The sales process
Selling is a sequence, and most of the loss happens between the steps.
The order a small business sells in: decide what the company is aiming at, work out who buys, build the list, generate the enquiries, arm the person selling, answer fast, qualify honestly, quote, chase, close, and earn the second order. Every step written as the work rather than the theory.
In one paragraph
A sales process is the written order in which a business decides who to sell to, gets in front of them, asks for the order, and keeps the customer afterwards. This section publishes ours: 10 stages, 67 steps, each with what the step produces, who has to sign it off, and when it is not worth doing.
Read it in order the first time. After that, most owners use it as a checklist: find the step where their own answer is a shrug, and start there.
The stages, in order
- 01Strategic plan. What the business is for, what it is aiming at this year, and the numbers that say whether it got there.
- 02Customer research. Who buys, why they buy, and what they are comparing you against while they decide.
- 03Prospecting. Building the list of companies worth approaching, and deciding which of them to spend time on.
- 04Lead generation. The routes an enquiry can arrive by, and what each one costs in money or in time.
- 05Sales enablement. What the person selling says, sends and answers with, written down instead of improvised.
- 06Sales qualification. How fast an enquiry is answered, and the test that decides whether it becomes a proposal or a polite no.
- 07Proposal and follow-up. The meeting where you find out what they need, the quotation you send, and the chasing that decides most of it.
- 08Sales closure. The meeting, the decision, and what you learn from the ones you win and the ones you lose.
- 09After the order. Handing the customer to whoever delivers, then earning the second order and the referral.
- 10Running the process. Where the work is recorded and the meeting where it is managed, both running the whole year.
Stage 1
Strategic plan.
What the business is for, what it is aiming at this year, and the numbers that say whether it got there.
- MissionYour mission statement has to survive a prospect asking what you do.
- VisionA vision without a date on it is a wish, and your team knows it.
- Our storyNobody believes a company story in which nothing ever went wrong.
- Core valuesA value you have never refused an order over is not a value.
- SWOT analysisMost SWOTs end up as a list of complaints about other departments.
- TOWS analysisTurn the four boxes into six actions with a name and a date on each.
- Business goalsPick the one number you would be genuinely sorry to miss this year.
- Sales goalsWork out how many orders the team must close, then how many conversations that needs.
- Marketing goalsMarketing's goal is a number of enquiries, not a number of posts.
- Operational goals for sales and marketingMost orders are lost in the hours between the enquiry and the reply.
- Financial goals for sales and marketingKnow what an order costs you to win before you argue about the ad budget.
- People goals for sales and marketingHire when the arithmetic says the work will not fit in the hours you have.
Stage 2
Customer research.
Who buys, why they buy, and what they are comparing you against while they decide.
- Ideal customer profileMost of your wasted selling time goes to companies you should have refused.
- Buyer personaWrite to the person who signs, and to the mistake they are afraid of making.
- Customer behaviour: internal and external factorsNothing changed about your offer, and the enquiries stopped in June anyway.
- Buyer journeyEvery enquiry you lost stopped at a particular step, and you can name it.
- Buyer contextSame trade, same size, same quotation, and one of them was never buying.
- Primary and secondary customersThe person who pays your invoice is rarely the person who chose you.
- Value propositionIf your nearest rival could print the same sentence, it is not yours.
Stage 3
Prospecting.
Building the list of companies worth approaching, and deciding which of them to spend time on.
Stage 4
Lead generation.
The routes an enquiry can arrive by, and what each one costs in money or in time.
- Mutual connection sourcingA shared contact will introduce you, but only if you write the ask for them.
- Trigger eventsA company becomes a buyer on the day something changes at its end.
- Search engine optimisationNothing happens for months, and then the phone rings with no budget behind it.
- Search engine adsAds reach the people already searching, and nobody else at all.
- WebsiteEvery other route ends at your website, and that is all it does on its own.
- Social media marketingThe account goes quiet the week your business gets busy, and that is the problem.
- Educational contentThe same question comes on the phone every week and nobody has written the answer.
- Connectors and contact sphereSomebody meets your buyer three months before you do, and you can name them.
- Influencer marketingYou are renting somebody else's audience once, so decide first what you will count.
- Networking groupsA referral room pays back in the second year, and charges you all through the first.
