Sales process for the Start Up

One thing you will have noticed when you talk to an investor is there passion for your sales projection, order book and customer sales funnel, nothing gets an investor ready to sign up and part with the cash more than a strong route to a growing market. The scary thing is if you were asked what is your sales order process can you show them ? from the initial enquiry through to the repeat order, do you have a customer satisfaction feedback process ? The process I will show here would be modified to suit your own business , but it captures the essence of what you should be doing...nothing complex just Keep It Simple Smarty.

An Intro to the Super-Simple Sales Process
extract from
Don’t Be Afraid of the S-Word
By Uzi Shmilovici

Fortunately, managing sales is actually much less daunting than it might sound. My company uses a very simple seven-bucket sales process. It goes like this:

1. Track and categorize new business leads. If you receive an email or a phone call from a prospective customer, you want to record the discussed project/deal in this stage. Try to understand where the leads came from. Tracking that will help you understand which marketing channels work best for you. Did they see your website? Hear you speak at a conference? Learn about you from a colleague or friend?

2. Determine the quality of the lead. All leads are not created equal. Upon receiving the lead, try to assess if this lead is qualified. More specifically:

* Do they have the budget to work with you? You can gently ask this in the first call or even mention your usual rates for such projects and evaluate your prospect’s response.
* Are they of the right size? If you’re used to working with startups on two-month projects, working with Fortune 500 companies on two-year projects might be unrealistic and unwise.
* Is the prospect serious about this project? Assess whether or not they are ready to pull the trigger. Is there budget allocated for the project? Is there a timeline for kicking off the project?
* Are you passionate about this project? If you have many potential leads in your pipeline, you may decide it’s not worth pursuing a project that seems too boring or not challenging enough.

Remember that client who said that we were “pretty expensive” for them? A qualifying question in the first phone call could have saved us many hours of working on this deal. If you decide that the deal is unqualified, you just save it under another bucket: the unqualified deals bucket. On the other hand, if it’s qualified, move it forward in the process to the qualified stage.

3. Gather the requirements for the project. This will usually involve securing documents from the customer and/or meeting them face-to-face to gather the requirements. The purpose is to confirm that you want to do the project, and to gather enough information to write a quote.

4. Prepare the quote. If a deal arrives at this stage, you want to win it. Particularly, if you are juggling a number of quotes, it’s wise to set reminders so you don’t miss any deadline. Failure to submit a quote on time signals to your potential clients that you are not professional and unable to handle even a straight-forward follow-up.

5. Close the deal. Nothing can guarantee that you will actually win a deal but two crucial best practices can definitely increase your chances:

* Confirm receipt of the quote, and respond to any concerns. Call your prospect to check that she received your proposal, and to see if she has any questions. You don’t want to lose the deal because of a simple misunderstanding about your approach or pricing.
* Follow up again, and demonstrate your expertise. Set a reminder for yourself to follow up with her within a couple of days. When you make that next call (or email), try to pepper the conversation with a few comments that demonstrate your knowledge and generosity.

6. Celebrate. Congratulations! You’ve won the deal! Keeping track of all the deals you close will help you understand what kind of deals you typically win and will help you improve your qualifying process. Also, try to understand where those deals originated. If 80% came from your portfolio website on Behance, then you should keep growing and improving it as it is a major source of business.

7. Or, analyze and regroup. Lost the deal? Ugh, bummer. But, this is a great opportunity for you to learn why this happened. Try to understand and keep note of the reason for every deal you lose. Losing too many deals because you are expensive? Maybe you should consider lowering your prices or, better yet, seek a different type of customer who can afford your high-quality work.

How much can following this process improve your sales? 10% improvement? 500% improvement? I’ve seen both. It depends on how effective you are, how good your work is, and how much you care about making the sales happen.

As my friend said, we are all selling at the end of the day. So, stop being afraid of the S-word. By finding a way to balance your creative role with giving sales the proper attention, you can improve the projects you’re working on and grow your business.

Gordon Whyte

Customers, What do they really think about your company

Customer feedback or not

I have myself lost track slightly of my customers in times gone past, once the PO is placed and the Invoice paid it's on to the next fire to fight, funding event, board meeting, flight to catch, in a small early stage company 2 to 3 employees, it is hard to follow up regularly, if your cutomer based is more that 40 companies, you end up priotitiseing the customer base and chaseing up the next order, you never take too much time to get to know what your customers think about you, what you could do better, and where there buisness is going etc, these things are taken care off when you grow and can afford a biz dep person, but until you get there , it's up to you. I myself spend time now and make it a point to touch bases on the phone with the main customers regularly every couple of weeks..and the rest by email every 4 to 6 weeks, I have found that this has improved the business and customer retention.

This article below details customer feed back questions, some you should know the answers too anyway, but others are interesting it can be found on the Bnet UK webpage>

10 Customer Feedback Questions You Need to Ask Yourself

Lots of organisations invest a lot of time, money and effort in getting customer feedback. I also think that lots of organisations waste lots of time, money and effort in getting customer feedback.

Why? They ask the wrong questions, they ask lots of questions, but don’t actually listen, or they listen to the answers and then do nothing about what they hear.

I’m all for getting customer feedback –- it’s a great source of ideas, opportunities, improvements, and it demonstrates to your customers you care, provided you do listen and then take action.

Too many organisations simply get boxes ticked, go through the motions, and ask questions that don’t make them too uncomfortable.

So, just to get you thinking, here are 10 questions you might want to consider asking your customers that challenge the status quo and possibly improve your performance, attitude and relationships.

1. What attracted you to us originally? This helps get a view of how you are seen in the market place and what are the things that appeal to your customers.
2. What would you do if we weren’t here? This may give an insight into the value they place on you as a supplier — Would they actually notice if you disappeared?
3. Can you name one particular individual who has impressed you in our organisation? This highlights your customer champions, and maybe some of your unsung heroes. If they can’t name anyone, what does that say about the way your people interact with your customers?
4. What one thing could we do better? Just one thing -– it may highlight their priorities and key issues.
5. Why do you buy from us? This highlights your strengths –- some of which, you may not be aware of. Be careful how you phrase this one. You might sound as if you’re doubting yourselves.
6. If our business was the best in the world, what would it look like? This one stretches the imagination, and even though you may not be able to deliver exactly what they say, it may give you a few ideas about what they see as important.
7. Name one thing that we do or don’t do that irritates you –- The key is doing something about it.
8. Who can we learn from? This helps you identify who your customers see as role models, and might just point something out that’s not happening in your industry you could learn from.
9. What would you say to someone else who asked you about us? Their initial response to this is often a revealing one.
10. What is the one thing we should never stop doing? This one tells you what they really value about you.

You may feel you can’t ask these questions to your customers. That’s not a problem, as long as you can find some questions that you can ask.

Article by Andy Hanselman he is an independent consultant specialising in improving business competitiveness. He has authored two books: ‘Thinking in 3D – Creating A Business That’s Dramatically And Demonstrably Different’, and ‘Revolutionise The Profitability Of Your Business’, and is currently writing his third, ‘Maximising Customer Relationships’.