A company cannot be successful with a single effort from just one person. It may have a chance to succeed if it combines the efforts from the entire team with an effective sales strategy.

How do you implement an effective sales process? Read on! 

Create your sales playbook

Your sales playbook is like a battle plan for you and your team. It’s the how-to guide and the what’s-next guide. Without it, neither you or your team would know what to do to implement your vision. Your company will be lacking cohesion in action.

Whatever your sales strategy is, you need people to implement it. Unless you have great people ready to implement the playbook, the playbook doesn’t work. Even if they know what to do, your team may be missing the motivation to do it. 

Put a motivated team together

Motivation affects your team’s productivity to a great degree. But having non-motivated employees is a common complaint among entrepreneurs. 

How do you put together a highly motivated team? 

First of all, start with yourself. Motivation is both internal (your own grit) and external (something you take from outside yourself). Identify your internal motivation. You need to feel you have a purpose. When you’re an entrepreneur, you keep that purpose in sight. 

When you are clear what motivates you, you can communicate that vision to your team so they can buy into it too. 

Having a motivated team starts with a well-thought-out hiring process. The recruiting process needs to reflect the standards of your sales playbook. Make sure your recruitment process aligns with your strategy, that includes your interview process, your vetting procedure or your onboarding to ensure you have the right team in place.

Add the human element

Let’s say, you have your sales playbook and a motivated team in place. That’s great, but that’s not enough for you to stand apart from competition. 

Your sales process should be more than the playbook. It must include the human element.

If you are not personable with your leads and customers, you’ll have trouble getting and retaining them. People respond to people. Making people seen, understood, and cared for will ensure your company’s success when you already have a great product or service.

Make sure your team doesn’t follow your sales playbook mindlessly. Most sales scripts are tactical. You’ve experienced it yourself. You’re interested, so you listen to the spiel, but you lose interest when the salesperson starts sounding robotic, delivering their lines without listening to your input. They don’t respond to what you are saying, leaving you hanging with your problem.

A timely and helpful response to your customer goes a long way. Depending on the product or service you offer, you’ll discover that sometimes all you need to do is stay on chat when your leads or clients need to talk to you. They will feel valued, and their trust in you will increase, leading to more conversions. 

Video chats have become popular now. Seems people are more open in front of a computer screen. They can speak to you (and your sales team) about what they’re going through directly to you and feel they are being heard. 

You humanize your sales process when you offer real help and service. Tune in to the customers’ sentiments. What are their issues? See what you can solve. You dive deep with them and move them along the pipeline with real communication. 

This is how you get referrals: from real, honest-to-goodness great service. 

Conclusion

To ensure you have an effective sales process, you need three key elements: a guide to follow, a motivated team, and a human approach to your customers.

A lot of businesses out there are only in it for the profit. They don’t care about supporting their clients. When you sell with integrity and authenticity, with a genuine desire to help, you set yourself apart, and you win.