Sales Process Model

During the late 90s and early 00s I made my living improving sales processes. I lived and breathed process maps, metrics, re-engineering workshops and implementation plans.

So what I’m going to say may sound a little sacreligious – but over the years I’ve come to believe that sales processes just aren’t that important.

Now don’t get me wrong, they’re not unimportant. Qualification helps you focus your resources and time on your highest priorities. Good forecasting keeps your investors happy and helps you know when you need to take action to remedy problems. Review processes give managers a forum to coach and improve the skillss of their team. And for new salespeople, a solid process can help guide them throught the basics of making a sale before the key stages become embedded in their brains.

But at best, achieving excellence in sales processes will make you efficient. It will make sure you don’t waste time & resources, that you don’t bog down your sales team in admin, and that you get useful information to track progress and to manage the team.

But what will really drive up your sales? It’s the actions your salespeople take when directly interacting with your customers. It’s their skills, their technique, and most importantly, their mindset during those interactions. Give me a genuine and skillful salesperson over an excellent sales process anyday.

So for almost any company, given a choice of where to invest management time or resources for improvement: invest them in improving the capabilities of your team rather than in sales processes.