Improving Your Sales Process

Is Your Sales Process Working or Is Your Sales Team Chasing Prospect Rainbows?
by Paul DiModica

At DigitalHatch, we have identified over 45 key sales process metrics that management teams should use to increase company revenue and build a scalable, replicable sales process for their salespeople.

Selling products and services is a premeditated sport. It is a thinking, calculating, strategizing business process where success is based on planning.

Shooting from the hip only impedes your sales success.

To help you as an individual salesperson or to help your sales team, take the Sales Process Audit below to see if you have a sales program that helps salespeople sell more or a sales program that impedes sales success.

Sales Process Audit

Have you documented your sales costs including marketing lead costs, sales man-hour allocation, travel costs, and expenses to capture each new sale from a new prospect?

___Yes ___No
Have you documented the top ten sales objections and appropriate sales response for each product or service and for each business vertical you sell into?

___Yes ___No
Has your company analyzed why you lose business for each product or service you sell?

___Yes ___No
Have you documented your sales process and the steps needed to secure a contract or a purchase order?

___Yes ___No
Have you developed a centralized sales tool box with support and training materials so your sales process is replicable and scalable for new sales team members?

___Yes ___No
Do you have a written policy on pricing guidelines that is published for the sales team to follow?

___Yes ___No
Does your sales team have written guidelines and business examples for all prospect correspondence including emails, proposals, and direct sales letters for each stage of your sales process?

___Yes ___No
Do you have a written sales process for forecasting based on the specific criteria that is needed for each sales stage?

___Yes ___No
Do you track and use a specific sales methodology for each title your sales reps sell to?

___Yes ___No
Are your sales quotas based on identified market gap analysis, where demand is greater than supply by vertical for each product or service you sell?

___Yes ___No

Test Scoring

All correct answers are yes. Give yourself 10 points for each right answer.

What did you score?

If your score is below 75%, you need to rebuild and plan your sales process more.

"Planning is scary if you do it right, because what you're really talking about is change. It's much easier to just say, 'Next year's going to be better, and leave it at that'." Graham Briggs

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