Improve your business to business sales process for product quality

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hi it's Richard from ignite growth and in this video I'm going to follow on from my other B2B sales videos that I've done and in one of those I talked about being human holistic and helpful and that that applied really to your sales process so you're trying to align a sales process with how people make a buying decision in your industry so in B2B you've probably got a sector or a vertical that you've identified in the strategy phase and that's where you're going to be focusing your efforts um your sales and marketing efforts marketing to generate the lead then handing those leads over to sales and sales turn those leads into sales opportunities and hopefully close them into customers and um revenue for the business so one of the core mistakes that I find business owners and sales teams making is that they don't have a structured sales process they tend to be winging it a lot of them they tend to get leads from all different sources and they're not really pre-qualifying them they're not really a good fit for what they do so they tend to be spending their time trying to sell to everybody out there really that broadcast mentality I talked about in the Being Human holistic and helpful video is driven by the sales team a lot of the time they're really broadcasting out there and hopefully attracting one person that they can then engage into it have maybe have a meeting with engage in a sales conversation maybe pitch get the pitch deck out and start pitching to them and this isn't really what modern B2B sales is about modern B2B sales is all about nurturing relationships so we're going to nurture relationships going to add value at every stage of that relationship answer questions answer obviously pain points answer worries answer fears that people may have and then as we move people naturally along they're buying and decision making process then we should have naturally have sales conversations and naturally close that conversation as well and that's really what I think a four-step sales process does it also allows you to measure how your sales process is working how your team are working each of the elements has its own core skills they have to master and it really allows you to zero in on where those roadblocks are to give you a really predictable sales process that's very natural that people are happy to be led through and that you know answers all the questions as they go through that process so let's go through those four steps in this video and from there I'll have a number of other videos probably off this just looking at each of the individual steps as well but in this video I just wanted to uh look at the importance of having set structured stages to your sales process so the four steps that I recommend you focus on really follow the inbound mentality um to selling so the first of those is identify so step one's identify step two is connect step three is to explore and step four is to advise now nearly every business every sector every B2B business I speak to is going through these stages in some way or another but as I say a lot of it's very haphazard it's not really being put into a set sales process that's been mapped out and each stage is being worked on because what you want to do here is have a percentage so between each of these stages we've got a sales conversion and obviously on the advise stage it's either then closed one or closed sorry about that last so you've then got closed one or closed lost as your result at the end of this process so if every single lead and everyone went through this process then you've got set four set metrics to measure there haven't you you've got four set sales metrics to build into your core of your sales metrics to know whether your sales process is working or it isn't working and where the blocks are so an average sales process I would say you're aiming to convert one in five so at twenty percent when people start applying this principle they find that that goes very quickly up to one in four goes up to 25 percent of leads being converted and I've seen sales processes where you get up to 40 or 50 percent you can get up to one in two so what the knock-on effect of that is and suddenly your marketing budget is super targeted you're not having to spend more because you don't need more traffic and you're targeting the right people so identify is key if this is a sales Pro I'm talking about sales process here and if you're actually giving inbound leads to your sales team as well then your marketing's doing a lot of the lead gen for you but in this I'm talking about a sales specific organization so identify this stage is all about putting work in before you reach out to people to connect to see that they're the right person they're from the right sector they are the right person within that company you need to be initially talking to and reaching out to you know you need to do research and on the company I would spend 15 to 20 minutes on LinkedIn looking at the company I would then go to the website of the company and look at their blog posts look at their latest news look to see what they're talking about generally then on LinkedIn identify all the key decision makers so it may well be the operations director that you need to be in front of for your service or your product but I can guarantee they will then be speaking to the CEO they'll probably bring in the finance director maybe the sales and marketing directors are involved as well so it all depends what that uh makeup of that company and that Target uh company looks like if it's a big corporate though you can guarantee in B2B there'll be multiple people involved in that decision making so yes you want to know your champion this is my decision maker this is the person who'll be making the decision but then start thinking about who else do I need to know about who else do I need