Sales process

A sales process is a systematic methodology for performing product or service sales. The reasons for having a sales process include seller and buyer risk management, achieving standardized customer interaction in sales and scalable revenue generation.

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Specific steps in sales processes vary from company to company but generally include the following steps:

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• Sales lead
• Qualified prospect
• Need identification
• Product proposal
• Deal close
• Deal Transaction

From a seller's point of view, a sales process mediates risk by stage-gating deals based on collection of information or execution of procedures that gate movement to the next step. This controls seller resource expenditure on non-performing deals. Ideally this also prevents buyers from purchasing products they don't need though such a benefit requires ethical intentions by the seller. Because of the uncertainty of this assurance, buyers often have a buying or purchasing process.

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Sales processes are generally more common for companies that either have large revenue risks that require systematic assurance of revenue generation and/or those that choose to use a more consultative sales approach (e.g. Saturn, IBM, Hewlett-Packard).

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Strictly even an effective ad hoc or retail sales process can be described by steps of an ideal sales process though some of the steps may be executed quickly. Often a bad sales experience can be analyzed and shown to have skipped key steps. This is where a good sales processes mediate risk for both buyer and seller.

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Many companies develop their own sales process, however, off the shelf versions are available from companies such as Huthwaite International and Miller Heiman. These provide a customisable process and a set of electronic tools that can be freestanding or can be integrated if required with the company's CRM or opportunity management system.

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