Learn to Love Your Sales Process is based on the eBook (http://read.infoteam-consulting.com/sales-process-ebook) authored by Phil Kreindler and helps sales people realise that the sales process shouldn’t be something you hate or a formality, but actually, it should be something you love – an action guideline based on best practice, and above all, a toolkit that helps you increase the probability of a sale.

2. Learn to Love Your Sales Process is authored by Phil Kreindler.
Phil Kreindler is the Founder and CEO of Infoteam – The Sales
Process Architects.
He is a senior consultant and coach who specialises in improving
B2B sales performance.
His thought leadership on What Really Matters In B2B Selling is
based on a 25-year track record of consulting 350 companies across
multiple industries globally.

3. Contents
1. What is a Sales Process
2. What We All Hate About Sales Processes
3. Process versus Goals
4. Why we should all Love the Sales Process
5. The Elements of an Ideal Sales Process
6. Using a Sales Process When Things are not Ideal
7. Sales Process and CRM
8. Sales Process and Recruitment
9. The Benefit of a Good Sales Process in a Nutshell

4. What is a Sales Process?
It is an action guideline based on best practices and a toolkit to
increase the probability of advancing the sale, build customer trust
and differentiate yourself through how you sell.

5. The Sales Prevention Officer
Plenty of sales people could name someone worthy of this
job title.
What We All Hate About
Sales Processes
The Sales Process as control
Control is what a lot of Sales People think the Sales
Process is for.
A bad Sales Process focuses on
control and tiresome reporting.
A good Sales Process focuses on
helping Sales Professionals sell and
give other people the data they need.

6. Process versus Goals
There are salespeople who think along the lines of:
“Never mind about process just give me a goal to meet and a
bonus to go with it and let me sell!”
That can certainly work in the short-term in simple B2C
situations, but not in complex B2B sales.
Can you ignore the goal and
just concentrate on the
process? Probably, yes.
Best is if you keep the
goal in mind and
concentrate on the
process.

7. It’s not an off-the-shelf solution. The Sales Process has
to be configured to YOUR business then tailored for
EVERY pitch to EACH customer.
Once it’s understood and applied by everyone
involved, your Sales Process differentiates you
from the competition.
It prevents you wasting time on “no-hope”
opportunities, increases your customers’ trust in you
and helps customer-side people to sell your solution to
other internal stakeholders.
Why we should all Love the
Sales Process

8. Stage 1: Identification
Stage 2: Qualification
Stage 3: Covering the Buying Centre
Stage 4: Proposal
Stage 5: Decision
The Elements of an Ideal
Sales Process

9. Stage 1: Identification
This involves working out what kind of organisation
you want to talk to.
It makes sense to target groups of similar companies
so you can research a business sector and use the
results of your research many times over.
You may need to apply filters like company size and
location to make sure your targeting is viable.
Then you need to identify potential challenges, the
right person to target and a reason which motivates them
to want to meet you.

10. Stage 2: Qualification
This is the point at which you take stock and ask the
following questions:
• Is this Opportunity right for us?
• Do we have a viable solution with a distinctive value
proposition?
• Can we realistically win against the competition?
• Have we identified all risks?

11. Stage 3: Covering the
Buying Centre
This important stage in the Sales Process is rarely
part of the customer’s buying process.
You have to discover what each person’s role in the
decision making process is, what their needs are and
what relationships they may have with your
competitors.
Failure to do all this effectively is the cause of a great
many failed pitches.

12. Stage 4: Proposal
It’s usually best when you are be allowed to present your
proposal in person to all the key decision makers, but
sometimes that’s just not possible.
The key tool to use both in a face-to-face presentations
and in situations where you may not get to talk to all the
decision makers is the Deal One Pager and sometimes the
Business Case.

13. Stage 5: Decision
Customers rarely just say yes, they usually want to
negotiate. Their starting point is often just to get the
price down - which is the last thing you want.
There are many things you need to do to prepare for and
manage a successful negotiation but the aim is always to
retain the profit in the deal.
The key to this is identifying things that you can offer that
are of significant value to the customer but cost you very
little – we call them Elements of Unequal Value.

14. Not every opportunity fits into the Sales Process, but with smart
work you should be able to apply the principles of your Sales
Process and thereby make it winnable.
Using a Sales Process When
Things are not Ideal
The first thing to do is Qualify the lead rigorously, if you can’t
apply your Sales Process in any way at all, that may be enough
reason to walk away.
Remember, a lot of organisations need a
minimum number of responses from
credible organisations to make their
process viable.
You may be able to leverage their need
for you to respond to get access to the
Buying Centre.

15. CRM systems are an excellent tool when they are fully
aligned with the Sales Process and are not over-
engineered.
Sales Process and CRM
What technology does is reinforce structure and
discipline and embeds the same language into the way
every Sales person works.
Our experience shows that
supporting the Sales Process with
fully integrated technology
increases adoption to around 80%.

16. When you hire experienced Sales Professionals you want the
ones who already use your Sales Process, or something very
similar. If they do they will be more productive, more quickly.
Sales Process and
Recruitment
To improve recruitment, create a Success Profile for each role
and then prepare your recruitment interview questions.
You ask the question and make sure you
get an answer that demonstrates the
competency, to ensure the candidate
behaves consistently in the way you
would like.

17. The whole process differentiates you from your
competitors by focusing on customer expectations of
vendor Sales people.
The Benefit of a Good
Sales Process in a Nutshell
With the benefits of linking your
Sales Process to your CRM to
keep everyone on track and the
advantages of using your Sales
Process to build the right team and
it’s hard to see why you shouldn’t
love your Sales Process.
Just make sure it’s a good one.

18. A Couple of Questions to Ask
Yourself:
Does the Sales Team think it is a good Sales Process?
Do you have a Sales Process?
Does your CRM support and reinforce an Ideal Sales Process?
Find out more about Learning to
Love Your Sales Process with our
eBook
Download the eBook Now