In 2024, 91% of business leaders reported that their sales team failed to hit their quota expectations. Many salespeople often blame the shifting market dynamics, but the truth is that many business leaders do not consider how their inefficient sales process steps hinder their sales pipeline.
In this post, we dissect our proven sales process and guide you through our unique workflow.
Here are our 10 steps in managing the sales process
- Understand your market
- Align sales and marketing
- Invest in a data vendor
- Ensure CRM is up to speed with your latest sales processes
- Utilize an all-bound method to attract leads
- Undergo effective lead nurturing
- Schedule a discovery call
- Prepare for a deeper dive call
- Meet with relevant stakeholders within the buying committees
- Sign and close the deal
The Essential Guide to Sales Pipeline Management
Learn our strategic approach to tracking prospects throughout the pipeline, forecasting revenue, and closing more deals.
What is a sales process?
A sales process is a standardized workflow that manages all sales activities from lead nurturing to deepening customer relationships. The ultimate goal is to accelerate lead generation while expediting the process of converting them into paying customers.
EBQ Tip: Most business leaders think that the first sales conversation occurs when a sales rep connects with a prospect. However, the first sales conversation happens when your prospect first becomes aware of your solution.
“Therefore, everything is a sales interaction — whether it’s a social media caption or a negotiation call. Everyone — from marketing to customer support — is ultimately a sales rep.”
– Michael Edwards, VP of Sales
To evaluate the success of your current sales process management, ask yourself:
- How are you managing your CRM?
- What should your sales processes look like?
- How are your sales processes evaluated?
- When should you reach out to prospects?
- When should you follow up on sales conversations
- How do you manage your overall sales pipeline?
Optimize your sales process with ease by partnering with EBQ. We offer dedicated salespeople who master your unique workflows and become an integrated part of your sales team. Visit our Sales Services page to learn how we transform opportunities into closed deals.
How to manage your sales (from a salesperson’s perspective)
While every buyer’s journey is unique, a structured sales process empowers a salesperson to effectively engage their leads and push them further down the funnel. You need to start by addressing the right market.
1. Understand your market
Too often, we see that business leaders fail to understand their markets. Not only can that be detrimental to your marketing messages, but it also wastes valuable resources and time.
If your sales conversations are not resonating with your prospects, consider redefining your buyer personas and ideal customer profile:
- A buyer persona allows you to create a fictitious person within your target company.
- An ideal customer profile defines your target company’s demographic (what your prospects’ preferences and patterns are) and firmographic elements (what holistic data you can draw from for an entire organization).
EBQ Tip: Struggling to create your buyer persona? We outline how to create personas from data in Chapter 1 of our B2B Marketing Strategy Framework guide.
2. Align sales and marketing (to ensure the MQLs coming in are quality MQLs)
Now that you have properly identified your target market, align your sales and marketing teams with who you are targeting.
A strong sales and marketing alignment helps bolster your sales cycle by:
- Reaching 24% faster for revenue growth
- Increasing customer retention rate by 36%
- Becoming 67% more effective in closing deals
Poor sales and marketing partnerships result in teams adopting entirely different marketing messages. This can mislead the prospect and lead to an overall drain on your resources.
Therefore, strong relationships between sales and marketing teams lead to increased revenue growth and lowered costs, ultimately improving your sales process.
3. Invest in a data vendor
A data vendor supplies your sales development team with accurate and relevant contact information. They find leads that match your ICPs and create a sales prospect list for your sales team.
By choosing the right contact database provider, you accelerate your overall sales process, ensuring your sales team does not need to spend as much time trying to find the best leads. Instead, they can work through a list of quality contacts that become qualified prospects.
Did you know EBQ offers B2B Data Services? We work with leading data vendors, optimize information with our proprietary technology, and verify each contact to ensure we forward your sales team the most qualified leads possible.
4. Ensure CRM is up to speed with your latest sales processes
“If the lead does not exist in a CRM, it simply does not exist. To properly manage your sales process, you must be able to track sales activities,” explains Michael.
Translation? Without a sound CRM system, you have no way to manage your processes. That is why you need to make sure your CRM accurately reflects your current workflows.
Afterwards, we recommend developing a program to train all users on how to operate your CRM. That way, your entire organization can work harmoniously to unify customer data, which will better inform your sales process overall.
EBQ Tip: If you are working out of Salesforce or HubSpot, our CRM administration team can audit your current platform architecture and implement improvements to better your workflows.
