Blowing Up Your Sales Process: A “How To” Guide

Blowing Up Your Sales Process: A “How To” Guide:

My colleague Taylor recently wrote a post about one company’s journey to take their sales process to the next level. The company was Automatic Data Processing, Inc. (ADP), and they intentionally blurred the lines of distinction between buying and selling when constructing the latest iteration of their sales process.

ADP mapped out their customers’ buying process, and then created a tool that synched reps’ selling activities to the stages of that purchase process.

Why did ADP do this? Because they found that this led to easy, efficient purchase experiences for their customers, more efficient sales cycles for their salespeople, and more productive coaching sessions for their sales managers.

(SEC Members, if you haven’t had a chance to familiarize yourself with this best practice, now is a great time to review the case study or listen to our recent webinar during which the architects of this process from ADP discussed their journey in great detail.)

Since profiling this case example, Council members have been quick to construct a version of this tool to call their own. We’ve learned a great deal as we’ve helped members throughout the construction phase, so here’s a few “Do’s” and “Don’ts” for folks out there planning to take a crack at building a tool like this for their organization:

• Do include a cross functional group of high performers in the construction process (including high performing sales reps, managers, marketing/product experts, finance, procurement, legal, etc), and be sure to include your customers input in the build process to ensure accuracy
• Do create an occasion for the tool to be built (dedicate a half, or full day to the exercise)
• Do create a basic template for the group to use as they brainstorm (something similar to ADP’s version would be ideal, preferably with the ‘Customer Buying Process” fields already filled out, as this process is unlikely to vary a great deal, despite being used across company and industry)

Here’s some guidance to help avoid potential landmines:

• Don’t create this in a vacuum…ensuring that the frontline (as well as cross functional peers) have skin in the game when it comes to this tool will encourage ultimate adoption when the time comes
• Don’t use your current sales process as a reference as you build – allow the architecting team to disconnect from your organization’s “sacred cows” from a selling process standpoint
• Don’t have the group fill out the columns of the tool in isolation – instead, as a first step, get the group to first agree that the “buying process steps” are accurate – then have them focus on each step in the process, working left to right on the tool until each is complete

You might even want to give the group a sentence to complete for each stage of the buying process. For example, “During this first stage of the customer’s buying process, the customer must… As sellers, to help the customer in this stage of the buying process, we must… If successful, the buyer will signal… To enable success for the both the customer and seller in this stage, the organization will provide…”

For those that have begun mapping out their customers’ buying process and aligning rep activities to each stage, what have you found most helpful when completing this work? What has been most challenging?

SEC Members, be sure to review the ADP case study and check out our new Sales Process topic center for more guidance on aligning your sales process with the way customers want to buy.