to be connected around that person because you can guarantee they'll be going back and these discussions will be happening in the background so you need to make sure everybody in that decision making proof in that decision making um team is going to be informed and each has their own different drivers so as I say it's really important that you spend time on the identify stage but I'm really in the identify stage the core thing we're trying to do is identify if they're a good fit or a poor fit okay are they a good fit for what you do do they come from the right sector are they the right size company a lot of the metrics you'll have done in the strategy phase where you're actually building out a a good fit Matrix and again I'll do another video on what a good fit Matrix is but basically you should be running every lead through a good fit Matrix to see that they are a good fit for what you do that's really key that should be black or white yes they're the right size the right sector you know all the key elements are tips so that's a yes or they're not and again this is really key at the start of your process because you don't want to be spending lots of time on poor fit people because they're the ones that will sap all your time you'll end up trying to convince them whereas good fit people if they're then on the next stage which is in the buying process so by are they in buying process so yes they're a good fit and they're in the buying process so a lot of this again if you have a good CRM and you can see what content they're consuming you'll be able to make a very very educated decision on yes this person's a great fit and they are also starting the buying process there's something that's starting here there's a definite intent to buy so again those two things have to be in place in identify and I think you can get 90 of this information prior to ever connecting with anybody it's a really important stage that a lot of people skip they're just trying to connect with as many people as possible don't do that identify look at the key criteria that you've identified in your own good fit Matrix and you know it exactly what your ideal customer profile looks like so your ideal customer profile remember is sector and Company so what are the thermographic details that you need to be ticking it might be Geographic it might be that you work with certain companies in a region so you need to that that's one of your factors yes they're in the right region the right size company right sector so again you're identifying a good fit person and then are they actively buying are they showing intent to buy at this stage because again they're going to be far easier to take through this process than someone who yes they're a good fit but no they're clearly not actively buying they're not an active buyer they're a passive buyer so if they're a passive buyer they may well be a good fit and be buying in six months time well then they need to go into a slightly different approach to your traditional sales approach but if they're actively buying now and they're a good fit then you can guarantee it's worth spending your time with as a company or as a salesperson to get that person engaged connecting the right way so then we'll move on to connect and obviously in the modern world there's multiple ways to connect but what I'm trying to do here is get a connect call of around 15 minutes Max so I'm trying to get a connect call stage of around 50 minutes max at that stage because then if I can have that and that might be via Zoom or teams it might be a virtual one it might be on the phone those would usually be my two ways of having a connect call I don't think email is a good thing that's usually a way to connect but that should lead to a 15-minute connect call because again the 15-minute connect call is going to be all about them again you're going to just really use the information you've got in your identify stage to start creating relationship here um of course there may be a physical meeting but again what's the danger with a physical meeting to me it's a lot of time for this 15 minutes because really in here you're really going through the information you've got in your identify stage and just seeing if there is an intent to buy and they are going through some of the pains that you can solve with your solution your product or your service so you're really talking about their their world their position you know and once you've identified that there's definitely something to talk about and expand on then you need to know the other people who are involved in that decision-making process so at the end of this call you're really leading towards a longer exploratory call and for me that would definitely be better in person or virtual here certainly won't be on the phone from there would it um so when I'm finishing this call here I'm trying to move them then into a minimum of a one-hour exploratory so you're exploring here so I've got an exploratory call going with this client and at the end of The Connect call I'm saying who else is involved in this decision that we should have on the next call it sounds like we've got plenty to talk about there's plenty of areas we can help and there's certainly some additional advice I can give you so again to get everybody involved in the exploratory call you need to make sure that all the decision makers are on here all the decision-making group around that person is involved in that course so that's really key that you set that next call up correctly and what I also do here is send out a questionnaire questionnaire I won't fit on there send out a questionnaire here at the end of this call I said I'll send you out a quick question there just so we get maximum value out of this hour together and I'll also recap what we've talked about in here so there'll be a recap email and a questionnaire going out sometimes I'll also send a video about working with us who we are they're just so they can share