Master the Sales Process to Boost Your Revenue

Photo by LinkedIn Sales Navigator on Unsplash

Many people don’t realize that effective sales involve an entire process, not only a pitch. In fact, sometimes the entire process can take months or years, and each step deserves careful attention. Even if you think you’re good at closing deals, you can still brush up on your knowledge of the entire process, which can help you fill your sales pipe with more and better-qualified leads.

In this article, we’ll review some of the most essential steps in the sales process, so you can decide where you need to focus the most time and attention.

Study the Sales Cycle and Customize It to Meet Your Needs

The sales cycle includes seven stages, including:

Prospecting for leads (potential customers)
Connecting with and qualifying leads
Research
Presentation
Overcoming objections
Closing the sale
Generating customer referrals.

Every member of your sales team will follow this process (which can also be visualized with a sales funnel) with minor variations, but your business may want to consider customizing it to your needs. If you feel less-than-comfortable handling any of these changes, now is a great time to improve your skills and boost your knowledge.

Know Your Customers and What They Want/Need

When it comes to selling, you may think you’re doing a great job following the rules, but rules don’t mean anything if you’re not giving the customers what they’re seeking. Have your sales reps taken the time to listen to your customers’ pain points? Are you speaking language they understand? Are you offering them something they actually want? These are important questions to consider.

There are several ways to conduct this research. To begin, you can simply ask them questions via survey or use a tool like Question Analyzer from BuzzSumo to browse customer queries on public forums, as well as popular channels like Amazon, Reddit, and Quora.

[Image Source]

It also gets more complicated. You can implement a social login feature on your app, which will automatically pull user data from social media apps like Instagram into your system, so you can better understand their interests and browsing history on the internet.

Whatever method you choose, make sure you integrate customer research into your sales process to enrich it.

Form Long-Term Relationships

Not only should you try to give your customers what they want now, but you should also anticipate what they’ll want down the road. That way, you can build a long-term relationship with those customers and ensure that they’ll keep coming back for more. In addition, when your sales managers maintain long-term relationships with customers, they may feel inspired to refer you to others.

You can use a tool like FollowUp to stay in touch on a regular basis over email. These consistent touch points will go a long way towards building a steady relationship over time.

To Boost Revenue: Know What Sets You Apart

If you don’t know what your competition is doing, then you can’t possibly know what sets you apart. When was the last time you conducted a competitive analysis? You may even want to try some spy work and call your competitors (from a blocked number, of course) to see how they handle their own sales calls. Once you know what makes you special, you’ll be able to “wow” new customers with your unique value proposition.

Mastering the sales process can take many years, but it’s worth the time and effort, since there’s always something new to discover. By walking through these next steps on a regular basis, you can ensure that you’re staying one step ahead of the competition and doing your business justice.