Roadmap to Sales Success: 6 Actions You Must Take to Improve Your Sales Process

Are your sales going in the right direction? Is your sales process efficient and effective? Does your sales process make it easier for reps to target the right prospects and convert them to customers or clients? If you can’t answer a resounding YES to each of these questions, your path to success is off course and your sales process almost certainly needs to be redirected. Here are 6 essential course corrections that can improve your sales process:

Identify Where You Are

Before you can change course, you’ll need to know where you are in terms of the following.

Lead generation metrics: average lead response time, percentage of qualified leads, customer acquisition cost (CAC), etc.

Pipeline metrics: length of sales cycle, win rate, conversion rate by funnel stage, etc.

Sales process metrics: percentage of reps following the sales process

Sales tools metrics: adoption and usage rates for the CRM, percentage of reps using sales collateral, scripts, and messaging templates, etc.

Sales training metrics: average time in training per salesperson, level of satisfaction with training, and adoption and usage rates of key training initiatives

Set Your Destination

Next, use this information to clarify where you want to go. If qualified leads are too few, for example, do an in-depth review of where your leads are coming from. Then set a new stretch target based on the understanding that you’ll first need to adjust your sources as necessary. Likewise, knowing that you’ll be making process improvements, set new targets for improved conversion rates, too, as well as rates for sales rep adoption of available tools and the CRM. Simply put, wherever your current metrics are deficient, aim higher.

Map Your Current Sales Processes

If your current process is not well-defined, it probably isn’t being followed. In other words, your process might not be off course as much as you think; it simply isn’t clearly understood. By mapping your existing process, points of breakdowns should become obvious.

Navigate with Your Sales GPS (Your CRM)

Your company’s Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system is a tremendous tool to help manage your pipeline and the sales process – IF it’s well-designed, fully adopted by the sales team, and kept up-to-date. You can identify your leading and lagging Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) here and use your CRM data to connect process milestones with prospect and customer data.

Chart Your New Course

Armed with a clear and actionable Unique Value Proposition, and with a solid understanding of your company’s current processes and reliable CRM data, you can now fine-tune your overall sales process. Remember that merely rolling out a sales process improvement is only a first step; your sales team must be educated about the new process so they can fully engage with it.

Track Your Progress and Reroute as Necessary

With the improved sales process deployed, track and measure your KPIs. For weak areas, fine tune and communicate changes where necessary.