Imagine you are in a new city. You’ve just landed at the airport, you have just enough time to drive to a critical meeting with a customer, but you have no road map or GPS. Sure you can follow road signs, but sometimes, that’s a little tenuous. You have to proceed slowly, cautiously. Sometimes you make a wrong turn and have to retrace some of your steps–all the while, losing precious time. You worry that you might be late.
Clearly, none of us would do that if we had a short amount of time to get to a critical meeting. We’d make sure we had a road map, clear direction, and a GPS. We’d take the most efficient route we could, getting there in the shortest time possible.
So what Dave, what’s your point? We all get that, we’re not stupid, we always get directions so we make sure we reach our destination as efficiently as possible.
However, how many sales people treat their sales process the same way? Too often, we don’t have a process or we ignore it. The consequences are similar–we get lost, we wander, we take more time in getting to our destination–a close, than is needed. Sales cycles are longer than necessary, we wander and lose our way–frustrating customers, losing advantage to the competition.
Our sales process, particularly when aligned with our customers’ buying processes is our most effective tool in maximizing our effectiveness in each opportunity, as well as maximizing our ability to manage our pipelines and territories. The sales process is designed to maximize our ability to win, reduce our sales cycle, and to maximize our deal profitability. It’s our road map to success.
Sure, we can close deals without a sales process–but it’s risky and very inefficient. Since most of us are time poor, our goal is to be as effective and efficient as possible—this means we have to leverage the sales process.
Are you driving blindly, or are you being as effective as you possibly can be?
