Every Company Has Two Sales Processes

Consultants love getting their hands on a client's sales process. It's so easy to move the "needles" of sales effectiveness if you can help an entire sales team bucket their opportunities into a process that helps them clearly see the "next step" for each deal. Whether the credit goes to the consultant, or the Hawthorne Effect, or a bit to both, is unclear; but either way, the exercise is always fruitful.

My workshops with clients over years have revealed this fault line in the discussion of sales process. My experience shows me there are two sales processes at work in every company.

The first sales process is the most obvious one. It's what we normally think of in terms of sales process: the milestones for sales opportunities in the pipeline. I'll refer to this as the transactional sales process. We truly need this sales process in order to manage individual deals - to make sure they're progressing.

The second sales process is much more relational, and acknowledges that our best efforts are spent acquiring new business partners, not a single new order... in developing a book of business that will allow us to harvest many orders over many "seasons". This is what I call the relational development sales process. We need this sales process to develop our book of business - to "sell" ourselves on a long term partnership with a client.

Here's an example of the relationship development sales process:

Suspect
Prospect
Consumer
Advocate
Evangelist

As with the transactional sales process, training can (and should) be developed to further define each of these milestones, and to create appropriate action plans or plays for your playbook to advance a potential client along this process.

And for the record, here are several samples of the transactional sales process:

Prospect
Research
Presentation
Demonstration
Proposal

Engage
Investigate
Present
Demonstrate
Propose.
Negotiate
Answer objections
Close

Prospect
Qualified
Discovery
Development
Proposal
Close

Scoping
Build Business Case
Development
Validation
Launch

Engage
Qualify
Assess
Propose
Close
SALE!

Suspect
Prospect
Discovery
Proposal
Negotiation
Signatures
Transaction

Lead
Awareness
Interest
Consideration
Intent
Purchase

Identified
Contacted
Qualified
Presented
Proposed
Closed

Awareness
Familiarity
Opinion
Consideration
Make-model intention
Shopping
Purchase