Following is part of my new book. The section is titles “Sales Process”, and it addresses: • The importance and proof of value to companies who have a formal sales process in place • The evolution of sales processes since the 50’s till today

1. Excerpt from my book titled
“Practical guide to sales effectiveness in emerging markets”
Following is part of my new book. The section is titles “Sales Process”, and it addresses:
• The importance and proof of value to companies who have a formal sales process in place
• The evolution of sales processes since the 50’s till today
Sales Process
Selling methodologies have evolved from transactional selling in the 1950’s till today in a
pattern of waves of sales methodologies. A certain methodology hits the tipping point and
suddenly every corporate rushes to implement it.
Corporates usually adopt the methodology du jour, create a formal sales process that
follows this methodology, train their employees on it, and force their employees adhere to it.
The advent of salesforce.com and the likes, was a help to many corporates to enforce the use of
a formalized sales process.
Why do we need a sales process?
Companies who follow a formal sales process are known to close more business as per the
following statistics that compare companies with a random selling process to those who have a
formal process:
• Percentage of sales professionals making their target increased, 52% to 57%
• Percentage of companies achieving their planned revenue increased, 77% to 81%
• Percentage of forecast- wins increased from 38% to 47%
• Percentage of forecast-loss decreased from 35% to 31%
• Percentage of forecast-no decision decreased from 26% to 22%
• Percentage of sales force turnover decreased from 20% to 18%
Evolution of sales processes
The prominent sales processes since the 1950 are as follows:
• AIDA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Action)
• AIDCA (Attention, Interest, Desire, Conviction, Action)
• FFAB or tactical selling (Feature, Function, Advantage, Benefit)
• FFAB Plus or Solution selling (Feature, Function, Advantage, Benefit, Implications,
Problem, Drivers)
• SPIN (Situation, Problem, Impact, Need for solution)
• By the year 2000, an initial form of consultative selling was introduced and called value
selling. It was built upon strategic business alignment and building a strong business
case. The problem was the way the sales professionals were implementing it. They had a

2. long list of questions that not all customers welcomed answering
• The genuine consultative selling process that I recommend is Richardson’s. It is built on
insight building and gives the sales professional an professional advantage that builds
trust between him and his customer. A trust that makes answering questions of a
consultative nature an earned right of the sales person, since he brought insight based
knowledge to the table.
Back to our subject, the corporate employees who have learned any of the above
mentioned sales processes leave their companies and join smaller ones, or even start their own
business thinking that what they used in their corporate job is THE only version of truth, so
they mimic what they have learned (which is not based on any sales strategy). They basically
stick to the choreography part of the sales scene and ignore the substance depth, and
intelligence behind the choreography.
In this section, we will get into the details of the elements of sales strategy in a practical,
hands-on manner that will enable the reader to conduct a clear sales strategy for their
organizations. We use a very effective consulting method developed by sales benchmark
index.
Moving deals through the pipeline is on every sales leader’s and salesperson’s mind.
Companies that follow a defined sales process are more likely to move opportunities through
their pipelines more quickly, forecast more accurately, and close more deals. An effective sales
process is very specific, defining:
• The major stages in the sales cycle
• Objectives to accomplish in each stage
• Selling activities to carry out in each stage based on best practices of top performers and
research
• Verifiable outcomes to spell out actions that customers must take to signal their
readiness (and therefore your readiness) to move to the next stage so you can
realistically assess the opportunity
• Sales tools to support your sales efforts in each stage
• Dialogue models to help you deliver your message clearly and persuasively
By aligning your sales process with your customer’s buying cycle, you make better
decisions. You help customers make better decisions. You do the right things at the
right