A well defined and optimized business process represents not only the opportunity to maximize results, increase sales and improve the organizations-profit margins, but the possibility of making all this with less effort and costs. In addition, it makes it a sustainable process long-term.
1. It determines your competitive advantages
Today it is recommended that companies not single offer value to the price of your product or service, as this as well as cause wars of price among competitors, can lead customers to perceive the product as of low quality.
It is important to define which other characteristics worth establishing as competitive advantages. It is also essential that these attributes really represent a difference in the face of competition and in this way avoid creating false expectations to customers.
Some other features that your company can define as competitive advantages are: brand positioning, the quality of service to the customer, an efficient production process, technology, infrastructure, human capital of excellence, distribution channels, to name a few.
It is noteworthy that an advantage can be seen how competitive it must be hard to beat the competition and sustainable to the passage of time.
2. Aligns the business process with the customer buying process
It is highly recommended that when designing the sales process you consider the process that customer is carrying on his hand. Know at what stage of the purchase decision every prospect is will be helpful for your sales force can provide the most appropriate and more timely information.
To make both processes mapping the actions of the sales team will be more focused and will increase the chances of successful closings.
3. It establishes activities and times for each stage
In order to standardize and facilitate the work of each of the parties involved in the sales process, it is necessary to establish the activities that need to be done in each phase. This will also help that each is well identified, defined and fulfilled in time and form.
For each stage of the sales cycle, you can define processes that each employee must perform. It also helps establish the materials required in each phase, for example: marketing materials (such as brochures, presentations, informational CDs, etc.), formats of follow-up to prospects and administrative documents (such as formats to perform economic proposals, contracts, trade agreements, confidentiality, etc.). All this helps to streamline the work of all and is also reflected in a better customer service, having timely deliveries.
Also, set the estimated time that remains a prospect at each stage of the process. In this way it will be easier to monitor sales opportunities and take action on those who are lagging behind.
4. Your talk of sale fits the customer's needs
One suggestion for greater success at the time presented the speech of sales to customers is to adapt it to their needs.
Sometimes sales representatives follow a script already defined and memorised can be boring and unattractive. It is therefore more appropriate to present the product or service highlighting the features and most important benefits according to the customer's situation, highlighting those that represent a solution to their needs and thus take the purchase decision easier. To achieve this, it is necessary to listen to it with attention, ask questions about their problems and on this basis set speech.
5. Define indicators to measure the performance of the sales process
A fundamental part of the business process is the monitoring of sales opportunities. Its importance lies in that if you do not take timely follow-up some may be lost. This is necessary to have indicators and controls of this phase of the process, as to be able to assess promptly the performance of your computer will be possible to detect areas of opportunities, define actions to correct them and of course achieve higher levels of sales.
In addition, the indicators will provide clarity to your representatives in its objectives, can detect the progress of each one of the opportunities and put special care into those that need attention in order to realize.
In addition, managers may have timely information of the performance of the equipment and processes of each collaborator. This also translates into the opportunity to better observe the performance of employees and carry out assessments more objective.
The metrics can be divided according to your business process in order to have greater clarity at every stage. Some examples of indicators that you can implement are:
During the pre-sales phase, the amount of leaflets, time and conversion rate, the activities of the representative and effectiveness of each.
In the sales stage, the amount of sales per customer, the amount of sales by product, utility margins, discounts applied, among others.
The rate of satisfaction of the client, the percentage can be used in the post-sale of repurchase, amount of returns, to mention only a few.