Developing a Sales Process | Sales Model Development

Every company’s sales model is going to be different depending on a number of factors. Variables like your products and services, your market, the industry as well as your own company’s values and methods.

But for many new small businesses who are starting out, they may not know how or where to begin. This is a sketch and a general guideline for how to develop a basic sales model for any business model, any company, division or market.

There are basic components in a sales model, which is different from a marketing model, that all small businesses need to consider when they are going out to the market to sell their products and services.

Go through this list and make sure your business model incorporates these components in one way or another. Then we will also discuss that actual sales process and what components you'll need to think through on that front.

Once you start a sales department and begin building a sales force, you will need to think through the sales training model as well, but we'll cover that at another time.

Before we even start talking about the product or service, we need to identify the target market. It is vitally important that you have a basic value system that always thinks about the market before they think about the product or service.

Identifying the target market needs to be the first step in developing the sales model. This is the one aspect that will overlap with your overall marketing model.

A very successful sales professional who was a top sales rep at places like Boston Scientific and Proctor & Gamble used to tell me to never make a product or service decision behind the desk. Always make it in front of the customer.

The big idea was that any modifications or creation of products and services should be a direct response to what the customers are telling us, not what we think they need. An initial business model will take you only so far. You need the feedback of real customers to make good decisions.

So begin with the customer in mind. This begins with identifying who they are. Many businesses begin with a general and abstract picture of their target market and potential customers and leave it at that. But you need to go a few steps more than this.

After you identify the target market, you must find out characteristics and get data to back you up. You need to answer questions like the following:

1) How big is your market?

2) What is their age range?

3) What is their gender or gender ratios?

4) Where do the live?

5) What are their felt needs and wants?

Once you’ve figured out general characteristics of your market, you should focus in on your top market prospects. Who is most likely to buy? Which market is most likely to bring in revenue?

Features and Benefits

Once you’ve identified you target market and gathered as much data and information on who they are and what they want, you need to craft a marketing message for your product or service. And that begins with listing the features and benefits of your wares. This needs to be written out and be an explicit part of your sales model.

Features are positive aspects or characteristics of your product or service. If you are selling cars, a feature might be power windows, or AC. If it’s a television, it would be the size of the screen.

Benefits are what your customers are going to get out of having your product or service. If you’re selling a car, a benefit of the power windows will be that you won’t have to reach over to roll down the window. In the case of televisions, it would be the enjoyment of watching a football game on a 52” screen.

Contact Strategy

Next you need to figure out how you will contact your prospects. Most companies just choose to do cold calling that leads to a sales presentation. You can also do marketing campaigns to generate warm leads, but doing this would require a marketing budget.

If you do cold calling, you have to figure out how you will generate leads. You can just google your prospects or you can buy leads from a lead generation company like InfoUSA and Salesgenie.  You need to think about sales lead generation as you plan your sales model.

Cold Calling Script

If you are utilizing cold calling in your basic sales model, you will need to craft a cold calling script. This will need to be a 4-5 sentence pitch that gets your prospect to agree to an addition meeting where you do a full sales presentation.

In most cases, especially business-to-business (B2B) sales, your goal isn’t to sell your product or service on the spot over the phone. You’re goal is simply to get them to a sales presentation or sales interview.

Sales Presentation

Next you need to develop a sales presentation. Usually these are no longer than 20 minutes, with 10 minutes of discussion, questions, and answers for a total of 30 minutes. Of course, if it goes longer, it must be because the prospect wants it to go longer at that point. But your part should only be 20 minutes.

Reason being is that most people won’t agree to a sales meeting that lasts longer than 30 minutes. Most prospects know that meetings like these usually last longer than expected or initially pitched. So if you say 20 minutes, it’s more agreeable to a prospect.

Sales Conferencing

Your sales presentations don’t always need to be in person or on location at a prospects office. It can be a virtual sales meeting that is conducted over a sales conferencing session.

This would involve calling the prospect, doing the presentation verbally over the phone and a visual presentation online. There are many great services like Gotomeeting and Webex that facilitate these types of virtual meetings for a very low cost.

Sales Follow Up Calls

Once you do a sales presentation, you need to follow up on your prospects. Usually this is a simple concept that people often over complicate. The most important thing about sales follow up calls is to DO IT.

Research shows that most sales reps stop after 5 follow up calls and that most deals are closed with an average of 7 calls. The sales follow up call is one of the most important and most neglected part of developing a sales model that will bring in the revenue stream.