Sales Process

If you do not clearly understand the steps to complete a sale for your business, then your sales activities become a series of unrelated events that cannot be managed, improved, or taught. 

The foundation of your sales program is based on understanding the following:  

Product market strategy: What product do you intend to sell to what target market? What is the split between new logo acquisition sales and growing share of wallet of current customers?  

Go-to-Market (GTM) plan: How do you intend to execute your product market strategy?  

Sales process: The specific steps to complete a sale for your industry/business. 

There are somewhere between four and seven key steps to complete any business-to-business sale (large or small). You need to map out these steps if you want to improve sales execution and scale your sales team.  

We have provided the following generic sales process for your review. You can download this tool and easily customize it for your business. 

ITF Sales Process 

Generate a Lead 

Objective: To identify a qualified new business lead for your company. 

Approach 

Objectives:  

  1. Develop a qualified sales opportunity for your company from a new business lead, 

  2. Understand the business problem your prospect is trying to solve 

  3. Understand the prospect’s buying process (separate from your sales process). This includes their decision process, the buying influences involved in the decision, and how they measure the business case or the ROI to solve their problem (how they cost-justify the investment). 

Discover 

Objectives:  

  1. Grow understanding of what business problem the prospect is trying to solve and the specific implications to their business of not solving this problem 

  2. Develop a solution and value proposition that is compelling to all buying influencers involved in the decision 

  3. Clarify for you and your prospect why they should work with your company and why now 

Propose 

Objective: To present a solution that solves the prospect’s business problem, has a positive return on investment (or meets the hurdle rate for business cases in their firm) and is compelling to ALL buying influences involved. 

Close 

Objective: To close a new sale for your company. 

Make no mistake, mapping out the sales process for your business is the responsibility of executive / sales leadership NOT the sales team. Their job is to execute against the sales process once it is institutionalized.