Best Sales Process Steps to Close More Deals

Know about best sales process steps to earn more success.

A sales process is a well-structured framework that sales teams follow to close more deals in a streamlined and seamless way. It’s basically a compilation of planned steps or recommended guidelines that help sales teams to become more efficient and effective in converting prospects into paying customers.

With an intelligent sales process in place, sales teams can quickly identify and overcome challenges, empowering them to achieve more sales. Furthermore, they can get the right direction and clarity to move prospects from the awareness stage to a closed sale.

Now that you’ve got an idea about what a sales process is, let’s go through the best steps a successful sales process typically comprises.

Start with sales prospecting

Prospecting is one of the most critical steps in a sales process that determines whether or not you’re going to close a deal. If you search for the wrong prospects or in the wrong places, you’re going to waste your precious sales time and resources on people and companies who aren’t likely to buy from you.

Build a buyer persona or ideal customer profile and find prospects that are the right fit. You can also qualify leads or contacts by asking the right questions to know if they’re a prospect. Professional networking platforms like LinkedIn or prospecting intelligence tools like the free Chrome extension RevDriver can help you find and reach prospects faster and easier.

Qualify your prospects

In the qualification stage, you research more about prospects, gain deeper insights into their needs, pain points, expectations, and interests, and assess whether they could become your customer. It’s important to qualify prospects at different levels: stakeholder, opportunity, and organization. A discovery call really does help to qualify prospects.

Set up a meeting

Engage prospects through email, social media, or a sales call to build a rapport with them, develop a relationship, and understand their needs and concerns and provide solutions. Start a conversation or create a discussion with them and give them reasons to meet you or set up an appointment.

Avoid sounding salesy and focus on delivering value and solutions to their problem. Politely ask them if they can meet you online or in person to know more about the solution they need or how your product can solve their problem.

Present your solution

Personalize and customize your product presentation, keeping in mind the industry, business, requirements, expectations, and challenges of your prospects. Your presentation may include a demo or trial of the product you’re selling. Use your presentation as an opportunity to display your product’s value proposition and show how your product is unique and why your prospect should buy it.

Tactfully handle sales objections

The first thing you need to do when faced with sales objections is to not get discouraged. Allow prospects to express their concerns and objections. Ask them questions if you need to in order to carefully understand their objections. Try to understand their objections from their perspective and come up with the best possible way to resolve them. After that, turn their focus back to your product.

Close properly

Push prospects to take the right action. However, be extra careful with how you close a deal. Show prospects how they can benefit from your solution, try to answer their questions, and meet their expectations. Don’t commit the mistake of rushing the prospect to close the deal with you. Share a testimonial, create a sense of urgency, or offer a bonus or something that would delight the prospect.

After prospects become customers, be sure to maintain your relationship with them even after a close. Follow up on your customers, ask for their feedback, and offer them your help in using your product. This will allow you to retain customers, create testimonials, drive referral success, and gain more.