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there's your sales process fueling really chaotic and you're trying to manage it ad-hoc but it's stressing you oh and you want to figure out how to systematize it if that sounds like you you're gonna want to keep watching this video because we're gonna share how to put together a five-step sales process and then how to customize it for your unique business [Music] I'm Christie and I'm Mike and welcome back to our channel where we love sharing tactical tips and best practices that will help you level up your small business so if you want to take your small business to the next level make sure you hit the subscribe button and a notification bow so you don't miss another video so Before we jump into the actual five-step sales process I think it's worth taking a minute to talk about why is it so important to define your sales process why is it so important to have this and what are some of the challenges that you yourself are probably experiencing that led you to look for this video yeah I think the first thing is exactly why you're here and that is because you're feeling really stressed you're trying to manage all this stuff in your head you're trying to manage all your clients all the deals you have on the go all the communications you've had back and forth and that gets really really daunting very quickly especially as your client base starts to grow yeah and so what that leads to is you forget to follow up with people things start slipping through the cracks and that leads to lost revenue you know you've got these leads coming in but if you're not following a process to make sure that you're following up with everyone then you're missing out on a lot of money or leaving a lot of money on the table and that's a problem when you're a solopreneur it's just you but then as you grow your company and you hire more people it's even more important that everybody follows a systematized process instead of everyone's kind of just doing it however they want a very ad hoc and the other thing that's great is that as you're recording all this data as you're systematizing and using a tool to keep track of all these things it gives you an opportunity to go back and reflect on how things are going and gives you it a great way to optimize your sales process you can look at what's working and understand why it's working do more of that you can see where things are not working so well and figure out how how can you fix that you really can get good at maximizing your potential and really growing the business because you're not losing out on any any opportunities that are coming your way so important and in our experience we've talked to lots of different businesses across a whole bunch of different industries mostly in professional services or you know consultants lawyers financial advisors photographers and even though every business and industry is a little bit different in their sales process is quite unique there is this trend in these five common stages or steps of a sales process so we're going to walk you through those kind of core five steps the sales process and then you can kind of take it from there to customize it to fit your unique business step one is inquiry so this is when someone is either contacting you or you are contacting someone about doing business together so this could look like an email coming in someone calling you up messaging you on Facebook LinkedIn Instagram any of the other social media platforms or this could be prospecting maybe you're going through LinkedIn and looking for people that could potentially use your services or other social media avenues this could be contacting someone who is already a client maybe in the past and you're trying to drum up some repeat business which by the way we talked about in another video small business marketing ideas if you're interested in ideas to ramp up more leads and clients the main thing for this stage is really all about this is someone really making known that they're interested in your service or your contacting someone who could be a great client for you yeah and as you're starting to think about systematizing this whole process at this step you want to make sure you're capturing all the details about your prospects you want to make sure you have all the information you need to get back to them in terms of their contact information what services they're looking for what you might have proposed to them you want to start building that trail so you don't forget anything and so that things don't fall through the cracks this is really gonna help with that stress and getting things out of your head it's also setting you up for being able to review this down the road and making sure that you have the right data in place to start figuring out how to optimize your process for example one really important thing might be to capture where these leads are coming from because then that helps you identify good sources of leads so you can start investing more in getting more leads out of that source so start recording all the data get it out of your head and set yourself up for success down the road stage 2 is qualify so you've met someone at a networking event or some is contacting you through email maybe called you up on the phone or message you through social media and have talked about they're interested in working with you this next stage is all about identifying what are their needs what are the problems they're trying to solve what are the requirements for the project or whatever they're hiring you for because this is really important to help you identify are they a right fit client for you and you should invest more time in following up with this type of lead or are they a wrong fit client and you should identify okay where did leave come through because I want to make sure I'm not getting more of these leads and not investing a lot of time in there so for some people this happens over the phone this can happen over that first phone call but often times is like a secondary phone call a 30 minute or one hour consultation kind of really dig into and understand their needs and requirements which i think is also important to mention that we hear from so many people that sell their services they're like oh I don't do sales I'm just trying to get more leads and more clients and I think that's just because they don't want to sound pushy or salesy they don't do like a pitch or big sales deck but this is still sales you're really trying to identify what are their problems what are their needs and then talk about how you can help them solve those problems and the value that you can add and really that comes down to asking a whole bunch of questions to find out if they're right that client for you so again this can happen over the phone this could happen in a secondary meeting some people automate this through a questionnaire they kind of send something that you fill out through the website or a form to fill out to kind of automate this stuff really it's just about finding out what are their needs what are they looking to hire you for and to systematize this you want to again start recording all the data you're gonna get a lot of great insights following these suggestions from Christy as you're talking to these clients or potential clients and you want to record as much of this down as possible you can go back and reflect on it later for example Christy spoke about identifying good fit leads versus bad fit leads and understanding where they're coming from and getting specific on recording down which marketing campaigns which email blasts you sent out which conferences or maybe who's referring these people recording all that down lets you go back later and look and see okay all my good fit leads are coming from this specific marketing campaign a lot of my bad fit are coming from this person who's referring it this allows you to fix the process you can double down on what's working maybe ask that person to stop referring you're like more about hey this is the type of client and lead that I'm looking for so that you can go set them straight but basically if you don't record all this data down you're not going to be able to make these adjustments as you're going also through all these conversations and insights you're probably gonna get wind of things that your prospects are looking for but they don't aren't quite ready for it or they don't quite know that they need it so if you have a client coming to you or service a for example but as you're speaking to them you're seeing that they're gonna have a need for service B maybe six months out well cord that down and set yourself a reminder to follow up in six months you're going to look like a rockstar to them because you're gonna hit them up right when they're starting to feel that pain but also you're gonna increase your business because