- Word of mouthPeople can only repeat a sentence they can remember.
- Channel sales partnersEvery rupee of dealer margin buys a salesperson you do not employ.
- WebinarsMost webinars fail three weeks before they start, when nobody was invited.
- Free consultationsA free hour is easy to give away and easy to waste.
- Quora marketingAnswer the question a buyer actually typed, in the words they typed it.
- Email marketingThe only list worth sending to is one you can explain, address by address.
- Pinterest marketingPinterest sells kitchens and weddings, and it will not sell your gearboxes.
Stage 5
Sales enablement.
What the person selling says, sends and answers with, written down instead of improvised.
- Sales pitchSomebody asks what you do and four people answer it four different ways.
- Meeting roleplayEverybody agrees roleplay works and almost nobody in a small firm does it.
- Call scriptsA call script is a map of where the call can turn, not a paragraph to read out.
- Email templatesThe email that says just following up is the one nobody ever answers.
- StoriesA story where nothing went wrong is an advertisement, and buyers hear it.
- High impact questionsThe answer to your first question is the one the buyer has already rehearsed.
- Objections listWrite down the sentence the buyer actually said, not the objection you remember.
- Objection handlingToo expensive can mean four different things and only one of them is money.
Stage 6
Sales qualification.
How fast an enquiry is answered, and the test that decides whether it becomes a proposal or a polite no.
Stage 7
Proposal and follow-up.
The meeting where you find out what they need, the quotation you send, and the chasing that decides most of it.
- Discovery meetingYou cannot price a job you have not understood, and most jobs are priced anyway.
- Site visit, demo or sampleA free sample with no date attached to it is a gift, and it gets treated like one.
- Quotation and proposalA price on WhatsApp is not a quotation, and it loses to anyone who sends a document.
- Follow-up after the quoteMost quotations are never refused, they are forgotten, and nobody in your office notices.
- Negotiation and termsThe discount was agreed in four seconds and it gets paid for over four months.
Stage 8
Sales closure.
The meeting, the decision, and what you learn from the ones you win and the ones you lose.
- Meeting preparation checklistFifteen minutes before the meeting decides most of what happens in it.
- Closing tacticsA deal with no date on it is not a deal, whatever the pipeline says.
- Sales presentationNobody in the history of your trade has bought because of slide seven.
- Win debriefEverybody in the room already knows why you won, and they mostly do not.
- Lost debriefThe buyer who did not choose you owes you nothing, which is the whole problem.
- TestimonialsAsk on the day it worked, not at the end of the year when the feeling has gone.
- Case studiesThe part your buyer wants to read is the part everybody leaves out.
Stage 9
After the order.
Handing the customer to whoever delivers, then earning the second order and the referral.
- Handover to deliveryMost of the damage is done in the week after the order is signed.
- Repeat and reorderNobody in the company owns the question of when a customer is due to buy again.
- Asking for referralsA customer who would recommend you has still never been asked to.
- Winning back dormant customersThe customers who stopped buying are still in your books, and nobody has rung them.
Stage 10
Running the process.
Where the work is recorded and the meeting where it is managed, both running the whole year.
Before you start
Three things worth knowing about the list.
Most owners have a sales process. Almost nobody has written it down.
It lives in the founder's head, which means it cannot be taught to a new salesperson, cannot be audited when revenue drops, and leaves with whoever knew it.
The steps are in this order for a reason.
A prospect list built before anyone agreed who the ideal customer is will be wrong, and no amount of lead generation rescues it. Skipping backwards is where most of the wasted spend happens.
You will not need all of them.
A four-person firm selling to three buyers needs perhaps a dozen of these. The point of the list is to let you see what you are choosing not to do, rather than to find out later.
The offer
Start with a free audit of how you sell.
It is useful on its own, whether or not you hire us.
What you receive
- A 45-minute call with the person who will do the work
- A written, scored report on the six places orders leak, within a few working days
- Every fix ranked by what it returns and what it costs
- The one thing to do first, and why
- An honest line on whether you need outside help at all
- If you do, the scope and the fee in writing
No invoice. No obligation. No sales script.
FAQ
Questions owners ask about the process.
Not here? More answers, or ask on WhatsApp.