How to Choose the Right Sales Process for Your Business Growth

A one-size-fits-all kind of mentality has become the norm in the sale of SaaS solutions right now. In fact, this approach towards selling has become a scourge, and so businesses that adhere to this notion that a wonder drug process will work for their brand and business are in major danger of losing revenue now.

For an example, if you visit websites like YouTube and LinkedIn you will be able to view a torrent of prescriptive videos and articles from experts those who claim to know the secret sauce of growing sales for your company.
Now as everyone is claiming that their way is the only right way for creating a sales process that will usher a rapid business growth , it becomes really difficult for companies the perceive whom to believe for boosting their sales and revenue in a competitive business landscape of the present times.

Therefore, the only answer to this problem is: Trust your knowledge and your data.

What Is this “One-Size-Fits-All” Attitude?

Everyone desires to be an “Influencer”. This is because influencers most often find the opportunity to get invited to speak at conferences, which makes them socially taller and more attractive over the course of time.

However, whether a thought leader’s speech is worth listening to depends on whether they can back up their ideas with lessons they learned in real life. Since, if it is not, and they do not have real experience, they cannot be considered as leaders but can be marked just as “Promoters”.

On the other hand, a “Practitioner” is a teacher. Since it is only a practitioner who can speak about which process will work in a specific situation.
Practitioners are the ones who can explain why a process that promotes transactional sales, does not work for strategic sales, or why some types of sales require involving SDR (Sales Development Representative) and others don’t.

In other words, practitioners do not have to convince that their process is the best as they have nothing to profit from even if their audience accept and adopt their ideas.

Therefore, while a Promoter promises that their processes ‘will‘ work for your business, a Practitioner asks ‘whether’ a solution will work for your organization.

The Risks of a Bad Fit

Succumbing to the long believed myth of one-size-fits-all can be a crucial mistake for any organization, but small and midsize startup businesses have the most to lose.
This is because, startups and small businesses need quick wins, but their sales teams do not have enough experience to understand the best way to sell their specific product or service to a particular market, an uncertainty that makes them vulnerable to the latest sales processes that are making noise on social media platforms.
Since everybody might be saying that their latest sales process is the smartest method that will deliver 

big results and any business not using it is sure to fail and get doomed, therefore the temptation to squeeze your own organization into the template is strong.

For example, the latest buzz about ABX (Account Based Experience) about which we have written and spoken a lot is not for everyone, as ABX is not only expensive but it also requires a lot of time and resources to track and analyze its progress for successful sales. Hence ABX is great for high-dollar enterprise and strategic sales, although not all organizations require such an intensive approach.

Customers Cost Money

Now, there are two factors you need to ask yourself before deciding on your sales process.
Firstly how much does it cost for your business to acquire new customers and secondly what is the average value of your customer over its lifetime?

Moreover, you also need to think whether you are into B2B or B2C business, or what are your customer segments, whether you are practicing high-velocity or strategic sales, is your procurements mapped to your sales cycles, and many more variables that can provide you a direction that you need to build your sales process which is going to make sense for your company.

There are several startups and small businesses that do not think about the cost of acquiring new customers and prioritize top-line growth for their brands by just showing that they are signing up a lot of people for selling their offerings.
Therefore, when small and mid-sized organizations spend more on winning new customers than they can profit from their new business, profitability at an early stage does not always indicate success.

Although most small businesses and startups view this as temporary pain, the problem lies when this temporary pain becomes a long-standing habit and this costly sales process gets engrained into the company’s DNA.

Dirty Data Is a Culture Problem

Collect your own data and keep it clean.

We have seen that there are several startups and small businesses that do not have enough data since they do not use easy to use CRM platform. Although even those that have their best small business CRM software to track their accounts do not keep their data in their CRM database clean.

Mostly human errors are to be blamed for the accumulation of bad data in the CRM. Duplicate records, mis-keyed information, notes associated with wrong customers are some of the mistakes that are always going to happen, but businesses should have a process and necessary tools to correct these issues.

There is another more insidious problem which is most often bonded to the company’s culture. At the end of each quarter, the sales managers in any organization want to show that they have an impressive sales pipeline. Therefore, they pressurize their sales reps to close deals even before the month gets over, a pressure that drives reps to make aggressive predictions about sales that are not going to close before the quarter ends.
Now, when these deals do not close, the reps appear to fail in their job, whereas the truth was that the deal was never matured that far in the very first place.

Specialists Can Force You Into the Wrong Mold

Every startup and small businesses want to view big names on their company’s ‘About Us’ web page. This is because having endorsements from big names transfers trustworthiness to an unproven product or service by telling the leads and prospects “We may be new, but look who believes in our brand.”

Therefore, hiring people because of their pedigree can be a big mistake for startups.

Hence, if you hire a sales rep from a global enterprise, someone who brings expectations and make him sell a SaaS product that is priced $20 a month, this is dangerous as the sales rep just does not fit with the stage your company is in.

Most modern account executives today are specialist, and so since they have not got their hands dirty in a long time; they are unaware of how to build their sales pipelines.

Now when you put someone like this in charge of building your sales team, that leader is going to bring their old processes with them, which can make you get confused and wonder why you are losing customers so fast.

Therefore, it is best to hire smart people who understand what to focus on at the current moment in the company’s maturity which is the only way to harness stellar business growth. 

Always Be Assessing

Lastly, do not stop assessing, since just because you got it right today, it necessarily does not mean you should not be tuning and adjusting your sales machine tomorrow.

Hence, as your markets change, buyers change, and your products change, even if you found a perfect one-size-fits-all solution sales process for your business today, do not count on it to work for you tomorrow like a perpetual motion machine.