Building a Sales Process for Technical Founders
A Step-by-Step Guide to Creating a Scalable, Repeatable Sales Model
You have developed the best solution for the problem you set out to solve. You are confident that for the money no one can do it better. That is a great start to your company. Now the hard work of selling your product or service starts. Without a solid framework for your sales process technical founders will struggle to continue to grow. Build and improve your sales process a little bit each day. Do not rely on ad-hoc efforts, build a solid step by step process that you can plug sales professionals into and the go grow and improve your business.
Are You Qualified?
Sales can be a challenging process, one of the best ways to make it easier is ensure you have qualified leads. Set up a solid opening to your funnel. This can be done several ways. Create a lead generation on your home page. Maybe a free PDF of tips in return for contact information. Maybe you reach out to a call center and have them prospect potential customers to get you leads. Maybe you just blast Instagram or TicTok with ads. As you gain these leads review them and learn what makes a good lead and what does not. Refine your lead generation process to improve these leads as you grow. Are you on the right social media platform? Are you asking qualifying questions in the process? Why is this so important? according to HubSpot, 67% of lost sales are the result of sales reps not properly qualifying leads. (Source: “The State of Sales Enablement” - HubSpot) Thus, the first step in building your solid sales process is making sure that you have qualified leads. Your future sales team will thank you.
Step by Step
Once you have your leads what are the steps to engage with the customer, generate a quote, perform the work, and follow-up? Is it really important to have a step by step process? According to the Harvard Business Review, yes it is. Their work shows that, organizations with a formal sales process are 33% more likely to be high performers in their industry. (Source: “The New Science of Sales Force Productivity” - HBR) A consistent step by step process ensure the same communication with all customers. It helps the onboarding process for new sales team members. It will ensure the same level of service for each customer as well. Things to consider as steps in your process:
The intake call/meeting. First touch point with the customer post lead generation.
The specification sheet, what does the customer need?
Quote sent
Quote follow-up
Sale confirmation
Delivery of goods and/or services
Confirmation of job completion
Follow-up
Re-order
These may not all apply to your business or product, but think through this list, add to it if needed. But define the steps of your process, and continue to improve them as your sales grow.
Structure Your Process, Structure Your Growth
To bring this home we will turn to Saleforce for a little inspiration on our potential future with a structured sales process. A standardized sales process can increase a company’s revenue by up to 28% (Source: “Why You Need a Scalable Sales Process” - Salesforce). A structured sales process is easy to scale from one sales person, yourself, to 10 sales people. It allows you to track the time from lead generation to revenue in the bank. It allows you to see what your revenue walk will look like over the next month, quarter, or year. Then you can ensure you have enough leads generated. You will know how to manage your inventory to service team. A structured sales process will take time, but start early and build it and improvement it. One sale at a time.
Action Step
What is your current sales process. Take 30 minutes this week to write out the steps. Do you have all the steps you need? What steps will you add before your next customer engagment?
Additional Reading
How to Build a Sales Process That Scales - HubSpot
Creating a Scalable Sales Process for Startups - Sales Hacker
The Ultimate Guide to Building a Repeatable Sales Process - Close.io