you're gonna be able to get repeat business so you're being proactive with all this data that you're collecting so being good at collecting as much insights as possible and going back and reflecting on them later is really the secret here that sets you up for success down the road step three in the sales process is the offer stage so this could also be called the quote estimate offer stages a lot of different words that people use for this but basically they've contacted you you've gone to the process to qualify and make sure they're a right fit lead you want to as quickly as possible follow up with them and send that quote and it's important to include some detail here you don't just send someone a quote or estimate that says you know project costs five grand they're gonna have some question that's a lot of money most people are gonna want to understand what they're gonna get out of spending that kind of money so if all you put on your quote is project a they're gonna come back to you and that's gonna delay your process so you want to get very specific on your quote you want to put as many detailed line items as possible so that they have a good sense of what they're gonna get out of spending this money out of making this investment and this is where all that data you've collected in the first two steps was really gonna pay off because that's gonna remind you of the things they're looking for the problems that they're trying to solve and the pains they have you can reiterate those things on the quote so the quote is really going to resonate with them when they're reading it and you just want them to say yes you don't want them to have any questions so guess detail as you possibly can on your quote step four in the sales process is the follow-up stage so you send someone a quote or an estimate the biggest mistake a lot of businesses make is they sit back and they wait for that lead to come to them which is a mistake because if you think about it that prospect is likely going out to other businesses or talking to other professionals and getting additional quotes so you want to be proactive make sure you're doing everything you can to increase your chance of closing that deal by following up with them and you can use that follow-up as an opportunity to negotiate if you need to yeah and the trend continues in all these steps record as much data as you possibly can you're going to get a lot of great insights that are going to help you improve for example if you are getting a lot of questions about your quotes you want to record those down and look for the trends so that you can proactively answer them maybe you need to update your website so that people understand some of this detail or put it in the quotes because this is slowing down your process you want to avoid having questions another example might be if you're hearing that your price is too high and you're losing business because people are going elsewhere you want to understand what the competition looks like and make a decision on if you're going to adjust your price or if you want to stick with your price that you're gonna have to figure out how you justify it right you might want to beef up your marketing a little bit yeah so I mean if you want to adjust your price that's the route you want to take that's one option but if you're saying no I want to keep my price high-end and go for that high-end clientele you need to make sure that your marketing and your brand and everything is aligning with that and make sure that you are doing the right marketing activities to get that right type client because if you continue to get these type of clients that aren't willing to pay that price that's gonna be an issue for you so if you are getting some clients that are willing to pay for that it's where those leads coming from optimize that so that you minimize having to go through this negotiation or just getting the wrong type of lead right so don't forget to follow up because you want to stay top of mind and record all this data so you can improve your process down the road the fifth and last step of the sales process is the closed stage so you followed up you've negotiated if you need to and hopefully you have won the deal now it's just about going through your checklist is there a contract that you need to get signed or is it just verbal confirmation is there a retainer that you need to that you need to get there's also some nice things that you can do like sending a follow-up note or a thank-you gift depending on how big you know that business is worth for you I know a wedding photographer that's a customer of ours that always follows up with this really nice thank-you PDF I'm guessing there's also some data that you need to collect on stage no I don't think there's any data just kidding there's lots of data this is probably where you're gonna get some of the most useful data to help you improve your process this is where you can understand why you lost and why you won so I think a lot of people tend to wonder why they lost business you should definitely take that one step further actually reach out to that prospect and ask them some questions to try and understand why you might have lost so that you can improve moving forward but I think a lot of people miss the opportunity to ask their new clients why they won and that's just as important actually as figuring out why you lost it's understanding what really resonated with these people so you can identify the trends and do more of those things was it really priced was it the mix of your product did you really somehow connect with these people was there some language you used whatever it is you need to understand that because you need to double down on that you need to do more of that that will lead you to close more incoming leads so really important to get a lot of data at this step right and this step really is while it's the end of the sales cycle it really is the beginning of working together if you're in professional services this is when you start the project or service for them so it's really important that you follow up right away as soon as you've closed the deal make sure that you're following up promptly to start the process of working together you really want to wow this client and impress them so that they refer you people later on and you can continue to increase your sales so those are the five steps in the sales process hopefully this has helped give you guys an idea of what the kind of main stages are for your business and then you can kind of customize from there really important that you're writing down and documenting this very important to systematize it at minimum you can use a spreadsheet to do this to kind of track where each lead is in that sales pipeline taking down notes that you have context it can get a little bit chaotic though depending on how many leads you have so obviously we're gonna recommend a CRM like they like well just helps you get better about collecting that data so you can analyze it later like a CRM tool is gonna really help you build a strong history around all your prospects and all your clients and that is kind of where all this data collection is happening that we keep referencing if you have this tool it's gonna make it very easy then to go back and review all this stuff so you can improve your process improve your steps improve your messaging improve all the things around you know getting a lead coming in and being able to close them systematizing all the steps and having checklists that you can follow throughout the process is really critical as well because as you start optimizing and fine-tuning that you don't want to forget any steps if there's key steps that really help you close business you don't ever want to forget those so systematize enos and having them in your checklist is really important especially as you hire people so that's good for systematizing your own process and as you hire people you want to make sure that those additional hires or salespeople are following the same process so they're continuing to do what's working and optimizing what's not working thanks for watching the video today guys we hope you enjoyed the five-step sales process that you can take and customize for your business if you have any questions or you have some tips for other people trying to create their sales process leave it in the comments down below if you enjoyed this video give it a thumbs up subscribe to the channel and hit that little notification bell so you don't miss a future video and be sure to check out the show description where we'll include a link to the other video we mentioned small business marketing ideas and if you need a CRM to help you systematize your sales process check out daylight we'll include a link below where you can start your own free trial and make sure you follow us on all the social channels [Music]