The Secrets to Sales Success for YOUR Service-Based Business, Part 1

When I tell you the secret, you may roll your eyes. But bear with me. I promise, it will be worth the read.

The secrets to sales success include two main ingredients:  1) Processes and 2) Communication.

But let’s be honest, most business leaders hate creating and implementing processes.

Like Angela Basset, they just want “to do the thing.”  

And that “thing” typically isn’t selling. It’s usually about delivering the service.

For example, a dentist went to dental school to learn how to help people live better lives and eliminate the shame and pain associated with a patient’s dental care. She didn’t go to learn how to run a marketing campaign.

Or a Chief Information Security Officer who set up a consulting practice to deliver and guide the implementation of security services. He’s passionate about protecting our economy and infrastructure from the bad guys. He’s not so keen on how to implement a sales strategy.

However, if you want to grow sales (topline) revenue and scale your business, your best bet for success (and to continue to do the things you enjoy in the business) is to build scalable revenue operations.

That is, you’re gonna have to sell the “thing,” or build a team that can.

In this article, I’m going to share with you the importance of building solid processes and give you some tips on how to do it effectively. The next article will address Communication.

Why Process?

Having clear marketing-sales-customer retention processes will help you build a predictable sales revenue cycle.
This is especially important if you want to scale your business and manage your employees’ utilization rates.

Also, having definable and repeatable processes that you can test and refine over time will provide the added benefit of mining actionable, first-person data.

For example, if you struggle with inconsistent sales, i.e., sales come in then stop, having your processes written down (defined) will provide you with actionable data. That is, you should be able to reverse engineer your process and benchmark it against current industry trends to help determine why sales lag in some months and are robust in other months.

The All Important Four “C’s” of the Sales Process

Sales processes demonstrate competence, confidence in your services offerings, continuity, and care.

Your sales process is how your customers will get to know about you and the services your company provides.

So for example, let’s say you’re an IT provider and you have a long sales cycle. In fact, according to your data, it takes 9 to 12 months to close a deal. (This is often the case whenever you have an expensive and/or complex service offering).

Your prospective customer may read a few reviews before an initial engagement, but that’s not going to sell them on your services.

Rather, your prospective customer will get to know you and your services through your sales process. Your process will determine whether they should trust you or not.

7 Questions to Help Improve Your Sales Processes

1. Do you have a definable and repeatable sales/lead generation process? Or is each engagement different?
2. Does everyone on your team understand their part in the sales process? Or is it disjointed?
3.  Does your sales process uncover and address your prospect’s key pain points?
4. Is your process well structured, taking the customers’ psychology and buying cycle into account?
5. Do you ask for feedback on your process from prospects you win and lose?
6. Do you believe that your process builds confidence?
7. Have you ever been complimented on the professionalism of your process even when being rejected? Or do prospective customers ghost you during the sales process?

Not sure about your sales processes? Then contact me today for a free, no-obligations Sales Growth & Strategy Session today at  https://helpugrowcro.com/contact/