It's good practice to say that an offer is valid for a certain amount of days, that ensures that there is some urgency and you don't have opportunities lying around that never turn into anything.

5a. Sold - Rainmaker Alert Sold

They say that in Sales you are always out for the next deal but you have to celebrate the wins. Well done if you make it to this stage!

5b. Archived - Better Luck Next Time Archived

The more No's the more likely you'll get a Yes soon. Or whatever, nobody wants to lose opportunities but it's better to lose quick than lose slow. Sales Tool helps you in auto-archiving opportunities that you haven't touch in a while. Default is 30 days but you can change that in your settings.

Make it Your Sales Process

You can rename the sales funnel stages to what you want, some people don't like to have the Suspect stage and start with Prospect, that's ok. Whatever you do, just be consistent, don't overcomplicate it and you will get results. Guaranteed.