How do prospects decide to purchase your product or service? Does a single decision maker find a product or service and buy on the spot, or does s/he go through many steps and approvals first? Perhaps there are multiple people or departments involved in the decision, each with their own needs?

Your sales process management determines the steps you follow as you guide prospects from initial contact to purchase. They’re far more common in B2B than in B2C, but it’s possible for many for high-ticket B2C items (such as real estate or autos) to have a distinct sales process.

Note: You can access guided, interactive templates for creating your sales process flowcharts in our marketing planning and management app. Try it for free!

Your sales process begins when you first identify a new prospect or the prospect engages with you:

An effective sales process management flowchart explains:

• Each distinct step a prospect takes
• Knowledge the prospect needs to move to the next step
• Literature and tools you provide to help the prospect move forward faster
• The length of time a prospect needs at each step
• Conversion rates: the percentage of prospects who move from one step to the next

With this documented sales process, you have a powerful tool that enables you to:

• Sell more efficiently
• Generate more accurate sales and revenue reports
• Estimate the revenue and return on investment (ROI) of your marketing campaigns
• See which stages take the most time and find new ways to move prospects forward
• Create better sales tools and literature
• Improve your campaigns
• Minimize the amount of time your reps spend on estimates and forecasts

Which of these scenarios best describes your sales process management?

Sales Process Managment Concepts & Steps

Before you begin

If you have multiple distribution channels, you might find that you have a different sales process for each. And, you could have a different process for each offering you provide within an existing channel, so it’s valuable to document the buying steps that your market prefers to take for each offering within each channel combination.

Your sales processes are also influenced by your positioning, brand strategy and pricing. Your brand personality should be evident at each step in the process. For example, if you’re delivering a luxury experience, don’t use pushy and aggressive sales tactics, and don’t use price discounts to convert prospects to customers.

Determine how your prospects buy

List the steps you think prospects logically take from the time they recognize a problem to the time they purchase a solution. Talk with customers or ask your sales reps for more insight. Figure out what steps they take, what they need to know at each step and how you can deliver that information most effectively.

Create your sales process

For each step your prospects need to take, list:

• What the prospect needs to learn
• Sales tools and literature you can provide to help the prospect move forward
• The length of time a prospect needs at that step
• The percentage of prospects who move from each step to the next (your “conversion rate”)

Project campaign results and revenue

When you have a sales process with conversion rates, you can quickly generate solid pipeline and revenue reports. For example, if you have 50 prospects at the presentation stage, your process may show that 20% will become customers. That means those 50 prospects should deliver 10 new customers. Your process will also tell you when that should happen and how much revenue those prospect represent.

You can use a similar calculation to project results from new marketing campaigns. For example, if a campaign should produce 100 qualified leads, you can estimate the number of meetings, presentations, and new customers the campaign will generate.

Improve your process to maximize revenue

When you have a defined process, it’s easier to test ideas for improving results. For example, you can

• Identify spots where prospects get “stuck” in the process and try new materials or messages to help them move forward
• Measure how well different reps convert at each step and help those that aren’t doing as well
• See how leads from different marketing campaigns convert and improve your campaigns
• Create campaigns to “recycle” leads that fall out of the process at various spots

After Documenting Your Sales Process Management Procedures

After you’ve documented your process, develop the sales tools and literature you’ll need to guide your prospects through each step. Add your process to your customer relationship management (CRM) software so that each account is assigned to a stage at all times. Then you can run reports and measure your progress and improve your sales management.