Having a strategic sales plan sets the stage for success. But a plan without execution is just a wish. This week, we delve into two pivotal steps of SalesStar’s Strategic Sales System: setting up a best-practice sales process and establishing Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
These elements are where your sales strategy truly comes to life. While many businesses struggle with inconsistent results due to an undefined or ineffective sales process, and without clear KPIs, teams operate without a compass, hindering accurate forecasting and overall performance.
Let’s transform your sales operations by giving your blueprint concrete form.
Set Up a Best-Practice Sales Process
The sales process is the fundamental framework guiding every sales interaction, from initial contact to deal closure and beyond. Without a defined process, sales activities can be chaotic, leading to missed opportunities and wasted effort.
Studies show that companies with a well-defined process often see higher win rates and more predictable revenue.
Why a Sales Process is Imperative: An effective sales process acts as the “guiding light” for your organization, providing a multitude of benefits:
Consistency and Efficiency: A documented sales process ensures consistent best practices across the team, leading to more efficient operations. Organizations with a formal sales process achieve 18% greater revenue growth than those without one.
Predictable Results: With a clear process, sales activities become measurable, allowing for more accurate forecasting and pipeline management.
Improved Sales Team Performance: It offers a clear framework for consistent rules, increases accountability, and boosts productivity. Sales managers gain a clear coaching framework, as they can easily identify where reps excel or struggle within specific steps.
Faster Onboarding and Ramp-Up: New sales representatives have a clear roadmap to success, significantly accelerating their ramp-up time and getting them to productivity faster.
How to Develop Your Best-Practice Sales Process:
1. Understand Your Target Market’s Buying Journey: Before designing your sales process, thoroughly research how your target market makes buying decisions. Your sales process must mirror the customer’s buying journey to maximize success. For instance, if clients make decisions by committee, your process needs steps for engaging multiple stakeholders).
2. Define Milestone-Centric Stages: Break down the overall sales cycle into 4-6 key phases or milestones (e.g., Lead Generation, Initiating Contact, Discovery Meeting, Presenting Solutions, Closing the Deal, Account Management). Each phase should have clear objectives, specific steps/actions, and a qualifying checklist to ensure progress.
3. Involve Your Sales Team: While there’s typically one “best practice way” to sell your product, involving your top performers in process development helps identify what works. Crucially, involving your entire team fosters buy-in and increases adoption rates, as “those who plan the fight don’t fight the plan”.
4. Keep it Simple and Document it: An overly complex process will not be followed. Keep steps concise and straightforward. Formalize the process by documenting it in an electronic medium, such as CRM software or a spreadsheet, for easy access and consistent adherence across the organization.
Establish KPIs and Sales Systems
As the founder of modern management, Peter Drucker, famously said, “What gets measured gets improved”. Without a set of well-defined sales KPIs and an effective system to track them, a sales team operates without clear direction, leading to inconsistent results and stress for leadership.
The Dos and Don’ts of Determining Your KPIs:
✅ DO Focus on Leading Indicators: Many companies mistakenly focus only on lagging indicators (e.g., sales revenue, quotas, deals won), which are historical and can’t be changed.
Instead, emphasize leading indicators – behavioral measures that predict future success and can be influenced now. Examples include: number of discovery meetings, proposals presented, cold calls made, or pipeline velocity.
❌ DON’T Overwhelm with Too Many KPIs: While it’s tempting to track everything, too many KPIs can lead to confusion and dilute focus.
Prioritize a few crucial leading indicators that directly align with your sales process and revenue goals. SalesStar, for instance, focuses on four core KPIs: number of discovery meetings this week/next week, and number of proposals presented this week/next week.
✅ DO Make Success Easy to Understand: KPIs should provide crystal clear clarity around what activities are required to move prospects through the pipeline and ultimately become customers. They should inspire action and accountability.
Finding the Best Sales Systems:
Effective KPI tracking requires robust sales systems. The most crucial aspect is choosing systems that can accurately replicate and track your specific sales process. A good system, like a CRM with strong dashboard capabilities, should:
Allow you to see deals progressing through defined milestones.
Provide real-time visibility into pipeline health and sales activities.
Support data-driven decision-making, helping identify roadblocks and enable timely coaching.
Integrate forecasting methodologies, aligning sales steps with expected closure dates and probability percentages.
Tools like Membrain (used by SalesStar) are effective because they map out the sales process, provide win-loss ratios for accurate forecasting, and offer dashboard visibility. HubSpot and Results.com are also popular choices that offer robust sales system capabilities.
Conclusion
Implementing a best-practice sales process and establishing clear, relevant KPIs are fundamental steps in SalesStar’s Blueprint to Scale.
These elements provide the clarity, structure, and accountability necessary to transform inconsistent sales results into predictable and profitable growth.
By meticulously designing your process around the customer journey, leveraging leading indicators, and utilizing effective sales systems, you empower your team to achieve their full potential.
Ready to implement your blueprint for sales success?
