Sales process

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

A sales process is a systematic approach for performing product or service sales. The reasons for having a sales process include seller and buyer risk management, standardized customer interaction in sales, and scalable revenue generation.

Specific steps or stages in a sales process vary from company to company but generally include the following steps:

From a seller's point of view, a sales process mediates risk by stage-gating deals based on collection of information or execution of procedures that gate movement to the next step. This controls seller resource expenditure on non-performing deals. Ideally this also prevents buyers from purchasing products they don't need though such a benefit requires ethical intentions by the seller. Because of the uncertainty of this assurance, buyers often have a buying or purchasing process.

A formalized sales process is generally more common for companies that either have large revenue risks that require systematic assurance of revenue generation and/or those that choose to use a more consultative sales approach (e.g. Saturn, IBM, Hewlett-Packard).

Strictly speaking, even an effective ad hoc or retail sales process can be described by steps of an ideal sales process though some of the steps may be executed quickly. Often a bad sales experience can be analyzed and shown to have skipped key steps. This is where a good sales process mediates risk for both buyer and seller. A solid sales process also has the dramatic impact of forecasting accuracy and predictability in revenue results.

Many companies develop their own sales process; however, off the shelf versions are available from companies such as the Improved Performance Group, Huthwaite International, and Miller Heiman. These provide a customizable process and a set of electronic tools that can be freestanding or can be integrated if required with the company's SFA, CRM, or other opportunity management system.