How a Refined Sales Process Will Help Your Team Drive More Sales
What is a Sales Process?
A robust sales process is the roadmap for converting prospective leads into longtime customers and enables sales teams to efficiently close deals.
The sales process is the standardized practice for researching, approaching, and closing potential customers.
The customer's perspective of the sales process is the buyer's journey. A well-oiled sales process creates a successful buyer's journey.
The sales process is commonly done through seven easily incorporated steps:
Prospecting
Research and Analysis of the Company
Outreach and Qualification of Leads
Make a Pitch
Handling Objections
Closing the Sale
Follow-up and Nurturing
In this article, we'll be taking a deep dive into these seven steps, providing tips to get started, and explaining how Owler helps sales teams better understand current and future clients through sales intelligence, competitive analysis, company news alerts, and more.
Why is a Sales Process Important to Your Sales Team?
A standardized sales process is key to building an effective sales strategy. Without one, salespeople risk inconsistent follow-up with new customers and weak lead generation with potential prospects.
With businesses that have mastered their sales pipeline practices, we see the effectiveness of a predefined sales process reflected in a 28% boost in revenue.
By developing a fluid sales process and expanding your repertoire of sales tools to include Owler Max, sales teams can focus on what matters: growing a lucrative customer base.
7 Sales Process Steps to Close More Deals
The seven-step sales process is all about cultivating strong customer relationships from beginning to end.
If you're ready to improve workflow, you need to thoroughly understand and implement each part of the sales process. Here's what you need to know about the seven steps of the sales process:
1. Prospecting
Research and data collection are the pillars of a successful and efficient sales prospecting strategy; that’s where Owler comes in.
Owler Max gives businesses a significant advantage by supplying sales teams with a massive database of over 14 million company profiles––each profile containing real-time relevant, up-to-date information about a company's decision-makers, product launches, company size, and more.
Prospecting with Owler allows your salespeople to reach out at the right time, to the right prospects, with the right message.
2. Research and Analysis of the Company
The next stage involves sales research. During this phase, salespersons thoroughly investigate their prospects' companies and challenges.
In-depth research is crucial as it helps sales teams tailor a more personalized buyer experience and frame an emotional focus on the upcoming pitch.
To better understand your prospect’s needs, try and step into their shoes. Speak with decision-makers at the company to gain a holistic view of their enterprise. You can also use social media to learn more about their brand image and target audience.
Salespeople can also use research tools such as Owler Max to fast-track information gathering and stay up-to-date on important company news. Owler does this by mapping over 40 million competitive relationships to deliver over 180,000 weekly news updates through our exclusive Newsfeed and Daily Snapshot features.
Owler allows you to configure your feed to filter 15 new event types or review seven years of historical data. Providing daily alerts about companies you follow, the Daily Snapshot delivers a sleek and simplified overview of everything you need to know.
3. Outreach and Qualification of Leads
The second stage is a two-step process.
The first step involves making contact with early-stage leads. At this point, you’re not looking to close a deal. Instead, you’re generating interest and gathering more information on your prospects.
The second step is lead qualification. Qualifying leads help determine whether a potential client fits your ideal customer description (aka the buyer persona) and if they’re likely to move forward through the sales funnel.
Lead qualification is crucial since it saves a lot of time.
A salesperson can often assess whether a prospect is a qualified lead through a discovery call or email and ask questions such as:
“What are the challenges you currently face?”
“What would you say are your company’s biggest strengths and weaknesses?”
“What’s your day-to-day look like?”
4. Make a Pitch
The fourth stage of the sales process is the ice-breaker. Salespersons schedule a meeting with interested parties and hold a formal sales presentation during this stage.
Since you don’t want to waste time or valuable resources on an uninterested prospect, you must reserve formal demonstrations solely for qualified leads.
A sales pitch aims to present an effective solution to your prospects’ pain points.
To make sure you impress your prospective client, include relevant stats and information about the company and personalize each pitch to establish credibility and authenticity.
5. Handling Objections
One of the biggest challenges that salespeople face is high price points. 35% of sales professionals report price objections as a major obstacle.
Sales managers should prepare their teams to anticipate objections wherever possible.
Whether it’s about the price or the processes involved, never neglect the buyer’s perspective. You’re not just selling a product or a service—but a solution. The customer’s needs and challenges should be your top priority.
Encourage sales reps to think on their feet by identifying roadblocks ahead of time. Also, be sure to train inexperienced team members to quickly and confidently settle client challenges when they arise.
6. Closing the Sale
Closing customers is the ultimate goal of the sales process. For a successful close, sales professionals should begin final preparations.
Closing goes a little differently with each prospect. Your business may directly provide quotes, or they may go through several more rounds of negotiations before all major stakeholders are satisfied.
Salespeople stay involved until a concrete agreement on price and conditions is met.
Whatever the agreement entails, it should be mutually beneficial. Appropriate legal steps should be taken, and a binding contract drafted to ensure follow-through.
7. Follow-Up and Nurturing
In sales, the work doesn’t stop when the deal is sealed. Rather, following a successful close, the sales process moves forward into developing a deeper relationship with the client, building trust, and becoming their partner.
With Owler Max's Salesforce and Slack integration, customer success managers and members of your sales team can ensure a client's onboarding is seamless and easy. From prospect to pipeline to payment, it is one smooth process.
Salespeople should also ensure follow-through with any deliveries or installations. Not only will this help prevent issues during onboarding, but sales can take the opportunity to nurture their leads, build brand loyalty, upsell and cross-sell other products, and secure referrals from happy customers.
5 Quick Tips to Develop Client Trust
Know your customer, do your research, and understand their business inside out. Reach out with timely questions and congratulations based on their company news.
Be client-focused. Bring value to the table instead of just pushing products.
Honesty. Let your clients know what your business can and cannot do. Don’t promise the stars and then fail to deliver.
Demonstrate a high level of expertise in your product or service - be able to answer any questions.
Be dependable and organized. Do what you say you will when you say you will do it, and do not leave your clients hanging. Ensure you know your deliverables and have everything you need from the client before time runs out and deadlines arrive.
Build Your Sales Process Today with Owler!
A great many working parts go into a strong sales process. From prospecting to presenting, truly effective sales practices take time to build. However, armed with the correct information and the right tools, developing a sales process that gets results is possible.
With Owler’s dynamic data and real-time company news updates, you can improve your sales process and drive higher conversion rates, starting with the most important person: the customer.
Discover everything you need to know about prospective clients with Owler Max. Connect with the companies you care about and take advantage of unique features and special pricing with our team bundle.
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