HOWTO… create the perfect sales cycle

HOWTO… sales and marketing guides from Solutions for Sales are brief practical guides for Sales and Marketing professionals. They provide a primer for the inexperienced and a reminder for those already in the know. For more guides visit our website: www.solutionsforsales.com 

The stages of a perfect sale

This HOWTO… guide explains how a set of sales stages can improve sales efficiency and predictability. If you are seeking a structured sales cycle for your company then the table in this guide may be a good starting point. If you have already standardised your sales cycle then use the information here as a checklist to see if there is scope for improvement.

Background

Solutions for Sales works with many companies where 90% of salespeople have been trained in one or other of the “solution selling” style methodologies but, owing to recruitment, reorganisation or mergers, not the same one. This is not a major problem, because the various methodologies are all broadly similar, except that each one has its own definition of the sales cycle, its own vocabulary for naming the stages of a sale and different criteria for progress from one stage to the next. If you are in this position then you won’t want to spend money on another round of sales training just to get the salesforce aligned to one set of selling stages. Alternatively, perhaps you are building a salesforce and you want to establish a standard selling vocabulary and process.

The table below page shows recommended sales stages for a relatively complex B2B sale. If this suits your sales environment then feel free to adopt it. At a detailed level, the perfect sales cycle differs for every solution and market combination, but to gain the benefits of a standard process you’ll need a common framework within which each solution-specific cycle fits.

Why sales stages?

Agreeing on a standard set of sales stages improves selling in three main ways:

• Efficiency
• Predictability
• Success rates

If the sales stages include a definition of what should be done at each stage then efficiency is improved through better cooperation across the organisation. Others understand where you are and what you need, so they will be more willing and better able to provide assistance. Expensive support resources can be reserved for those sales where they are really justified.

Having sales stages with agreed exit criteria improves pipeline predictability because some of the subjectivity relating to sales progress is removed. Accurate forecasting is a major challenge for any sales organisation. Having objective criteria to determine the stage each sale has reached reduces the risk of over optimistic forecasts and aids revenue assurance.

Success rates are improved by learning what works and what doesn’t work at each stage. Successful tactics can be “baked-in” to each sales stage, helping salespeople to get it right more often and enabling rookies to learn faster.

Practical considerations

Sales stages define hard boundaries along the path of a sale, but in the real world the boundaries are permeable. Customers don’t always do things in the order you would like; they often double-back on ground that has already been covered or bring-forward a topic because it is of particular concern. You will find it useful to understand the customers’ buying stages. These are explained in a companion guide, HOWTO… sell, and the buying stages described there are shown alongside the sales stages in the table over the page.

What now?

If you haven’t yet standardised on a generic sales cycle then use the table on the next page as a starting point. Make sure your sales stages define the actions expected at each stage and provide objective exit criteria. If your generic sales cycle is well defined then now is the time to start developing solution-specific versions to guide salespeople towards the particular sales actions that work best for each solution.

The stages of a perfect sale

This is an example sales cycle for a fairly complex B2B sale. The starting point is assumed to be a lead or pre-existing contact into a prospective customer in your target market.

For a clearer version of this table, please click the link in the right hand margin to download the article.

What do you think? If you have comments on this HOWTO… sales and marketing guide, or new ideas, questions, or requests for new guides then email or call +44(0)1702 586742.