Your Business Needs a Standardized Sales Process and Here’s Why

A talented, hardworking sales team is not enough to make a business successful. To streamline the process and make the most of your talented employees, you need a formal set of guidelines for them to follow.

A standardized sales process is a list of replicable steps to guide salespeople so they can effectively convert potential customers into customers. Research shows that B2B companies with an established sales process increased their revenue by 18 percent more than companies without one.
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And revenue growth is only one of many reasons to build a standardized sales process. Here are six additional benefits to establishing a standardized sales process for your B2B sales team.

2) It’s easier to train new employees

 
Without a protocol for the sales process, it’s hard to train new salespeople. On the other hand, by having a standardized process, training is easy, fast, and effective. No matter if you’re onboarding a rookie or an experienced salesperson, the basic steps for how to do things at the company remain the same.
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With the whole team following the same sales process, you won’t have to rely on just the sales manager to do all the training anymore. Now, any qualified sales team member can onboard freshly hired staff.

3) You can improve the method using measurable data

B2B companies without a standardized sales process have a tough time identifying the root cause for why certain methods are working or not. With a standard operating procedure for sales, you quickly begin to collect data and feedback about how it’s going. This provides the company with invaluable insight into what’s working and what is not. It then becomes much easier to refine the process by eliminating the right actions.

4) Your sales become more predictable

When the whole sales team is using the same repeatable steps, your company ends up with more consistency in its sales. It allows you to more accurately predict your win rate based on the number of leads at any given moment. With this information, sales managers can set quotas that are realistic and reliable.

5) It improves communication with other company departments

Communication between different departments in a company can be tricky. A standardized sales process creates a common language known to all areas of the company, simplifying communication between departments. This leads to less inter-departmental confusion and allows all the non-sales departments insight into how to assist the sales team if and when it is necessary.

6) The performance of the sales team is easier to track

With a sales team that operates without structure, it’s difficult for managers to measure the strengths and weaknesses of their sales team. They know how often they win and lose, but they don’t really know why. A standardized sales procedure provides a window into the specific actions of the sales team. Managers can then connect sales targets and other metrics with the sales process and adjust accordingly.