that video um amongst their decision making group before we meet them here at the exploratory call we now get to the exploratory call and we're either in person or virtual again and this the important thing here is it's all about them okay so it's all about them as the exploratory call until the last five or ten minutes then we may touch on our solution touch on what we're going to talk about and we have a way to address all of the challenges that have come up this exploratory call is really in depth it's understanding exactly what their situation is and the areas you can help them in okay you also want to talk a little bit about budget things like that in here so it's not a surprise here but all of that exploratory call should be about them and then I would say in mine it's the last five men's to 10 mins about others okay so the last five to ten minutes is going to be about us um but everything else in that hour-long call is about them so you're really giving loads of value you're really understanding asking lots of questions and it's all all these open questions that you can answer and get all the information in obviously that's going in your CRM as well from this call this should then come through to advise stage which is going to be some form of presentation and again the key with a good presentation is very personal it's very personal to these people here shows you've totally understood their position that they're in um as well as understanding the position you've come up with a solution and options as well I would come up with solution and options and then next steps okay so again once you've gone through that presentation and I would say this has to be a structured very structured presentation yes it needs personalizing but it's got to be something that you've worked on as a PowerPoint deck um that is structured leads them through recap in all your conversations to date your understanding of the situation you're understanding of the challenges your understanding of who their target market is and then your solution presentation here that should naturally lead into next steps from there and then with the next steps you can actually say and this is what it looks like from here Mr Prospect okay this is what happens next this is what happens next you've been as transparent as possible you're making it very easy for them to make a decision because all really I want to do when I leave a presentation with a client is I want them to know that where the best solution for them that we're the people they want to work with it should literally come down to a yes or no they can either afford it or they can't afford it you know it shouldn't be anything else other than yes no and that's where you get your closed one and close lost and even when the clothes lost I'll do another video on how you'll get another 20 percent of business back by chasing those closed loss deals the ones that you thought had gone but if you chase them up regularly a month later two months later three months later and you have a a process nearly automated I would use email automation for this have a workflow going from your CRM just to stay in contact with these people and we pick one in five back up again because they get let down by the other people that they decided to go with and it didn't happen quite as they thought and as I say if you've left them wanting to work with you to save a few pennies they'd probably go with someone who's a little bit cheaper than you but we don't want to be getting down to that situation when we're positioning ourselves in the marketplace as I say in other videos I've talked about why you position yourself as a specialist as the expert because people will pay the expert to work with them it will never come down to price if you're coming down to price here and losing a lot of deals here then I would go back to the start and say let's look at our positioning are we positioning ourselves well enough here throughout this process okay does that all makes sense I know it's about 15 minutes long that video but I wanted to go through those four steps really important because each of them then has a metric to measure it and you'll see in my lapse video that I talk about lapse reporting as your core sales metrics that you report on it follows this process through as well but this process also aligns with how people make buying decisions so they're identifying is when they're really when we're connecting we're talking about their pain points their challenges their problems we're starting to understand that they have a problem that we need to help them solve we're then exploring that deeper so we're looking at all the different options they have so that's like the decision-making stage where you have an awareness stage where I've got a problem I need to solve I then go into this consideration stage where I look at all the companies and all the solutions and ways I can sort the problem so I'm defining my problem and refining it so this is all about understanding and then looking at the options and then your advice phase is really like your decision making phase in that in a standard buying process so again it'll align with how people naturally buy now as well all right so hopefully that was useful for you I just wanted to put that video together because it's something I talk a lot about with clients and I spend time in strategy at the Strategic end as well mapping out what a sales process looks like because every industry's business is different every business is different but if we get those four core steps in then it gives us something to measure something to improve something to optimize at each stage and just make sure it works really well until we get this conversion percentage up around the 30 40 percent and that will usually be getting better quality leads in at the top here okay so hopefully talk to you again soon I will leave you there and look forward to talking to you in the next video cheers now