Our focus is making it easy for you to track every component of your sales process. We ensure that information doesn’t fall through the cracks that could cost you a sale. While we make it easy to automate this process, many companies aren’t 100% sure if they’re going about sales the right way.
If you’re worried that there may be a hole in your sales process, the good news is it’s easy to find out. Let’s take a look at the six standard parts of the sales process:
Generate Leads
Every business needs leads. If no one knows about your business or is interested in what you have to offer, you’re not going to make any sales. Fortunately, the Internet has made it easier than ever to attract new leads. From blogging to using social media, there are a lot of ways to connect with potential customers.
Qualify Prospects
As you’ve learned from experience, there’s a big difference between a lead and a customer. You can save yourself a lot of frustration by figuring out as early as possible if someone is truly a good fit for your business.
Convert to Customers
Once you know that a lead really does want exactly what you have to offer, your goal is to convert them into a customer. During this stage of the sales process, you can use SalesNexus to track everything from email conversations to notes you take about a meeting.
Fully Serve Customers
As many businesses have learned during the last few years, the best way to weather challenging times is to have strong relationships with your customers. That’s why sales don’t end with someone becoming a customer. Instead, your business needs to put effort into making customers feel like they’re always a priority.
Customer Referrals
Happy customers are the best way to bring in new business. Once you fully serve your customers, you want to be sure to make it as easy as possible for them to refer you to others.
New Opportunities
By looking at the flow of customers through your sales process, you can figure out ways to tap new markets and opportunities.
Are You Missing Something?
Now that you know exactly what your sales process should contain, it’s easy to determine if you’re missing something. You can analyze your own process by using a spreadsheet. At the top of the sheet, use each of the six process parts as a column heading. Then on the side of the sheet, list each sales or marketing activity you do.
For each activity, make a mark in the column that it falls under. For many of your activities, it will make sense to mark them in more than one of the six columns. Once you finish doing this for each activity, you will have a convenient visual reference for your sales process. You can use this spreadsheet to see which processes receive the most of your resources, as well as if there are any areas where you need to increase your efforts.
Is there a part of your sales process that you want to improve in 2012?