How to document your sales process yourself, in one page

To document your sales process without a consultant, sit with your best salesperson and ask five questions about the last deals they won. Turn the answers into one page of plain sentences, each saying who does what and what must be true before the deal moves. Then test the page against five real deals. If a deal cannot be placed on it, the page is wrong, not the deal.

Why start with your best salesperson and not a blank page?

Because the good process already exists. It sits in the head of the person who keeps winning, and nobody has asked them to explain it. For example, imagine an invented Kochi firm that installs CCTV and access systems for offices and has one salesperson whose quotes close more often. This person always asks about the cabling route on the first call and sends a photo of the site plan with the quote. Those two habits are the process. Write them down before you invent anything.

If you are the best salesperson yourself, ask someone else to interview you. You will skip the steps that feel obvious, and those are exactly the ones a new person will miss.

What are the five questions to ask?

Ask them about two or three specific won deals, not in general. "What do you usually do" produces tidy fiction. "Walk me through the Kakkanad office order" produces the truth. Record the talk on a phone if the person agrees, because you will not keep up with notes.

1. What happened between the first message and the first visit or call?
2. What did you need to know before you wrote the quote, and how did you find out?
3. Who else had to agree, and how did you reach them?
4. What did you do when the buyer went quiet?
5. What did you do the day the order came?

Leave the answers in their words for now. Tidying comes later.

How do I turn the answers into one page?

Skip the grid. Write each step as a sentence with four parts: the trigger, the person, the action, and where it is written down. Six or seven sentences are enough. For the Kochi firm they might read:

• When an enquiry arrives, whoever holds the phone adds a row to the enquiry sheet and asks for the building type and floor count.
• Before a visit is fixed, the salesperson has asked about the cabling route and written the answer in the notes column.
• The technician uploads site photos to the buyer's folder the day of the visit.
• A quote leaves the office only with a site photo attached and a call-back date written in the row.
• If the buyer has not answered after the number of tries the owner has set, the salesperson marks the row Lost, reason "no response".
• Advance received: the owner opens a job card.

Notice that every sentence names a record. If a step leaves nothing written down, nobody can check it happened.

Under the sentences, add three lines: the buyer you want, the buyer you decline, and the one number you count, such as quotes sent against orders received. Do not add more.

What if the people you interview disagree?

They will. One salesperson visits before quoting, another quotes from photos. Do not average them. Look at the won and lost deals each one has, and keep the habit that shows up in the wins. If both habits win, write the page for the commoner case and note the exception in one line. If neither shows a pattern, you have found a gap that needs more records, not more writing.

How do you check the page against real deals?

Take five deals, two won, two lost, one still open. Place each on the page and mark where it actually stood on each sentence. You are looking for three things.

• A step that the won deals went through and the lost ones skipped. That is worth protecting.
• A step the page has but none of the deals did. Cut it, or admit nobody follows it.
• A deal that fits nowhere. Add the missing step.

Suppose, in the same imagined firm, both lost deals had no site visit. The buyer asked for a quote on WhatsApp and the salesperson sent one. The page had said "visit", but nobody had noticed it was being skipped. The repair would be a rule: no quote without a visit or at least a photo of the site. It costs a site visit of about ₹400 in fuel and an hour, and two buyers decide the extra step is too slow and go elsewhere, so the firm keeps the photo option. Placing real deals on the page shows what reading it through does not.

Who should read it before you finalise it?

Everyone who handles an enquiry, including whoever picks up the phone. Hand them the page and ask them to mark the one sentence they think is wrong or never happens. Do not ask whether they like it; they will say yes. A junior who says "we never get the photos before the quote" has just shown you where the page and the practice differ.

Then pin it where people work. A page in a folder named "Processes" does nothing.

When is this not enough?

A one-page note suits a team of two to ten selling something that closes in a handful of conversations. It will not hold up with several offices, a distributor network or tenders decided by committees. There the steps change on who is involved and the page needs branches. It also fails if your best salesperson is guessing. Won deals with nothing in common mean you need records first.

One more honest limit: writing it down does not make people follow it. Someone must look at the enquiry sheet and ask about the missing dates. That is a management habit, not a writing task.

Using the page on live enquiries

Today, book an hour with your best salesperson and ask the five questions about two won deals. Then run the page on the next ten enquiries and mark where it failed, fixing only the wording that confused people. This page is meant to work without us. If you would still like help, revenue process documentation is the service, and the sales process hub sets out each step. You can tell us what you need.