In this article
Start from real deals, not a textbook
Take the last twenty deals you won and ten you lost. For each, write the sequence of things that actually happened: the enquiry or the outreach, the first call, the visit, the sample, the quote, the negotiation, the order — and where the lost ones stopped. The pattern that emerges is your process; it is already there, unnamed. A machine shop’s might be enquiry, drawing received, feasibility confirmed, quote sent, sample approved, order. A clinic’s might be enquiry, consultation booked, consultation done, treatment plan given, deposit paid. A consultancy’s might be introduction, discovery call, proposal, presentation, contract.
Bring the salesperson who does most of the selling and the person who delivers into the room; the process crosses between them, and the handover is where most deals are dropped.
Map the stages from target account to won or lost
Five to seven stages, named for what has happened rather than for a feeling: not “interested” but “discovery call done”; not “hot” but “quote sent and acknowledged”. Start with the earliest point you do work — a target account identified, or an enquiry received — and end with two outcomes, won and lost, with a reason recorded for every loss. Keep a separate “nurture” state for the real-but-not-now buyers so they are neither cluttering the pipeline nor forgotten.
Each stage answers three questions: what happened to get here, what the salesperson does here, and what has to be true to leave. Write them on one page. If a stage cannot be described in that form, it is not a stage; it is a mood.
Define entry, exit, ownership and the information required
Entry and exit criteria are the discipline that makes the process useful. A deal enters “quote sent” only when the quote has actually gone, with a date; it leaves only when the buyer has responded or a stated number of follow-ups have failed. A deal enters “proposal” only when discovery has produced the three facts a proposal needs — the need in the buyer’s words, who decides, and when. Without criteria, deals drift forward on optimism and the pipeline tells the owner nothing.
Ownership: one person per deal, named, responsible for moving it or closing it out, and a rule for handover — from marketing to sales at qualification, from sales to delivery at order — with what information passes across. Information required at each stage: for the CRM record, the few fields that must be filled before the deal can move — contact, need, value, decision-maker, next action and date. Not thirty fields; five, enforced.
Make it live: meetings, CRM, coaching
The process exists only where it is used. In the CRM: the stages are the pipeline view, the entry criteria are required fields, every deal has a next action and a date, and a deal with no activity for a stated period is flagged. In the weekly meeting: thirty minutes, the pipeline on the screen, and one question per deal — what has to happen to move it, and by when; not a status recital. In coaching: the manager or owner looks at the deals stuck at one stage and works with the salesperson on that stage’s skill — discovery if deals die after the first call, proposals if they die after the quote.
Owner responsibilities: the owner or sales lead runs the weekly meeting and reviews the stuck deals; each salesperson keeps their deals current; someone — often the same person — records loss reasons honestly. Twenty minutes a day of CRM discipline from each salesperson is the whole cost.
Map · use it here or print it
The SME sales process
Seven stages from a name on a list to a decision. Each has what must be true to enter it, what must be recorded, and who owns it. Put the same seven in the CRM, in this order.
Target
A business that fits the profile, with a named contact. Nothing has happened yet.
- Enter: fits sector, size, territory
- Record: company, contact, source
- Owner: marketing or the SDR
Contacted
A conversation has happened — a call answered, a reply received, an enquiry made.
- Enter: two-way contact, not a sent email
- Record: what they said, the next step and date
- Owner: SDR or salesperson
Qualified
Fit, need, timing, authority and budget are known well enough to spend a salesperson’s time.
- Enter: the qualification scorecard passed
- Record: trigger, decision-maker, timeframe, budget range
- Owner: salesperson
Discovery done
A meeting or call in which the problem, the alternatives and the measure of success were established.
- Enter: discovery notes written the same day
- Record: the problem in their words, who else decides, what good looks like
- Owner: salesperson
Proposal
A written recommendation with scope, price and next steps, presented — not emailed and hoped for.
- Enter: proposal presented to the decision-maker
- Record: value, close date, the objection heard
- Owner: salesperson; manager reviews above a threshold
Negotiation
Terms are being settled: price, scope, timing, contract.
- Enter: verbal intent to proceed
- Record: the concessions and what was asked in return
- Owner: salesperson; owner or manager approves discounts
Won or lost
Signed, or closed with a reason. Every lost deal has one of six recorded reasons.
- Record: reason, competitor if any, what would change the answer
- Won: handover to delivery with the promises made
- Lost: a review date to re-approach
The rule that makes it work: a deal cannot move to the next stage until the record for this one is complete. The Monday pipeline meeting reads the stages, not the salesperson’s mood.
Free to print and share with your team.
Mistakes, measures, and what changes
The mistakes: copying a process from a software vendor with twelve stages your business never passes through; stages named for feelings; no exit criteria, so every deal is “80% likely” forever; a CRM with sixty fields nobody fills; the weekly meeting as a status recital; and writing the process and never opening it again. A safeguard: if a new salesperson could not run a deal from the one page, the page is not finished.
Measure the process by conversion between stages, time spent in each stage, and the share of deals with a next action and date. Within a quarter the stuck stage becomes visible, the forecast becomes credible, and the owner stops learning about lost deals at month end. This is the sales-process design we do with SMEs — the mapping from your real deals, the one-page process with criteria and owners, the CRM configured to it, the weekly meeting format, and the first month of coaching on the stuck stage — and the free audit starts with your last thirty deals.
Questions owners ask
How many stages should a small-business sales process have?
Five to seven. Fewer hides where deals get stuck; more creates stages nobody can tell apart. Each stage should be something that visibly happened, not a level of enthusiasm.
Do we need a CRM to have a process?
You need one place where every deal, its stage, its owner and its next action are visible. A simple CRM does that; a spreadsheet does it for a very small team for a while; an inbox never does.
How long does it take to put in place?
An afternoon to map from real deals, a week to configure the CRM and write the one page, a quarter of weekly meetings before it is a habit. The habit is the hard part.
What if salespeople resist the criteria?
Usually because the criteria expose stuck deals. Keep the fields to five, run the meeting on next actions rather than blame, and coach the stage where deals die. Resistance fades when the process helps them close.
Should marketing be part of the sales process?
At the handover, yes: the qualification stage is where marketing’s lead becomes sales’s deal, and what information passes across is part of the process.
What does GullySales do?
The deal review, the one-page process with entry and exit criteria and owners, the CRM configured to match, the weekly pipeline meeting format, loss-reason capture, and coaching on the stuck stage for the first month. Scoped in the free audit and priced in writing.