5. Undergo effective lead nurturing
According to a recent HubSpot survey, over 60% of sales professionals conduct their cold outreach. However, engaging with cold leads takes a lot of time that could be spent closing sales.
Nurturing does not always fall under a salesperson’s responsibility. At EBQ, we operate from an SDR/AE model that ensures salespeople focus on closing deals while sales development reps (SDRs) do the legwork, generating interest in the organization’s solution.
As our salespeople are negotiating with decision-makers, our SDRs:
- Call on cold leads to generate interest in your solution
- Follow up with marketing-qualified leads to convert them into opportunities
- Push unresponsive leads through a thorough sales cadence to ensure maximized follow-ups
- Complete qualifying notes to better prepare salespeople for their discovery calls
6. Schedule a Discovery Call
Congratulations! An SDR has a prospect ready for a sales meeting. But the work has just begun.
The next key step is initiating a warm sales handoff to help prospects transition from their designated SDR to a salesperson.
The SDR should outline a few qualifying notes for the salesperson to review, including:
- Who are you speaking to?
- What solution is the prospect interested in?
- What are a few of their pain points?
From there, you need a clear follow-up process specific to the prospect. This can vary call to call. For example, is your next step to:
- Forward a specific resource to better their understanding of your industry?
- Scheduling a deeper dive call for a product demo?
- Follow up on a call where budget concerns were mentioned?
Your sales team’s ultimate goal for this stage is to understand the prospect’s current pain points that piqued their interest in your solution. From there, your sales team can determine if the lead is still worth pursuing.
EBQ Tip: Make sure you record each sales call. Not only does it enable your salespeople to be more present during the calls, but it also acts as a great reference to better prepare for future calls.
7. Prepare for a Deeper Dive Call
Sometimes referred to as a Solutioning Call or Exploration Call, your sales team’s next step is to tailor the sales messaging to demonstrate how your solution will solve their biggest challenges.
The deeper dive call allows the salesperson to anticipate prospect objections and responses that keep the conversation moving. A few of the most common objections you will need to prepare for are:
- Your solution is too expensive
- Your solution does not directly address my problems
- We do not have the budget for this
At this stage, your goal is to get buy-in from at least one person in your customer’s organization. This primary point of contact will advocate for your solution to their buying committee before scheduling a call so you can meet with them.
8. Meet with relevant stakeholders within the buying committees
While you already have a strong relationship with your primary point of contact, you still need to convince the rest of the buying committee to commit. Now is the ideal time for salespeople to review previous sales calls as a way to prepare for the next appointment.
Your goal here should not be to reiterate your pitch from the deeper dive call. This research should prepare the salesperson to face the committee’s concerns tactfully, effectively earning their trust.
9. Sign and close the deal
At this point in the sales management process, you have successfully convinced a prospect to invest in your solution. Now, it is time to formalize the partnership and document your agreements.
Your sales reps and operations teams should work closely together to ensure that your outlined deliverables can be reasonably executed. Moreover, your sales team needs to ensure that the contract mirrors all the negotiated factors mentioned in previous sales calls.
From there, all that’s needed is for the client to promptly sign the contract. If there is any hesitation, listen to their concerns and respond accordingly.
10. Follow up after the sale
Just because the sale is closed does not mean the work is over. A good sales rep will always follow up with the customer to ensure the solution is being adopted effectively. Otherwise, you risk losing that deal the following year, let alone cross-selling or upselling.
EBQ Tip: Even after the sale closes, you should always keep your CRM up to date. That way, the platform can provide your customer service team with to best address your customers’ needs.
Accelerate your sales process workflow with EBQ
An effective sales process is not just about closing deals. It is about nurturing leads thoughtfully to push prospects down the buyer’s journey. By following these 10 steps, your sales team will see exponential success in generating revenue.
10 Steps In Managing The Sales Process
- Understand your market
- Align sales and marketing
- Invest in a data vendor
- Ensure CRM is up to speed with your latest sales processes
- Utilize an all-bound method to attract leads
- Undergo effective lead nurturing
- Schedule a discovery call
- Prepare for a deeper dive call
- Meet with relevant stakeholders within the buying committees
- Sign and close the deal
Need help generating sales? Our inside sales team is trained and driven to convert opportunities into paying customers. Every program also comes with a dedicated Revenue Consultant and Sales Manager to hold your team accountable for your pipeline’s ongoing success.
About the Author:
David is a Revenue Cycle Consultant at EBQ who leverages his experience as a former VP of Sales to align sales and marketing teams for measurable results. With expertise in B2B digital marketing and demand generation, he helps businesses optimize strategies for long-term success.