The Center for Sales Strategy Blog

Having a strategic sales process goes far beyond knowing how to close a deal. If your goal is to drive sales performance and increase revenue, stay true to a repeatable sales process that leads to predictable sales.

The six steps of the Sales Accelerator lead salespeople from identifying a good prospect to developing a business relationship that results from the sale of your solution. Making it to step five—Close—means the finish line is in sight. But we’ve all heard the phrase, “the end depends on the beginning, and everything in between.”

Based on HubSpot research, only 3% of buyers trust sales representatives. If your sales process follows the cookie-cutter pattern of simply selling a product or service, the chances of you reversing that statistic are slim to none.

If you follow the formulated Sales Accelerator process, you know how important it is to execute the steps in correct order. During Discover, sellers uncovered prospect’s desired business results. The next step is to Advise the prospect on the best solution path, and that starts by determining which solution path is right for the situation.

This is the step where sellers learn how to differentiate themselves and prove to potential clients how they can make their life easier. From determining a solution path to removing surprises and handling objections, there are several points you don’t want your salespeople to overlook.

A conversation about desired business results (needs, challenges, and opportunities) is an essential part of the sales process. When engaging new business prospects as well as current customers, it’s crucial to ask the right questions. Aside from the right questions, other tools can help a seller discover core needs quickly and succinctly.

Needs analysis is a central and critical part of making the sale. Sellers work hard setting appointments; the end result should never be a botched needs analysis. Here are eight tools—along with some thoughts about each—that sellers can use to make the most of a needs analysis meeting.

The third step of our sales process is often the most tedious. Discover—also referred to in other sales process steps as “define,” assessment,” or “needs,” all share the same goal of meeting with a prospect or client to uncover their desired business results.  

The key part of this stage is understanding each prospect's challenges and needs and establishing how your product or service can help. We find that sellers rush through this step, but by taking their time in the Discover phase of the sales process, they will actually accelerate the sales cycle and increase their odds of closing the deal.

While technology and buyer behaviors have caused businesses to modernize their sales process, basic principles such as qualifying prospects, defining needs, and understanding buying patterns haven’t changed that much. Every business is different, but most follow a progression with comparable sales stages.

Recognizing the need to humanize the sales process, our Sales Accelerator series is known for being more in-step with how real selling is done today while applying basic fundamentals.

Each of the six steps in the Sales Accelerator series offers important points you don’t want your salespeople to overlook. However, the second step—Connect—is where we teach sellers how to establish two vital fundamentals: establishing credibility and building trust.

Setting the first appointment with a new business prospect is not an easy task. Some argue it’s the toughest part of the sales process. Additionally, it’s something veteran sellers struggle with as much as new sellers.

The main reason this is a difficult task is the lack of credibility that salespeople are saddled with. Let’s face it; salespeople are usually met with skepticism and kept at arm’s length by prospects who don’t know or trust them. Building trust and closing the credibility gap from the onset of the sales process is a great way to set more appointments with new business prospects.

Routines, schedules, processes—they all make us more efficient, consistent, and accurate in our roles. A strong sales process helps the prospect along their journey but also acts as a roadmap for reps so that they can consistently close deals.

The strategic sales process that we teach at The Center for Sales Strategy is called Sales Accelerator. It's an updated look at the customer-focused sales process, addressing how the sales process has evolved, and more in-step with how real selling is done today.

There are six steps of the Sales Accelerator, each filled with several courses that goes deep enough to build an effective, tailored solution while moving fast enough to achieve acceleration. Sales managers take note; these are the things you don’t want your team to overlook in the first step—Identify—of the sales process.

Sales managers and salespeople have discovered new ways of conducting face-to-face sales activity as a result of recent social distancing restrictions. Being creative and using video technology to stay connected with customers as well as propose and close business with new prospects has become the new normal.

World-class sellers know it’s time to move from playing defense to playing offense because customers and prospects need help. They need solutions. They need the problem-solving expertise that a quality salesperson brings to the table. Simply put, customers are more open to ideas and solutions than ever before because their level of pain is high.

When you try to engage in a serious conversation via email, you will generally find the recipient calling you on the phone to have the conversation. If you meet other people for a living—aka work in sales—verbal communication is usually the best form of communication.

To people like us, we only prefer written text when confirming dates or answering 'yes' or 'no' questions. Most salespeople are more effective when they have a face-to-face opportunity than when they depend on their writing abilities. With those face-to-face meetings now temporarily on-hold, we need email to help us reach people we don’t know. You need to stand out from all the other emails, and here's how.

While recently chatting with a new salesperson about setting appointments with new business target accounts, the seller said, “I never leave a message if my call goes into voicemail. I don’t want to waste time leaving a message.”

It’s no secret that leaving a good sales voicemail is hard. Even the most well-crafted messages often get ignored by prospects. However, leaving a voicemail is a wise investment and a critical part of the sales process that enables sellers to stand out and connect with prospects, and here are four reasons why.